While watching A Streetcar named Desire, the character of Blanche Dubois at first appeared to be a weak self-absorbed southern woman, when really what started coming from her character was a flawed personality. What is not known is whether this is something that runs in the family, or has only shown itself through Blanche. Since this was during a time when mental illness was not yet studied deeply, the way Blanche is treated while succumbing to her illness and how she was sent off to the mental hospital was rather archaic. Blanche is the central character and the movie shows her spiraling down into the abyss of mental illness apparently escalated by the loss of family, her home and the treatment by Stanley.
Inside, Blanche had wantonness, sexual desire that she apparently gave into frequently at the Flamingo Hotel. Though it was never stated directly in the movie, the assumption placed before the audience was that Blanche had been involved in a form of prostitution. This may have been a factor to her declining mental health, or could have been a side effect of her condition. Mental illness presents differently through each person. What may have appeared to the other characters as choices for Blanche may have been something she was not able to control. It is not clear whether she had been that way before her marriage.
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The way that Blanche’s character was written shows a strong tendency towards a mental health issue known as Histrionic Personality Disorder. The earmarks of this illness are as follows: excessively emotional, need for an audience, shallow and rapidly shifting emotions, inappropriate sexual or provocative behavior, and does not form strong relational bonds amongst a wh...
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...sed, Stella used the same defense mechanism Blanche resorted to, to help Stella endure the pain in her life. The emotional response was to believe how life should be and not as it actually was resulted in a fairytale like expectation of their own world.
Works Cited
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Griffies, W. Scott, A Streetcar Named Desire and Tennessee Williams’ Object-Relational Conflicts, DOI: 10.1002/aps.127, September 1, 2007, Retrieved from, http://web.a. a.ebscohost.com.cwi. idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=7260b208-7178- 43fa-8426-400cfc364c1b%40sessionmgr4002&vid=2&hid=4114, 14 March 2014
Williams, Tennessee, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Retrieved from, https://swarm.tv/t/Z2l,
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U.S. National Library of Medicine, 11/17/2012, Retrieved from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ medlineplus/ ency/article/001531.htm, 14 March 2014
The writer portrays Blanche as fragile character who uses alcoholism as an escapism tool. This indicates how weak and heartbroken person she is. At last, the writer tends to show us the dramatic fall of Blanche; she ends up as an insane person emphasized his perception in quote below.
Isn't it true the relationship between Stella and Stanley is praiseworthy, since it combines sexual attraction with compassion for the purpose of procreation? Isn't it true that as opposed to Stanley's normalcy in marriage, Blanche's dalliance in sexual perversion and overt efforts to break up Stanley and Stella's marriage is reprehensible? Isn't it true that Stella's faulty socialization resulting in signs of hysteria throughout the play meant that she probably would have ended her life in a mental hospital no matter whether the rape had occurred or not?
Blanche’s developmental history or character development points to her diagnosis. Blanche comes to New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella after being fired from her job as a schoolteacher due to having an inappropriate affair with a teenage student. When she arrives to see her sister, she is consumed with insecurities regarding her appearance and is condescending to her sister’s humble lifestyle. Stella’s husband Stanley immediately has distrust and dislike for Blanche and treats her
From the very beginning, Blanche DuBois attempts to conceal her tragic flaws through a facade: of Virgin Mary like innocence and purity, while underneath her mask lays an identity of a prostitute and alcoholic. She strives to emulate a Southern aristocrat of her time period, but in this process, ironically, commits everything to solidify herself as the exact opposite. Blanche’s first impression reflects one of confidence, however; her fatal flaw of loneliness is ever present. Williams reveals to the reader Blanche’s solitude and instability with her statement to Stella, her sister, of the fact that “I can’t be alone! Because--as you must have noticed--I’m¬--not very well…” (17). Blanche yearns for the company of her sister, as she lacks any other stable relations. With the family deceased and Stella as the only survivor, Blanche can only lean on her shoulder in times of ha...
