Stanley and Stella Kowalski live in the lower apartment, and during the heat of summer, Stella’s older sister, Blanche, arrives carrying suitcases. Blanche is thirty, approximately five years older than her sister, and represents the epitome of a Southern Belle, albeit a faded one. Blanche informs her sister their family plantation, Belle Rive, located in Laurel, Mississippi, has been lost due to financial failure and draining after deaths in the family.
Soon Blanche is faced with Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski, a man who in every respect is the opposite of Blanche. Stanley is animalistic, sensual, working-class, and brutish in Blanche’s eyes, and the two seem to irritate each other from their first meeting. Stanley suspects Blanche is swindling his wife, and in effect, himself, and sets out to discover the truth about her and the status of the family plantation.