After being exiled from her hometown of Auriol, Mississippi for seducing a seventeen-year-old boy at the school where she taught English, Blanche DuBois arrives unexpectedly at the New Orleans home of her pregnant sister Stella Kowalski and Stella's husband Stanley. Stanley, both repulsed by and attracted to Blanche, discovers that she has mortgaged property left to both sisters and spent all the money. He sets about discovering everything else he can about her past, and tension between Blanche and Stanley is further intensified when Blanche begins dating one of Stanley's poker buddies.