Tennessee Williams' apprentice work Fugitive Kind and the accomplished Vieux Carre span forty years of the playwright's prolific career, yet its origin is similar; both plays are set in the late 1930s and depict Depression life in St Louis and New Orleans, respectively. O'Connor discusses both plays and analyzes the different cultural contexts in which each work was first produced to examine the significant development of Williams' career as a playwright and of the changes in the American society, with the plays' reflection of 1930s mores and morals.