A Streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Williams takes place in New Orleans in 1947, a little bit after WWII. Williams had lived in New Orleans on and off throughout his career. His familiarity with the city helped him paint a pretty accurate picture and feel of New Orleans at that time period, of diversity and uniqueness. Throughout the play, the theme of social and gender class struggle can be mirrored to America’s social, political, and gender struggle post WWII.
New Orleans is a great example of America’s melting pot, having been initially founded as a French outpost, then temporarily controlled by the Spanish, to being ceded back to the French. Finally, under the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, New Orleans was bought by the United States. The city’s population steadily increased as immigrants came to the city, including French, Americans, Creoles, Germans, Mexicans, Asians, and Africans. New Orleanians would live in mixed neighborhoods since black servants and workers often lived close to their wealthy white employers. The city’s historical diversity bred a certain level of ease of intermingling among races, which is shown at the very beginning of the play. Africans Americans were still kept as slaves and considered inferior.
A radical shift came about during the Jim Crow laws nationally, which instituted racial segregation in all public facilities from 1876-1965. New Orleans shifted from being a tripartite to biracial society, in which residents were classified legally and socially as either black or white. As artificial land became available in New Orleans during the 1920’s, new neighborhoods were constructed in these suburbs in which middle class whites would move, and African Americans were excluded by racist deed covenants. The moving of whites to the suburbs changed the makeup of the neighborhoods and segregation became more evident. Also, after WWII, in order to help the economy of the city, officials devised strategies to increase tourism the French Quarter in New Orleans. This made the property values in the French Quarter escalate, which pushed lower income people and African Americans to move into cheaper neighborhoods.
As tourism grew during and after WWII, it increased appreciation for New Orleans rich history, including jazz. In the birthplace of jazz, jazz interest was revitalized as jazz fan pilgrims from around the world and local white elite jazz enthusiastic came to the city. This was despite the fact that local upper class looked down jazz as they correlated it with African Americans, crime, and degradation. White upper class Southerners did not want to associate themselves with African American and lower class culture, as Blanche clearly demonstrates throughout the play. She is a representation of the old aristocratic South and is obsessed with class.
After WWII, several changes inevitably had to come about due the social and political unrest left in the United States. Following the war, the Cold War began between the Soviet Union and the West, the ideological battle between communism and capitalism. Winston Churchill coins the phrase “Iron Curtain”, in which Europe is divided East and West with a representational line between communism and democracy. Along the same time, the first atomic bomb is tested in New Mexico, which would dramatically affect the Cold War later on. The baby boom also results, where there is a significant increase in births after WWII. At the end of WWII, Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American in baseball’s major leagues.
To those groups that are seeking equality in the United States, such as African Americans and women, communism becomes an interesting alternative since their ideology promotes equality. This especially becomes a more attractive option with the increasing violence promoted by the Jim Crow laws, where white working class homeowners use violence against African Americans who attempt to move into their neighborhoods or use their public facilities. Women’s roles temporarily changed during WWII in which more women were employed, and then after the war ended they had to return to their duties in the household. The media and government encouraged this sort of form of domestic repression and patriarchy. Except that some women already had a taste of more freedom, which helped further fuel the women’s civil rights movement.
On an interesting note, homosexuality in this time period was considered a mental illness and was categorized as such under the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) I until 1973. The end of WWII prompted reform in psychiatry, with increasing methods of brief treatment and therapy in outpatient clinics that gradually deinstitutionalized the mentally ill. Also in the 1950’s, psychotropic medication was invented, which also helped deinstitutionalize the mentally ill.
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