Blanche also becomes disconnected from reality because of her delusions of music and gunshots from her husband’s death. She seeks relationships with strangers in the hopes of recreating the love she had for her husband. When the relationship fails to satisfy her craving for love, she sinks further into her fantasy. When Mitch rejects her, saying “I don 't think I want to marry you anymore.” (Williams 131) she once again finds comfort in her fantasy. She has sunk so far into her fantasy that she has a response to all of Stanley’s questions. She is no longer up holding the illusion for others. She truly believes her delusions enough to maintain the façade while she is
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...
...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.
Blanche grew up living on a plantation in Laurel, Mississippi which is why she considers herself a Southern Belle, despite the changing environment around her. Her life at Belle Reve does not fulfill the dreams that once encircled the wealthy plantation. Instead, Blanche finds herself assuming the responsibilities for the “epic fornications” of her families past lives, along with the financial debt that comes with owning the house. This isn’t the only thing Blanche has been left to take care of though. She is also left to simultaneously pay for the funerals of her relatives, and after being unable to reimburse her debts, Blanche eventually succumbed to the loss of her cherished land. In addition to the loss of Belle Reve, she is also impacted by the lifelong guilt coming from the fact that she made a cruel r...
Stella represents an important part in this drama by providing a contrast to how life can change people when they go down different paths. In Contrast to her sister, Stella is bound to love. Although she fell in love with a primitive, common man, she most definitely loves him. Stella desires only to make Stanley happy and live a beautiful life together. She wants to find peace between her sister and her husband yet instead she finds conflict afflicting her on both sides. Blanche uses her dilutions and tries to sway Stella away from Stanley yet Stella takes all these slanders and belittles them. Stella does this because she loves Stanley and since she is pregnant with his baby.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a play of multifaceted themes and diverse characters with the main antagonists of the play, Blanche and Stanley infused by their polarized attitudes towards reality and society ‘structured on the basis of the oppositions past/present and paradise lost/present chaos’(*1). The effect of these conflicting views is the mental deterioration of Blanche’s cerebral health that, it has been said; Stanley an insensitive brute destroyed Blanche with cruel relish and is the architect of her tragic end. However, due to various events in the play this statement is open to question, for instance, the word ‘insensitive’ is debatable, ‘insensitive’ can be defined as not thinking of other people’s feelings but Stanley is aware of what he’s doing understanding the mental impairment he causes Blanche.
Although Stella is very obedient and a quite push-over, she can come across as a passionate character. Whenever Stanley has a proposition, she usually goes along with whatever he has to offer. But in Scene Seven, when Stanley is telling Stella all the rumors he has heard about Blanche around town, Stella exclaims with much fed-upness, “What--contemptible--lies!” (Williams 120). When it comes to her sister, Stella stands up for Blanche. She will not listen to such accusations and lies put upon her own blood. She respects and cares for Blanche and feels almost insulted Stanley would judge and treat her so unkindly because he doesn’t know the Blanche Stella does. Although these actions show Stella as a very loving character towards her sister, it also makes her very naive. It is almost as if she doesn’t think enough sometimes and generally takes what she wants to believe out of a situation. For example, after Blanche was raped by Stanley, Stella explains to her neighbor Eunice “I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley” (Williams 165). This quote indicates Blanche had told Stella of the rape and she decided to consider her options:
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.
How do Blanche Dubois’s interactions with males in A Streetcar Named Desire lead to her self-destruction?
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...
Blanche is driven by her sexual desire but also wishes for stability and a fresh start instead. Blanche states “It was the other little familiarity that I felt obliged to discourage, I didn’t resent it!.. I was somewhat flattered that you desired me” (Williams 87). For the first time she doesn’t succumb to her body’s physical needs for her wish to be able to settle down with Mitch. If Blanche answered her body’s need for sex she would have killed her act of being a Southern belle looking for a suitor. This again brings out the close line between death and