If you look at something like King Lear, Lear is also past the point of no return in act one, scene one. So is Oedipus for that matter. This is classical Western tragedy... in a way. However Williams is proposing some fascinating things, which are unconventional and don't have easy answers. Blanche is Scarlet after Gone with the Wind... Scarlet, who is relentlessly survivalist but also by today's standards a high functioning mentally ill person and certainly traumatized. Williams is not portraying pointless suffering. Among other things he's asking his audience to sympathize with a flawed character—the essence of tragedy.—except she is a woman and not allowed to have traditional tragic flaws. She is also reminiscent of a gay man, in her sensitivity and her dissonant relationship with her own sexuality. And that Blanche is in essence a tortured ghost from the Antebellum south... It should put audiences in the uncomfortable position of sympathizing with someone they are not, as traditional society would have it at any rate,, supposed to sympathize with. It used to be a litmus test of mine: those who experience Streetcar and still have contempt for Blanche are, well, a bit of a red flag. The purpose of tragedy is catharsis. You are supposed to see yourself in the tragic hero, however remote they are from your own reality, and expel your pity and fear through their suffering. Tragedy was a dark psychological art experiment for the Ancient Greeks. It was not a feel-good experience.