To begin with, A Streetcar Named Desire is considered as a tragedy because it has a tragic heroine. Each tragic hero or heroine has the potential to do, they are characterised as being the perfect hero except for his/her flaws, they are in conflict with at least one person around them, they are trapped in situations that they cannot get out of, they seem to be doomed from the start and they bring about their own downfall. Because the play has a tragic ending the audience usually ends up feeling pity for one or more …show more content…
From the first scene the audience learns that Blanche and Stella were brought up on a plantation and that Stanley and his friends are poor and uneducated. In the first scene the two families come together in a scruffy environment, it is therefore Blanche who must adjust to the situation. When Stanley exposes Blanche's past and when he rapes her, he turns her ‘upper-class’ upbringing (of which she is very proud) into something without any meaning. The conflict, therefore, is bigger than Stanley vs. Blanche or even male vs. female, it is the Old South vs. the new ind ustrial age and the upper-class life vs. the ‘common’ life. With Blanche, it is not only her sinful ways that causes her misery, it is her upper-class upbringing and clinging to the past that is one of the reasons for her downfall - a tragic end for a tragic character.
Williams described that A Streetcar Named Desire is a tragedy of Stanley’s incomprehension of Blanche’s needs. However there were many criticisms concerning this statement of this play being a tragedy. There are many factors that contributed to Blanche’s downfall and she seems to fit, the requirements for being a tragic heroine, perfectly. One may think that Blanche Dubois does not fit into the category as a tragic heroine, not because she is not tragic enough, but because she is not sympathetic enough to a