A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

This Pulitzer Prize winning play was written by Williams in 1947 and takes place in New Orleans. The play serves as an interesting dichotomy between two major groups in the American South: the belles and brutes. When Blanche DuBois ("white woods") is asked to take a leave from teaching English, she stays with her sister, Stella, and Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski. Blanche wants to maintain the grandeur of being a southern belle, but lost most of her family and the family plantation, Belle Reve. Stanley becomes very suspicious of Blanche's expensive clothes and jewelry and wants to investigate the status of Belle Reve. Blanche's traditional Southern culture clashes violently with that of Stanley's, and New Orlean's, urban working class culture.
Blanche originally claimed that she was asked to take a leave of absence due to her nerves, but we come to find that she was having a relationship with a seventeen year old student. We find out a lot about Blanche's past through one of Stanley's acquaintances who travels often in Laurel, Mississippi, the area around Belle Reve. The affair happened after Blanche's brief marriage to Allan Grey, who she later finds is homosexual.
Stella and Stanley have their own relationship problems. Stella is pregnant with Stanley's child but he is still verbally and physically abusive. Even after a particularly violent encounter during a card fight, Stella goes back to Stanley almost immediately. (This is also the origin of the well known yelling of "Stella".) Towards the end of the play, Stanley rapes Blanche and this sends her into a mental breakdown. When she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, a doctor leads Blanche away and she says the iconic line "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
Since A Streetcar Named Desire is a theatrical play, it would be best to perform it or watch a production. One time tested film is the 1951 production featuring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. This film version won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the categories of best actress for Vivien Leigh and was nominated for best actor, director and screenplay, among others.