Here be the main characters from A Streetcar Named Desire and the tropes they embody.
Blanche Dubois
(Stage debut) Played By: Jessica Tandy
(Movie) Played By: Vivien Leigh
A fading southern belle from a prestigious background, who lives with her younger sister, Stella, and her brother-in-law, Stanley.
- Big Sister Instinct: Blanche is angered by Stanley’s mistreatment of Stella and tells her to leave him.
- Break the Haughty: Blanche is quite proud of her rich family background and her Southern Belle status, but their property is lost and her looks are fading away. She stays with her married younger sister whose husband doesn't get along well with Blanche. And it only gets worse...
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Blanche prefers the world of her own creation, where she still is a chaste lady of refinement and she still can win the favors of men like Shep Huntleigh (whom we never meet and might not exist). This is highlighted when Stanley is revealing her falsehoods to Stella and Blanche is singing in the bath: "Say, it's only a paper moon/Sailing over a cardboard sea/But it wouldn't be make-believe/If you believed in me." Unfortunately, by the end of the play, this make-believe world is the only world she can stand to live in.
- Compulsive Liar: Blanche feels the need to lie about everything, even when it would make sense to tell the truth. Hence why Stella doesn't want to believe that Stanley raped Blanche.
- Desperately Craves Affection: Blanche desperately desires to be touched and fears it as well.
- Ear Worm: Played for Drama here, in both the movie and the play. The 'Varsuviana Polka' plays in her head, audible to herself and the audience, whenever she thinks about her past, specifically her late husband. It gets stuck in her head and won't stop playing until she hears the gun shot.
- Hot for Student: She pursued one of her high school students. This was why she was fired.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: When Blanche isn't calling Stanley a 'Polack', or deriding Stella for marrying him, Blanche can potentially be a genuinely nice person. For example, she's quick to help Stella after Stanley attacks her, and is greatly fearful for her welfare when she chooses to return to him.
- Meaningful Name: As Blanche herself tells to Mitch, her name means "white woods" in French.
- Old Maid: Modern equivalent. She was married, but her husband was homosexual. She is desperate to get married again, to a Nice Guy who can help her escape her reputation as a spinster. She is still fairly good-looking but is not happy about the fact that she might not be aging gracefully.
- Rape Leads to Insanity: Invoked, after Stanley rapes her. This is heavily implied to have broken her permanently. The next and last scene we see her, she has sunk deep into her delusions, and begins talking of her death for a romantic allure. Her descent into madness gives Stanley an excuse to send her to a mental asylum.
- Southern Belle: Blanche is a Southern Belle in the 20th century, a fading relic of a bygone age. She is living in a world that doesn't really exist anymore and her ideals are hopelessly out of date; she has to deal with the loss of their mansion house Belle Reve in the South, has no money or prospects, lives off her sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley but expects to be waited on and treated like a queen.
- Stepford Smiler: She has this as a part of her Southern Belle persona, pretending she is happy and sexually innocent, when in reality she is spiralling into madness..
Stanley Kowalski
Played By: Marlon Brando
Stella's husband and the main antagonist of the play.
- Berserk Button: More than a few, but especially being called a Polack. This is both because he doesn't like his heritage being disparaged, and because he considers himself an American above all else.I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is a one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack.
- Domestic Abuse: Fits this trope to a "T".
- Immigrant Patriotism: Insists he’s 100 percent American.
- Jerkass: He has basically zero redeeming qualities; he's loud, brutish, a cheater, and a rapist.
- Karma Houdini: He gets off completely scot-free in the original play, with Stella refusing to believe Blanche due to her constant lies and unwillingness to leave Stanley. The movie has Stella leave him with the baby, as it was a requirement of the Hay's Code that an evil character receive comeuppance.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Stanley is a brute, but he is very cunning and smarter than he appears.
- Mr. Fanservice: In and Out-of-Universe with the movie version. It is heavily implied that Blanche is attracted to his Bad Boy tendencies and good looks.
- Say My Name: One of the most famous examples of such: 'STEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!'
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The manly man to Mitch's sensitive guy.
Harold 'Mitch' Mitchell
Played By: Karl Malden
One of Stanley's friends, he is a Nice Guy who is a potential love interest for Blanche.
- Dogged Nice Guy: A rare example where Mitch dumps Blanche after she finds out she has been lying to him about everything about her. It is sadder when we hear that he doesn't care that she's older than he thought (what bothers her the most about herself), but that 'all the rest of it' ended it.
- Madonna-Whore Complex: Decides that Blanche is "not clean enough" to marry after he finds out about her Dark and Troubled Past but she's good enough to have a casual lay with. He attempts to do so when Blanche asks him feignly to marry her. He drops his hands from her waist and says he doesn't want to anymore.
- Momma's Boy: He's very attached to his mother, who he takes care of as she is sick. It is because of her that he wants to get married, as that is one of her wishes.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The sensitive guy to Stanley's manly man, highlighted by Blanche to show what she does and doesn't desire in the man. It is implied this may not be in her expressed order...
Stella Kowalski
Played By: Kim Hunter
Blanche's younger sister and Stanley's wife.- All Girls Want Bad Boys: She loves Stanley more than her own sister, despite the fact that he beats her.
- In Love with Your Carnage: The reason Stella doesn't leave Stanley; she mentions that on their wedding night, he took her slipper and smashed every light in the apartment with it. She says she was "sort of- thrilled by it..." in a lustful manner.
- Proper Lady: She acts like a deconstructed version of this, given the setting and nature of the play/film, in which case, she plays the loyal and faithful wife. However, in playing this, she's subject to much mistreatment.
- Stellar Name: Stella means "star" in Latin. Lampshaded by Blanche when she arrives to the Kowalskis.
- Stepford Smiler: Especially in the movie.
