Instantaneously, a reference of light is made; “the bedroom” is seen to be “relatively dim” suggesting that the masculine figure is far more dominant in the world as well as women represented as hiding behind the shadows. This is also represented in Scene one, Stanley throws a package of meat at his adoring Stella for her to catch. The action sends Eunice and the Negro woman into peals of laughter. Presumably, they have picked up on the sexual innuendo behind Stanley’s gesture. In hurling the meat at Stella, Stanley states the sexual proprietorship he holds over her. Stella’s delight in catching Stanley’s meat signifies her sexual infatuation with him. Furthermore Blanche demonstrates that she has noticed this herself in her analogy of Stanley, “bearing the raw meat home”.
Throughout the play, Blanche avoids appearing in direct, bright light, especially in front of her suitor, Mitch “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than a rude remark or a vulgar action”. She also refuses to reveal her age, and it is clear that she avoids light in order to prevent from seeing the reality of her fading beauty. In general, light symbolizes the reality of Blanche’s past. She is haunted by the ghosts of what she has lost, her first love, her purpose in life, her dignity, and the genteel society of her ancestors. Blanche’s inability to tolerate light means that her grasp on reality is also nearing its end.
In Scene Six, Blanche tells Mitch that being in love with her husband, Allan Grey, was like having the world revealed in bright, a “blinding light” which is suddenly turned “on something that ha always been half in shadow”. Since Allan’s suicide, Blanche says, the bright light has been missing; “then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again”. Through all of Blanche’s inconsequential sexual affairs with other men, she has experienced only “light that’s stronger than this- kitchen- candle”. Bright light, therefore, represents Blanche’s youthful sexual innocence, while poor light represents her sexual maturity and disillusionment.
Continuously throughout “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Blanche bathes herself. Her sexual experiences have made her a hysterical woman, but these baths, as she says, “calm my nerves”. In light of her efforts to forget and shed her illicit past in the new community of New Orleans, these baths represent her efforts to cleanse herself of her odious history. Yet, just as she cannot erase the past, her bathing is never done. Stanley also turns to water to undo a misdeed when he showers after beating Stella. The shower serves to soothe his violent temper; afterward, he leaves the bathroom feeling remorseful and calls out longingly for his wife.
As established Blanche is seen as fading symbol, the final destruction of the Old South. This theme–not unlike that in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind”–begins to unfold in the opening scene of the play. Two women, one white and one black, sit as equals on the steps of an apartment building while Blanche arrives on scene accoutered in the attitude and finery of a southern belle of yesteryear. She is an alien, a strange creature from another time, another place. Stella and Blanche come from a world that is rapidly dying. Belle Reve, their family's ancestral plantation, has been lost. The two sisters, symbolically, are the last living members of their family. Stella will mingle her blood with a man of blue-collar stock, and Blanche will enter the world of madness. Stanley represents the new order of the South: chivalry is dead, replaced by a "rat race".
William’s uses a variety of dramatic uses of colour and symbolism in the play as a whole, to integrate the themes together establishing how Blanche is threaten with this new rivalry society which Stella has clearly adapted herself into. Williams validates that unbridled sexual desire will lead to isolating darkness and eventually death. This is clearly shown, when Blanche takes a streetcar named “Desire” (sex), transfers to one named “Cemeteries” (Death), and gets off at a street named “Elysian Fields” (the Afterlife). He maintains the theme during the play with references to Blanche’s first husband, a homosexual who committed suicide after she caught him with another man, and with Blanche’s literal and figurative retreat into the shadows after having many sordid affairs.
