French Quarter
The French Quarter of New Orleans is the primary setting of A Streetcar Named Desire, a poor but raffish district whose atmosphere of decay, vitality, and raw sensuality shapes the play's conflicts and themes. The Kowalskis' apartment on Elysian Fields, a street running between the L&N tracks and the Mississippi River, is located in this section, which is characterized by white frame houses, weathered grey, with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables. The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay. The warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses, with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee, can almost be felt. A corresponding air is evoked by the music of Negro entertainers at a barroom around the corner, a tinny piano played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers, which expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here. The Quarter is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races in the old part of town.
Atmosphere and Daily Life
The French Quarter is a place of constant, overlapping sensory stimulation. The voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping above the music of the "blue piano." Street cries form a choral chant in the early morning. The kitchen of the Kowalski apartment, during the poker night, suggests a lurid nocturnal brilliance, the raw colors of childhood's spectrum, with vivid slices of watermelon on the table, whiskey bottles and glasses. The men wear colored shirts, solid blues, a purple, a red-and-white check, a light green, and are described as men at the peak of their physical manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colors. The Quarter's life is punctuated by the sounds of the "blue piano," the roar of an approaching locomotive, the cries of a tamale Vendor, and the cathedral bells of St. Louis Cathedral, which Blanche DuBois calls "the only clean thing in the Quarter." The neighborhood's casual acceptance of impropriety is evident when Mitch tells Blanche that her being "not properly dressed" makes no difference in the Quarter.
Key Locations and Events
The French Quarter contains several specific locations that figure in the play's action. The Kowalskis' apartment is the central domestic space where the poker night, the birthday supper, and the final confrontation between Blanche and Stanley occur. The Four Deuces barroom around the corner provides the "blue piano" music and is where Steve Hubbell chases Eunice after their fight. The street itself is where Stanley bellows for Stella after the poker night violence, and where Blanche first arrives, shocked by the incongruity of her sister's home. The Quarter's narrow streets and balconies are the setting for the Hubbells' marital disputes, with Eunice threatening to call the vice squad after seeing Steve chasing a blonde around the balcony. The neighborhood's proximity to Bourbon Street and the French Market is referenced, and the cathedral bells chime throughout the final scene. The Quarter's raw, lurid atmosphere is contrasted with Blanche's memories of Belle Reve and her fantasies of a cruise on the Caribbean, making her alienation from this world complete.
Thematic Significance
The French Quarter functions as a symbolic space that embodies the play's central tensions. Its raffish charm and decay mirror Blanche's own faded gentility and her sister Stella's descent into a life of sensual pleasure. The constant presence of the "blue piano" and the sounds of the street create a backdrop of raw, unmediated life against which Blanche's illusions and pretensions are measured and found wanting. The Quarter's tolerance for violence and sexual aggression, as seen in Stanley's behavior and the Hubbells' fights, provides the environment in which Stanley's rape of Blanche can occur. The neighborhood's lack of privacy, with its thin walls and open windows, makes Blanche's attempts to maintain her facade of refinement impossible. The French Quarter, with its mixture of decay and vitality, becomes the stage on which the conflict between the old world of Belle Reve and the new world of Stanley Kowalski is played out, and where Blanche's tragic fate is sealed.
