Recommendations
Books Like A Streetcar Named Desire
Best books to read after A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Williams's 1947 most theatrical play — Blanche DuBois's arrival at her sister Stella's New Orleans apartment and her confrontation with Stanley Kowalski — is simultaneously a tragedy of romantic self-deception, a study of sexual violence, and Williams's most complete statement about the war between the world of 'magic' and the world of brutal reality. These recommendations extend the experience through Williams's other major plays, through the mid-century American theatrical tradition, and through fiction that investigates the romantic imagination's destruction by a reality organized around power and physicality.
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The Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams
The companion and the earlier Williams play — Tom Wingfield's memory of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire are companion explorations of the southern belle unable to adapt to the world that has replaced hers (Amanda; Blanche), and both are organized around a male protagonist's ambivalent attempt to escape the trap that his connection to a fragile woman has set for him.
- 2Buy
Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller
The companion American tragedy of the same era — Willy Loman's self-deception and its consequences. A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman are the two plays that established postwar American drama: both organized around the confrontation between a romantic self-conception (Blanche's southern gentility; Willy's being well-liked) and a brutal reality that eventually destroys the romantic.
- 3Buy
Long Day's Journey into Night
by Eugene O'Neill
O'Neill's companion in the tradition of the American family tragedy about the romantic self that the present can no longer support — the Tyrones' terrible day and night. Long Day's Journey into Night and A Streetcar Named Desire are companion investigations of the romantic self (Mary Tyrone's image of herself as a convent girl; Blanche's image of herself as a southern belle) that the present can no longer accommodate.
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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald's 1925 companion in the tradition of the American romantic's destruction by the world that cannot accommodate their vision — Jay Gatsby's invented self and its collision with the Buchanans. The Great Gatsby and A Streetcar Named Desire are companion investigations of the romantic self-creator destroyed by carelessness: Gatsby by Tom Buchanan's carelessness; Blanche by Stanley Kowalski's deliberate brutality.
- 5Buy
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
by Tennessee Williams
Williams's 1955 companion — Brick and Maggie and Big Daddy in a Mississippi Delta mansion. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire are companion Williams plays about sexuality, family, and the past: both organized around a revelation about a sexual secret (Blanche's history; Brick's relationship with Skipper), and both use the heat and physicality of the American South as the setting for that revelation.
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Suddenly Last Summer
by Tennessee Williams
Williams's 1958 companion — Catharine Holly's account of what happened to her cousin Sebastian Venable, and Violet Venable's attempt to silence her. Suddenly Last Summer is the most extreme of Williams's plays and the most directly confrontational about homosexuality and the violence of social conformism. Reading it alongside A Streetcar Named Desire shows the full range of Williams's dark vision of desire and its social costs.
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A Raisin in the Sun
by Lorraine Hansberry
Hansberry's 1959 companion in the tradition of the American play about family, aspiration, and the confrontation with forces that deny the protagonist's vision — the Younger family's attempt to move out of their cramped apartment. A Raisin in the Sun and A Streetcar Named Desire are companion investigations of the gap between the American dream of self-realization and the forces (racism; sexuality; class) that prevent its fulfillment.
- 8Buy
The Awakening
by Kate Chopin
Chopin's 1899 companion in the tradition of the southern woman whose desire cannot be accommodated by the social world she inhabits — Edna Pontellier's gradual awakening. The Awakening and A Streetcar Named Desire are companion investigations of what happens to a woman of exceptional sensibility trapped in a social structure that offers no adequate outlet for her desires — though Chopin's Edna makes her own choice, while Williams's Blanche is destroyed by others' choices.
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