Though the extent to which A Streetcar Named Desire exemplifies traditional tragedy may command increasing attention as this paper progresses, a demonstration of that idea is not the central aim at hand. It is, rather, one fragment of the question of tragic stature that most concerns us here: the terms according to which "victory" may be considered within the heroine's grasp, the course of her struggle toward victory, and the pivotal moment in which the struggle turns to defeat. (p. 249)

[If] an argument is to be put forth that Blanche does not begin and proceed and end at the same low point, that argument must hinge on a value that … remains to Williams and to his tragedy. Decidedly there is such a value, one that American dramatists of the late 1940s and '50s cling to desperately (Miller, the most important exception.) This is the belief in intimate...