Naturalism, an outgrowth of literary realism, is a
literary movement that replicates everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as
Romanticism or Surrealism, in which symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment
is given to literary subjects. Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life,
including poverty, racism, sex, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution,
and filth. Certainly, Tennesse Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire
portrays life in a naturalistic manner.
Despite
her pretenses of gentility, Blanche DuBois admitedly has ridden that streetcar named
Desire in life. In Scene Nine, she admits to the Mexican woman selling flowers that she
anwered the calls of the drunken soldiers from the training camp who staggered into her
lawn at Belle Reve. While with her sister, Blanche disguises her penchant for sexual
interludes, but the earthy and animalistic Stanley sees through her guise. Finally, in
the end Blanche's psychoses are exposed, and Stanley, in his naturalistic desire for
survival as the dominant male, cooerces Stella into agreeing to have Blanche committed
to an asylum.
Certainly, if there were ever
a quintessentially naturalistic character, Stanley Kowalski is he. He constantly speaks
of being king of his castle; he reminds Stella that he brought her down from the "big
columns" of her plantation home and she "loved it." When Blanche flirts with him, he
tells her ''If I didn't know that you was my wife's sister I'd get ideas about you."
However, Stanley mainly enjoys the dominance and power he holds over Blanche because he
actually depises her. Animalistic, vulgar, and violent, the strong Stanley is no match
for the mentally weak Blanche or Stella the physically weaker of the married
couple.
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