1.1 Protagonist Blanche DuBois is the younger sister of Stella Kowalski. She comes to visit Stella and her husband, Stanley at their small home in New Orleans. Blanche is described as a Southern Belle that presents a tragic flaw stemmed from her lack of self- esteem. There are many words that can be used to describe Blanche; however her most dominant traits are unstable, flirtatious, and deceitful. Blanche has a devastating and scarring past in which her tragic flaw originates from. The elements of love, sex, and death haunt her until she is unable to handle it any longer and loses what is left of her sanity and sparks her unstable mind. To expatiate, Blanche was once married to the love of her life, Allen Grey, until she found him in bed with another man. Her husband shoots himself after Blanche says she is disgusted by him. This horrific event has an enormous impact on Blanche’s life and is key to her later behavior. To prove this, throughout the novel the narrator keeps referring to the Varsouviana, the song that was playing on the night of her husband’s death, playing through Blanche’s head every time she starts to panic. Blanche also feels a burning sense of guilt due to the fact that she feels his death was all her doing. “Blanche: Poems a dead boy wrote. I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can’t!” (34) Stella and Blanche’s family owned a large estate called Belle Reve. After Stella left Belle Reve, Blanche was unable to financially support neither the estate nor the family she had living there with just an English teacher’s salary. One by one until the last, her family dies leaving Blanche alone and to pay for their funeral costs. Eventually, Belle Reve is taken from her. Soon after, Blanche... ... middle of paper ... ...ader sees this in his dialogue and word choice. “You think I'm gonna interfere with you? You know, maybe you wouldn't be bad to interfere with.” This is said by Stanley just before he rapes Blanche. The sexually intended dialogue shows his animalistic intentions. By this point, the reader should have seen the foreshadowing of the rape before, but if not, this is sure to do so. STANLEY: Stella? [She sobs with inhuman abandon.] STANLEY: Now, honey. Now, love. Now, now, love. Here the reader sees a supposed loving side of Stanley. In truth, Stanley is only acting because as the dominant figure, he got what he wanted, Blanche to go. Through the word choice of Stanley, the reader can observe his dominant, animalistic behavior. WORK CITED Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2004.
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...
This gradual fall and loss of her sense of reality is truly tragic. Blanche is a person largely driven by the part of her that wants to be liked and be accepted. She cares greatly about how she is viewed and how she looks which is seen throughout the play. Even at the end when she’s living almost completely in the imaginations of her mind she asks Stella and Eunice how she looks before being taken away to an insane asylum. Tennessee Williams, the author of the play, uses all the conflict between Blanche and others, specifically Stanley, to show that fantasy is unable to overcome reality. Stanley and Blanche are both the epitomes of fantasy and reality. Stanley is a man focused on sexual drive, work, and fighting. He is exhibited as animalistic and strongly driven by his desires which is shown when he says, “Be comfortable. That's my motto up where I come from.” Stanley loves and searches after reality which is why he is so set on breaking down the facade he sees in Blanche. Blanche on the other hand is running from her reality and her past. Her fantasy of being high class and chaste is the exact opposite of her reality which is why she wants a life like that so badly. She wants marriage and stability, two things she was jealous of Stella having after arriving in New Orleans. Her fantasy she was building in her new life is shattered when Stanley is able to learn of her past and bring reality crashing down on her. Williams
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...
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
The drama is basically about a married couple -Stella and Stanley Kowalski- who are visited by Stella's older sister, Blanche. The drama shows the caustic feelings of these people putting Blance DuBois in the center. The drama tells the story of the pathetic mental and emotional demise of a determined, yet fragile, repressed and delicate Southern lady born to a once-wealthy family of Mississippi planters.3 No doubt that the character of Blanche is the most complex one in the drama. She is truly a tragic heroine.
In one conversation with Blanche, Blanche subtly insults him. He realizes this and thunders “Now let’s cut the re-bop!” (40) and scaring Blanche in the moment. With his loud, booming voice, Stanley is able to cause Blanche to cover her ears in pain and exhibit that he is powerful enough to be able to cause discomfort by merely raising his voice and putting her back in her place. Stanley obviously doesn’t do well with insults to his name because when Stella calls him a drunk animal, “Stanley charges after Stella… There is the sound of a blow… [and] the men rush forward and there is grappling and cursing” (63). It is obvious here that Stanley doesn’t like to be compared to an animal and began to take action to prove that that isn’t what you say to someone like him. However, it is ironic that his reaction is very animalistic in order to convey his strength and the magnitude of his masculinity towards his woman and towards the other men as he shakes them off. Another similar instance is when they were at the dinner table for Blanche’s birthday supper and he exclaims “Don’t you ever talk that way to me… I am the king around here, so don’t forget it” (131)!
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.
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
Williams introduces Blanche Dubois as a symbol of purity and innocence in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Although she isn’t exactly a heroine to this story she is the complex protagonist nonetheless. She is presented as a jaded belle without any money due to loss of her family’s fortune who’s come to New Orleans in search of refuge at the home of her sister Stella and her impulsive husband Stanley. While her sister Stella left Belle Reve to make a new life for herself, Blanche stayed behind and spent the rest of her watching as her family died eventually forcing her to sell the family mansion Belle Reve to pay for their funerals. Following that we learn that Blanche at one point in her life she was not only married to but worshipped and was infatuated
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.
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...
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 ...
...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.
Also, the repetitive comparison of him to an animal or ape is the perfect image not the id as it is the instinctive part of your psyche. The way this passage leaves the reader is very powerful saying that “maybe he’ll strike you” is a good example of Stanley’s aggressive nature, and when Blanche says “or maybe grunt and kiss you” is a very good example of his sexual nature.
[More laughter and shouts of parting come from the men. Stanley throws the screen door of the kitchen open and comes in. He is of medium height, about five feet eight or nine, and strongly, compactly built. Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependency, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens. Branching out from this complete and satisfying center are all the auxiliary channels of his life, such as his heartiness with men, his appreciation of rough humor, his love of good drink and food and games, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer. He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them.] Blanche is uncomfortable and draws involuntarily back from his stare. She is keenly aware of his dominant position and reacts as women of the day did. Through all of this he is the leader of his group and in full control of his household. Any opposition to his leadership is quickly put down by physical force. He beats his wife, fights his friends and eventually humiliates Blanche by raping her.