A tragic heroine is characterized by a protagonist capable of great achievements, but is destined to fail, whether it is due to unforeseen circumstances, their own fatal flaws or a series of poor decisions. In the literary criticism titled, “Blanche DuBois as the Tragic Heroine,” Bert Cardullo makes great points to show how the character Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire is in fact, a tragic heroine. After Blanche’s discovery of her husband’s sexuality, her inability to show compassion to him led to his death which in turn started the downward spiral of Blanche into her own destruction.
From the beginning, Blanche was already fated to meet her downfall. Her start as a tragic heroine began with the death of her husband, Allan. As Cardullo points out, it wasn’t the fact that she had married a homosexual or even that she found out the truth about him that Blanche had regretted. It was her failure to help him
…show more content…
However, as her backstory is introduced Blanche is developed as a character. Because Blanche is shown to be a victim of the events from her past, readers can sympathize with Blanche and see that she has gone through more suffering than she deserved. As Stella had said, “You didn’t know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.” (Tennessee 111). Characteristic of a tragic heroine, Blanche was put into a situation where she had to endure a series of unfortunate events. After Blanche had lost her first love at a young age, she finally finds Mitch, “the only true intimacy within her grasp” (Cardullo). But because of her mistakes, she ends up losing Mitch too. In desperation, Blanche holds on to the delusion that Mr. Shep Huntleigh would come and carry her away, giving her the life she wanted. But to no avail, Shep Huntleigh never showed up and Blanche was brought to the
However Blanche is unable to get attention or protection throughout the story be cause of all the lies she's told. She also ends up hurting the people who are closest to her when she tries to hide who she really is. For example when she says " I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes magic!
In Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses the suicide of Blanche's husband to illuminate Blanche's insecurities and immoral behavior. When something terrible happens to someone, it often reveals who he or she truly is. Blanche falls victim to this behavior, and she fails to face her demons. This displays how the play links a character’s illogical choices and their inner struggles.
McGlinn addresses the third dialectic taking hold of Blanche: illusion versus reality. McGlinn points out that, like all the women in Williams’s plays between 1940 and 1950, Blanche “refuses to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion.” [Tharpe, 513]. Although McGlinn is accurate in noting Blanche’s conflict between gentility and promiscuity, the result of which is “self-defeat instead of survival” [Tharpe, 513], she fails to see that Blanche lives in both illusion and reality simultaneously, and it is this dialectic that is the slow poison which destroys her. This death-instinct gives us the fourth and last dialectic in Blanche: her struggle between death and desire.”
The two important female characters in the "poetic tragedy"(Adler 12), A Streetcar Named Desire, are Stella and Blanche. The most obvious comparison between Stella and Blanche is that they are sisters, but this blood relationship suggests other similarities between the two women. They are both part of the final generation of a once aristocratic but now moribund family. Both manifest a great deal of culture and sensitivity, and because of this, both seem out of place in Elysian Fields. "Beauty is shipwrecked on the rock of the world's vulgarity" (Miller 45). Blanche, of course, is much more of an anachronism than Stella, who has for the most part adapted to the environment of Stanley Kowalski. Finally, both Stella and Blanche are or have been married. It is in their respective marriages that we can begin to trace the profound differences between these two sisters.
Throughout Tennessee Williams’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche Dubois exemplified several tragic flaws. She suffered from her haunting past; her inability to overcome; her desire to be someone else; and from the cruel, animalistic treatment she received from Stanley. Sadly, her sister Stella also played a role in her downfall. All of these factors ultimately led to Blanche’s tragic breakdown in the end. Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it.
Up until the moment she sees the doctor at the end of the play, she is convinced her former man, Shep Huntleigh, now a millionaire, is coming to get her and take her away to a life of stability and ease. As the doctor leads her away she says, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” This deluded calmness and happiness that Blanche has while being lead away to the insane asylum she still doesn’t know about, is suggestive that despite reality’s eventual and definite victory, fantasy is a strong and vital thing that is used by all individually in their own circumstances. Williams uses Blanche as one way to demonstrate and explore his points on the tragedy of reality versus
One character that has been plagued by betrayal, throughout her entire existence, is Blanche. Blanche’s husband, Allen, first betrays her. She catches him with another man and then shortly after he commits suicide. Being one of the influences behind his death, Blanche began to carry the guilt around with her. Their young love blinds them and hides all the obstacles they had to face. After catching him, she felt like she had lost part of herself, and after he shot himself, she felt like she
Blanche consider herself as a Southern Belle, despite the changing of her status. Her life changed when she is facing financial difficulty and she has to pay for the cost of the funeral of her relatives.Blanche has lost Belle Reve
Blanche was only a young girl without any experience when she got married. She married Allan Grey, who was only sixteen. Their marriage started well, but later the young wife found out that Allan was homosexual.
Blanche who had been caring for a generation of dying relatives at Belle Reve has been forced to sell the family plantation. Blanche is a great deal less realistic than Stanley and lives in illusions which bring upon her downfall.
This statement also emphasises much of Blanche’s own views on sorrow and explains how it has affected her life since she has made the comment from personal experience. To conclude, Tennessee Williams’ dramatic use of death and dying is an overarching theme in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ from which everything about Blanche’s character has formed from. Without the death of Allan, Blanche would not have resorted to prostitution and the brief affairs with strangers, also the deaths of her family have driven Blanche to Stella’s where she is “not wanted” and “ashamed to be”. Therefore these dramatic deaths have lead to the past which comes back to haunt
Firstly, the reader may initially feel Blanche is completely responsible or at least somewhat to blame, for what becomes of her. She is very deceitful and behaves in this way throughout the play, particularly to Mitch, saying, ‘Stella is my precious little sister’ and continuously attempting to deceive Stanley, saying she ‘received a telegram from an old admirer of mine’. These are just two examples of Blanches’ trickery and lying ways. In some ways though, the reader will sense that Blanche rather than knowingly being deceitful, actually begins to believe what she says is true, and that she lives in her own dream reality, telling people ‘what ought to be the truth’ probably due to the unforgiving nature of her true life. This will make the reader begin to pity Blanche and consider whether these lies and deceits are just what she uses to comfort and protect herself. Blanche has many romantic delusions which have been plaguing her mind since the death of her husband. Though his death was not entirely her fault, her flirtatious manner is a major contributor to her downfall. She came to New Orleans as she was fired from...
which, as Williams suggests, "was too great for her to contain". As to whether her escape was "madness" can be debatable - although Blanche is clearly unstable at many points, some believe that Blanche is not. actually insane, suggested by Stella's comment in Scene 11 - "I. couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley. " From her first appearance on stage, Blanche is presented as being.
...es and thinks that her hopes will not be destroyed. Thirdly, Blanche thinks that strangers are the ones who will rescue her; instead they want her for sex. Fourthly, Blanche believes that the ones who love her are trying to imprison her and make her work like a maid imprisoned by them. Fifthly, Blanche’s superiority in social status was an obscure in her way of having a good social life. Last but not least, Blanche symbolizes the road she chose in life- desire and fantasy- which led her to her final downfall.
One cant imagine how it must feel to lose the ones they love and hold dear, but to stay afterwards and mourn the loss of the many is unbearable. Blanche has had a streak of horrible luck. Her husband killing himself after she exposed her knowledge about his homosexuality, her advances on young men that led to her exile and finally her alcoholism that drew her life to pieces contemplated this sorrow that we could not help but feel for Blanche throughout the drama. Blanche’s desire to escape from this situation is fulfilled when she is taken away to the insane asylum. There she will have peace when in the real world she only faces pain.