Blanche is emotionally honest with Mitch during the play, especially in Scene 6. At the same time she deceives him many times from their first meeting, and presents herself as an “old maid” – hence her old fashioned language, such as “Unhand me”. She tries to hide her age, asking him to hang the Chinese paper lantern. Blanche even admits these deceits – announcing that she wants to deceive Mitch enough to make him want her. Once again employing her escapist methods, and ignoring reality, she flirts with a “young boy” at the end of scene 5. After kissing him full on the lips, she sends him away, just in time to meet Mitch, who is bearing flowers. This…
Within this drama Blanche’s life is the very depiction of how one single tragic event can play a major role in one’s future. However, in Blanche’s case, a series of tragic events spark a new lifestyle. Blanche’s sexual needs were never satisfied. She met and fell madly in love at a very young age. At just sixteen years old, she fell in love as well as eloped. After investing time in what she saw as a blissful marriage to her husband, Allan, he admitted to her that he was homosexual. She felt betrayed. She felt used and taken advantage of. Instead of…
This play reflected a part of society that was frowned upon on a social level in the mid 20th centuary. Today a play like this is concidered normal, or average as far as the contrivisrail espects are concerned, but in the 40s a character like Blanche Dubois was something that challegned the moral of the ideal american family. This play is about Blanche DuBois, a schoolteacher from Laurel, Mississippi. She arrives in New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella Kowalski. Blanche told her sister that she lost their their ancestral home Belle Reve, following the death of all their remaining relatives and husband. She mentions that she has been given a leave of absence from her teaching position because of her bad nervous breakdowns.…
Initially, both playwrights present the past as a route of future imprisonment for the characters. The initial exposition of Blanche’s marriage and widowing is demonstrated through the constant symbolic sound of the traditional polish Polka; also revealing Blanche’s extreme sensitivity as a woman, to her past and vulnerability as how ‘man cannot forget’. Blanche is glued to her past suffering, and deliberately forces herself to believe that her previous experiences no longer intimidates her, but deep down, her remembrances haunt her, infiltrating in her present and future through the subtle sound of the disruptive Polka music, slowly becoming more and more frequent, leading up to the climax point towards the end, where Blanche reaches her tragic…
Blanche becomes more and more acquainted with one of Stanley’s friends, Mitch. The first time she meets him, she tells him, “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action” (Williams 55). This was her justification for wanting her paper lantern put over the light bulb. The paper lantern assisted in alleviating the unhappy truth about her age, her tensions, and her situation. Smith-Howard and Heintzelman state, “...Blanche has an aversion to being viewed in bright light that will reveal her true age.” Blanche lies to Mitch about her age and prevents herself from being with him throughout the day and rather sees him during the evening or the night (Smith-Howard & Heintzelman). When they meet a second time, Blanche tells Mitch a part of her past. She tells him about a man, Allan Grey, that she used to be married to. She tells Mitch that she discovered love at a young age and at first it was like, “...you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in the shadow...then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again...” (Williams 95). Williams illustrates that Blanche was at one point in her life at ease and unafraid. After discovering that her husband was homosexual and telling him that he disgusted her, Allan committed suicide; as a result…
When the play begins, Blanche is already a fallen woman in society’s eyes. Her family fortune and estate are gone, she lost her young husband to suicide years earlier, and she is a social pariah due to her indiscrete sexual behavior. She also has a bad drinking problem, which she covers up poorly. Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety, Blanche is an insecure, dislocated individual. She is an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty. Her manner is dainty and frail, and she sports a wardrobe of showy but cheap evening clothes. Stanley quickly sees through Blanche’s act and seeks out information about her past. The notion of death is apparent through Blanches maiden name, Grey, which suggests bleakness and unhappiness. Indeed we are introduced to the fact that behind…
Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche’s personality and motives are expressed indirectly through her dialogue with other characters. When speaking to Eunice, Blanche hints at her history by saying that “they told [her] to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at – Elysian Fields!” The fact that the street-car is named desire suggests that Blanche’s motives in her past were ruled by sexual desire. This sexual desire took her to “Cemeteries,” which symbolizes Blanche’s social death that she experiences in Laurel when the people became aware of her immoral behavior. Finally, she gets off at “Elysian Fields,” which is the resting place of souls in Greek mythology. Elysian…
Blanche often fails to tell Mitch the truth about her past which he ignores and uses illusion by regarding Blanche as the perfect woman in order to escape her lies and false reality. In a criticism written by Joanne Woolway she states, "It appears that the connection in Blanche's past between violence and desire in some way contributes to the events within the time scale of the play." (292) This suggests that Blanche uses illusion to escape the bad memories of past violent relationships. “I guess it is just that I have old fashioned ideals! [She rolls her eyes, knowing he cannot see her face.]” (108) Blanche leads Mitch on by choosing to appear sexually naive, and this is apparent when she lies to Mitch about her past, adding to her facade. Mitch falls for Blanche’s charm which becomes evident when he says, “You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be- you and me, Blanche?” (116) He is blind to her deception and even defends Blanche when Stanley tells him the truth about her life and promiscuous relationships with men. Mitch is too consumed by her beauty and his fantasy of marrying a perfect woman to consider she is lying to…
