You sit down, now, and explain this place to me! What are you doing in a place like this?… Oh, I’m not going to be hypocritical, I’m going to be honestly critical about it! Never, never, never in my worst dreams could I picture – Only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar Allan Poe! – could do it justice! Out there I suppose is the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir!
– Tennessee Williams
A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche is shocked when she sees the rundown apartment her sister Stella is living in. She compares it to something out of the imagination of horror writer Edgar Allan Poe. Blanche’s references to Poe in the play reflects her own descent into madness. Poe struggled with depression and his stories and poems were preoccupied with madness and death.