This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Bess Rowen, Assistant Professor at Villanova University, US, which looks in particular at the play΄s treatment of rape, vulnerable people, mental institutions (especially in connection to Williams΄s own family), sexuality and sexual desire.

A Streetcar Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional values in the American South - an old-world graciousness and beauty running decoratively to seed - set against the rough-edged, aggressive materialism of the new world.

Through the vividly characterised figures of Southern belle Blanche Dubois, seeking refuge from physical ugliness in decayed gentility, and her brutal brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams dramatises his sense of the South΄s past as still active and often destructive in modern America.