The inevitable extinction of the morals and values of the aristocratic society that Blanche, the main protagonist has come to represent is clearly implied through the course of scene 10. Her illusions, the very foundation of her life, are destroyed and this reflects the decay in her power, status, and mental capacity. Symbolically, this scene is used by Williams to show the death of the aristocratic values of Blanche. Blanche herself realises this and believes she is in “desperate circumstances” as she is “caught in a trap” and needs “help”. The “trap” is reality as Blanche feels that her dreams are dying before her eyes and she can no longer protect herself. This is further explained when she “presses her fists to her ears”, thus highlighting the sounds of reality which is like an ‘approaching locomotive’, passing by her.…
The play A Streetcar Named Desire revolves around Blanche DuBois; therefore, the main theme of the drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the tragedy of an individual caught between two worlds-the world of the past and the world of the present-unwilling to let go of the past and unable, because of her character, to come to any sort of terms with the present. The final result is her destruction. This process began long before her clash with Stanley Kowalski. It started with the death of her young husband, a weak and perverted boy who committed suicide when she taunted him with her disgust at the discovery of his perversion. In retrospect, she knows that he was the only man she had ever loved, and from this early catastrophe evolves her promiscuity. She is lonely and frightened, and she attempts to fight this condition with sex. Desire fills the emptiness when there is no love and desire blocks the inexorable movement of death, which has already wasted and decayed Blanche's ancestral home Belle Reve.…
Later in the scene, we find out that Blanche had lost hers and Stella’s plantation. There were an abundance of other deaths in the family that Blanche had to deal with and pay for. “Death is expensive!” (22), Blanche says to Stella explaining herself. “That long parade to the Graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, That dreadful way! So big with it,…(scene 1, pg 21)” Blanche obviously couldn’t afford all these funerals on a teaching salary. Stanley implies that Blanche had been prostituting in Laurel at The Flamingo, “The Flamingo is used to all kinds of goings-on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame Blanche!” (120). Ultimately Blanche was trying to restore her life after the copious amounts of deaths that she witnessed. Blanche is convinced she caused her young husbands suicide by telling him “You disgust me…” (115). Blanche claims that her husband, Allan, was the only person she ever loved. After that happened she must have been left with a huge hole inside her and just looking for someone to fill it. Her job was lost because of a 17 year old who, “she’d gotten mixed up with! (Stanley, 122) which gives reason to suggest she was trying to relive the best days of her life. It seems like she is trying to doing the same thing in scene 5 with the young man she encounters who makes her “mouth water.…
In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, the protagonist Blanche DuBois descends into madness. In the play, Blanche dislikes the light. She explains “I like the dark. The dark is comforting to me” (116). The light symbolizes the truth, and Blanche is trying to hide from it. She is desperately wanting to forget her past, so she hides in the dark. In addition to her attempts to hide from the light, Blanche has an unhealthy obsession with young men. A boy selling newspapers speaks to Blanche and she kisses him and tells him “I’ve got to be good and keep my hands off children” (84). Blanche lies and tells her sister that she is taking a leave of absence from her job as a school teacher, but she was actually fired for having an inappropriate…
At the beginning of the play, Blanche is already in a nervous breakdown as she was drinking wine that she found in Stella’s house. She was using it to calm her nerves. When Stanley came home from his bowling game, he had a conversation with her. At the end of the scene, he asks her about her husband. She started to break apart as she says “The boy – the boy died; [She sinks back down] I’m afraid I‘m - going to be sick! [Her head falls on her arms],” (p. 31). This represents that her husband’s death has resulted her to go into a depression. She is unstable whenever she is reminded of her husband. She had some memories with her husband that she cannot forget causing her to be really sad. It is later revealed in the play that her husband was with another man. He killed himself due her revulsion towards him. She states “by coming suddenly into a room that I thought was empty – which wasn’t empty, but had two people in it...the boy I had married and an older man who had been friends for years...” (p. 95) and “I’d suddenly - said I saw you disgust me...” (p. 96). She loved her husband but he was…
These haunting memories of Blanche’s past are ironically revealed to the audience when she is taking a shower. Throughout the play Blanche spends a lot of time in the shower, this is because the wants to symbolically cleanse herself of her haunting past and all the horrible things she had done in order to survive after losing her property, Belle Reve. While Stanley is narrating the horrible truths to Stella about Blanche’s past, Blanche is happily singing mystical and a fiction song with “cardboard seas” and “paper moons”. She believes that the only way she can get out of this situation is if she is helped by another man. She believes that Mitch can be this man. The line of the song “It wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me” which is consentingly being repeated tells us…
Based on my reading thus far, Blanche proves the most antagonistic characteristic. She is sister of Stella and came to meet her unexpectedly. She lost her husband few years earlier and she is a social pariah due to her indiscrete sexual behavior. She also seeks for people attention and wants them to complement her. She has bad drinking habit which she tries to hide from everyone. Blanche's flirtatious behavior causes a lot of problems in Stella and Stanley life. Blanche displayed cunning, manipulative, and mendacious types of personalities which makes her antagonist.…