In “A Streetcar Named Desire”, the main character Blanche Dubois, displays a behavior similar to that of paranoia. The question that needs to be answered is why. Blanche is a character that has turned to many factors to ease her mental pain. Blanch uses denial as a coping mechanism which eventually causes her to have fears of abandonment and pressure from past conflicts.
Denial is one of the ways that has helped Blanche deal with her stress, putting her in a state of mind to maybe escape from her life problems or reality itself. She has also experienced the behavior of her alcohol addiction. In a setting in which someone were to psychoanalyze Blanche’s condition, the reader or viewer must first understand the entire situation. Referring to Sigmund Freud’s theory, “psychoanalysis is the technique of helping a person with emotional problems based on the unconscious mind” (Lahey 9). Therefore, analyzing the theory of Sigmund Freud to Blanche, it seems as if she has an innate motive that influence her to have these illusions and false notions.Blanche is suffering from past experiences beginning with the loss of her husband, the loss of Belle Reve, and the loss of her job as a Literature teacher in Laurel which resulted in a downfall on her life. Throughout the play she tries to avoid the guilt by engaging in sexual activities with strangers, constantly trying to avoid the truth, seeking needs of validation on how she’s perceived on her outward appearance, and even creating her own personal reality in which everything is perfect. “This is shown in a number of ways in Streetcar, principally in Blanche’s refusal to face up to certain acts of her past and the present reality of her own sexual drives which she covers over with such words ...
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...ng, “Whoever you are –I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (Williams 102).
As a result, it is seen that Blanche’s purpose is mainly to find stability from her past fears of abandonment and security from mind bottling affects that took a toll over her life. All the illusions, misconceptions, and alcoholism were to help Blanche deal with her desire to flee from the actuality of her life. Those different mechanisms were Blanche’s ideal way to deal with stress and rising tension during her stay at her sister’s house. These were her ways of dealing with the unpleasant situations and living in a world of fantasy and her ways of survival. “Blanche was not just detached from reality, but her romantic way of looking at things, sensitive as it may be, has a fatal weakness: it exists only by ignoring only certain portions of reality” (Drama for students 10).
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.”
She is constantly trying to compensate her surroundings both through actions and imagining possible ways of being forgiven, to make herself feel better, as her foundation of security lies in this act. However, Blanche is not aware that she wishes to eliminate her guilt, because she is convinced that it is the cross she will have to carry for the rest of her
Early in Blanche’s life before she arrived at the Kowalski’s residence, Blanche already led a life of promiscuity and alcoholism, which is exhibited when “she pours a half tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down.” Additionally, Blanche loses her job due to an inappropriate relationship with a student, and her excessive drinking throughout the play was triggered when she unknowingly married a homosexual man that later committed suicide after the discovery of his sexual preference. These events show who Blanche is as a person and how she operates in the world. She relies on her ability to act as an object of male sexual desire since her interactions with the males in the play always commence with flirtation. This is demonstrated when Blanche tells St...
Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it. She was passionately in love with Alan; but after discovering that he was gay, she could not stomach the news. When she revealed how disgusted she was, it prompted Alan to commit suicide. She could never quite overcome the guilt and put it behind her. Blanche often encountered flashbacks about him. She could hear the gun shot and polka music in her head. After Alan’s death, she was plagued by the deaths of her relatives. Stella moved away and did not have to deal with the agony Blanche faced each day. Blanche was the one who stuck it out with her family at Belle Reve where she had to watch as each of her remaining family members passed away. “I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths—not always” (Scene 1, page 1546). Blanche lost Belle Reve because of all the funeral expenses. Belle Reve had been in her family for generations, and it slipped through her fingers while she watched helplessly. Blanche’s anguish caused her loneliness. The loneliness fueled her abundance of sexual encounters. Her rendezvous just added to her problems and dirtied her rep...
During scene one, the audience is introduced to Blanche as Stella's sister, who is going to stay with her for a while. Blanch tries her best to act normal and hide her emotion from her sister, but breaks down at the end of scene one explaining to Stella how their old home, the Belle Reve, was "lost." It is inferred that the home had to be sold to cover the massive funeral expenses due to the many deaths of members of the Dubois family. As Blanche whines to her sister, "All of those deaths! The parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way!" (21). The audience sees this poor aging woman, who has lost so many close to her, and now her home where she grew up. How could anyone look at her, and not feel the pain and suffering that she has to deal with by herself? Williams wants the audience to see what this woman has been through and why she is acting the way she is. Blanche's first love was also taken from her. It seems that everyone she loves is dead except for her sister. Death plays a crucial role in Blanche's depression and other mental irregularities. While these circumstances are probably enough for the audience to feel sympathy for Blanche, Williams takes it a step further when we see Blanche's...
She passionately raves at length about the horrible deaths and her experience of loved ones dying around her; “all of those deaths… Father, Mother, Margaret, that dreadful way!” The horrific visions of bloated bodies and “the struggle for breath and breathing” have clearly cast a permanent effect on Blanche’s mind. She talks of the quiet funerals and the “gorgeous boxes” that were the coffins, with bitter, black humour. The deaths of Blanche and Stella’s family are important to the play as they highlight the desperation of Blanche’s situation through the fact that she has no other relative to turn to. This makes Stella’s decision at the end of the play seem even harsher than if Blanche had just simply shown up on her doorstep instead of going elsewhere.
To conclude, the author portrays Blanche’s deteriorating mental state throughout the play and by the end it has disappeared, she is in such a mental state that doctors take her away. Even at this stage she is still completely un-aware of her surroundings and the state she is in herself.
Blanche represents the Old American South, she was well educated, appreciates poetry and music, but The South is never glorified in the play, Blanche recollects the poverty and squalor of death there, “Funerals are pretty compared to death”.
This essay will describe whether or not Blanches’ unfortunate eventual mental collapse was due to her being a victim of the society she went to seek comfort in, or if she was solely or at least partly responsible. The factors and issues that will be discussed include, Blanches’ deceitful behaviour and romantic delusions which may have lead to her eventual downfall, the role Stanley ended up playing with his relentless investigations of her past and the continuous revelations of it, the part society and ‘new America’ played in stifling her desires and throwing her into a world she could not relate to or abide by.
One of the first major themes of this book is the constant battle between fantasy and reality. Blanche explains to Mitch that she fibs because she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. Lying to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is. Stanley, a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world, disdains Blanche’s fabrications and does everything he can to unravel them. The relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle between appearances and reality. It propels the play’s plot and creates an overarching tension. Ultimately, Blanche’s attempts to rejuvenate her life and to save Stella from a life with Stanley fail. One of the main ways the author dramatizes fantasy’s inability to overcome reality is through an explorati...
Blanche could be seen as the central character for “being torn away from (her) chosen image”, as the image she projects to the world gets cruelly ripped away from her through a series of events that lead to her demise. Blanche is described as being “moth like”, meaning that she has to hide herself in the dark for fear of going into the light, and in turn revealing the ‘real’ Blanche; she would become the moth, and metaphorically “die” in the light that she divulges.
She is introduced as a fragile woman, who the readers begin to feel sympathy for her. She had been asked to leave her job, and she lost the family estate. The readers also learn that Blanche is conflicted with her past; she tries to hide who she was.... ... middle of paper ...
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.