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
How do Blanche Dubois’s interactions with males in A Streetcar Named Desire lead to her self-destruction?
Due to a combination of her being an airhead, and her want to start over and dismember her past from herself, Blanche begins self-delusion. She creates a fantasy life, in which she is still a young, beautiful, innocent woman who has ju...
After Alan’s death, she was plagued by the death 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 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 are a shame!
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:
A Streetcar Named Desire is an intricate web of complex themes and conflicted characters. Set in the pivotal years immediately following World War II, Tennessee Williams infuses Blanche and Stanley with the symbols of opposing class and differing attitudes towards sex and love, then steps back as the power struggle between them ensues. Yet there are no clear cut lines of good vs. evil, no character is neither completely good nor bad, because the main characters, (especially Blanche), are so torn by conflicting and contradictory desires and needs. As such, the play has no clear victor, everyone loses something, and this fact is what gives the play its tragic cast. In a larger sense, Blanche and Stanley, individual characters as well as symbols for opposing classes, historical periods, and ways of life, struggle and find a new balance of power, not because of ideological rights and wrongs, but as a matter of historical inevitability. Interestingly, Williams finalizes the resolution of this struggle on the most base level possible. In Scene Ten, Stanley subdues Blanche, and all that she stands for, in the same way men have been subduing women for centuries. Yet, though shocking, this is not out of keeping with the themes of the play for, in all matters of power, force is its ultimate manifestation. And Blanche is not completely unwilling, she has her own desires that draw her to Stanley, like a moth to the light, a light she avoids, even hates, yet yearns for.
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’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
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.
In the play written by Tennessee Williams, "A Streetcar Named Desire", the use of his remarkable writing tactics and motifs are used to develop the main character Blanche throughout the play. As the play progresses, we gradually gain knowledge pertaining to Blanche and the type of individual she actually is in juxtapose to the facade she puts on. With clever usage of motifs such as lighting and flirtation, we can draw countless conclusions about Blanche throughout the play. Using the fore mentioned motifs we can contemplate that Blanche is developed into a deceiving, narcissistic and seductive being because of the use of motifs Williams amalgamated throughout the play.
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.
appropriately with the consequent events which take place. Using madness to escape from feelings which are "too great to contain" is strongly associated with Blanche but to some extent, I believe. with Stella. Although Stella decides to believe that Stanley is telling the truth that Blanche is in actual fact "insane" is. Stella's own way of avoiding the actual truth of the events of scene.
...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 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.
Blanche uses her fantasies as a shield; and her desires as her motivation to survive. Her fading beauty being her only asset and chance of finding stability. Stella’s relationship with Stanley also emphasis the theme Williams created in this book. They’re only bond is physical desire and nothing at all intellectual or deep rooted. Tennessee Williams exemplifies that their relationship which only springs from desire doesn’t make it any weaker. He also creates a social dichotomy of the relationship between death and desire.
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.