The Kindness of Strangers: Eugenics and Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire.

This article examines Tennessee Williams's *A Streetcar Named Desire* as a feminist, anti-eugenic critique of early twentieth-century American eugenic ideology, focusing on the forced institutionalization of the protagonist, Blanche DuBois. By analyzing eight archival drafts of the play held at the Harry Ransom Center alongside the published 1947 version, the study traces Blanche's diminishing reproductive and bodily agency, the stigmatization of her mental health, and the eugenic assumptions embedded in the characters' interactions—particularly regarding the potential offspring of Blanche or her sister Stella with Stanley Kowalski. The article situates the play within the sociohistorical context of negative eugenics in the American South, highlighting how Williams dramatizes the gendered, racist, ableist, and classist impacts of eugenic policies that targeted women's reproductive rights and mental health. Ultimately, Blanche's institutionalization is framed as a representation of the real-life abuses faced by women deemed "unfit" under eugenic social policy, underscoring the play's engagement with the dehumanizing consequences of such ideology.