Blanche DuBois, a middle-aged woman arrives at New Orleans to stay with her younger sister, Stella Kowalski. She assures Stella she will only stay for a short period of time but her large trunk and the fact that she has left her job due to bad nerves says otherwise. Blanche is secretly an alcoholic with a delusional mind. Blanche clearly does not have enough money to survive on her own but she deceives Stella and her husband Stanley that she is still as rich as she used to be. Blanche is condescending and disdainful of her sister's place which makes Stanley dislike her immediately. Stella left behind her wealthy background for the sexual attention she gets from her husband. She is even pregnant with his baby. Besides the sex, Stella and Stanley's marriage is an unhappy one. One day a drunk Stanley erupts at Blanche for winning the affections of his close friend, Mitch. When Stella yells back at him in her sister's defense, Stanley beats her. A short while later, Stanley is …show more content…
Stanley overhears her and to Blanche's dismay tells her he has heard rumours about her past as a prostitute. A teenage boy comes to the apartment to collect money for the newspaper. Blanche is broke so she gives him a passionate kiss instead. Blanche then goes on a date with Mitch and reveals to him her tragic past. Years ago her young husband admitted to her that he was homosexual. Blanche was rightfully upset and angry with him. Minutes later her former husband shoots himself and Blanche places the blame on her reaction. Mitch tells her he needs her. A month later a furious Mitch reveals to Stanley the truth he has learnt about Blanche. After losing the family mansion, she moved into a rundown motel which eventually evicted her due to her numerous, paying sexual partners. She was also fired from her teaching job because it was discovered that she was having an affair with a teenage
Blanche, a fading beauty, uses her sugary charm and soft southern ways to attract men. In comparison, Stanley "sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications" to "determine the way he smiles at them" (Williams, Street 29). Course and deliberately aggressive, he is a "survivor of the stone age" (Williams, Street 72). Despite their differences, they both possess a raw sensuality. In their first confrontation, Blanche's thick display of charm angers and attracts Stanley.
Blanche, in particular, 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. Where Blanche's marriage, to a man whom she dearly loved (Miller 43), proved catastrophic to her, Stella's marriage seems to be fulfilling her as a woman. Blanche's marriage to a young homosexual, and the subsequent tragedy that resulted from her discovery of her husband's degeneracy and her inability to help him, has been responsible for much of the perversity in her life.
Throughout Tennessee William’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.
Superficial is the first impression that Blanche gives when she enters the play. Consumed by appearance and face value, she is unable to see that Stella’s new lifestyle is not as horrid as she imagines. In comparison to Belle Reve, it is true that these New Orleans slums may not meet Dubois standards, but Blanche is unable to see beyond the way things appear in order to realize that Stella’s world does not revolve around material items. This flaw is intertwined with her vanity and her need keep up appearances. On the surface, Blanche appears to be snobbish and conceited.
She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and shields her past. The essential conflict of the story is between Blanche, and her brother-in-law Stanley. Stanley investigates Blanche’s life to find the truth of her promiscuity, ruining her relationships with Stella, and her possible future husband Mitch, which successfully obtain his goal of getting Blanche out of his house. Blanche attempts to convince Stella that she should leave Stanley because she witnessed a fight between the two. Despite these instances, there is an essence of sexual tension between the two, leading to a suspected rape scene in which one of their arguments ends with Stanley leading Blanche to the bed.
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.
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
As Stanley continues torturing Blanche and draws Stella and Mitch away from her, Blanche’s sanity slowly dwindles. Even though she lied throughout the play, her dishonesty becomes more noticeable and irrational due to Stanley's torment about her horrible past. After dealing with the deaths of her whole family, she loses Belle Reve, the estate on which her and her sister grew up. This is too much for Blanche to handle causing her moral vision to be blurred by “her desperate need to be with someone, with ancestors for models who indulged in “epic fornications” with impunity, [Blanche] moves through the world filling the void in her life with lust” (Kataria 2). She also loses a young husband who killed himself after she found out he was gay when she caught him with another man. After that traumatic experience she needed “a cosy nook to squirm herself into because ...
Stanley’s treatment of Blanche leaves her alone once again, with what little dreams of returning to her previous status destroyed like the paper lampshade that once gave her the shield from the real her she desperately craved. Stella, the one person Blanche believed she could rely on, sides against her husband after Blanche’s ordeal, leading Blanche to be taken away, relying on the “kindness of strangers”. This final image that Williams leaves us with fully demonstrates that Blanche has been cruelly and finally forced away from her “chosen image of what and who” she is, leaving an empty woman, once full of hope for her future.
As the play progresses, Stanley feels the disruption in his household. His privacy is being invaded with Blanche so close in the other room. Stella is standing up to his authority more often, with prompting from Blanche. Blanche continually berates him in front of Stella and his friends. He does not believe her story as to why she came. He also feels she is lying about most of her life story. This places him on a slow burn to find out why Blanche is in his home and how to get her to leave. He is determined to restore his household to its pre-Blanche condition. After he learns Blanche’s secrets, he plots to expose her and get her to leave. Due to his nature, he does not care if she is destroyed in the process. Blanche is depressed, lonely and just wants some peace. She has suffered through, death of a spouse, death of several family members, including mother and father, loss of their ancestral plantation, loss of her teaching job and finally loss of her dignity by selling herself for money. She strikes up a relationship with Stanley’s friend Mitch. She is not really interested in Mitch as a person. She just wants to be married, have a home to live in again and be at peace with her past. This in not to be, she is exposed and raped by Stanley, dumped by Mitch and has a psychotic
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.
Stanley’s lack of respect for Blanche’s mental fragility mixed with his verbal abuse and cruelty pushes her to the brink of insanity. Stanley does not only verbally abuse Blanche, but he also physically abuses her. The height of this physical abuse comes at the end of scene ten. Stella is in the hospital expected to deliver in the next 24-hours and Stanley comes home form the hospital to a distraught Blanche. Stanley is amicable and overjoyed with the fact that he will soon be having a son, while Blanche on the other hand has no hope in finding love or happiness having lost her opportunity with Mitch due to Stanley telling him about Blanche’s past. Blanche refers to Stanley as “swine” This upsets Stanley and he begins to taunt Blanche, even though he knows of her insecurities about her appearance. “Take a look at yourself in that worn-out Mardi Gras outfit, rented for fifty cents from some rag-picker! And with the crazy crown on! What queen do you think you are?” (10.107). Blanche’s reaction to his comments makes it evident that her remaining spirits are being broken. Stanley immediately looks to completely break her with physical abuse. He approaches her despite her requests for him to stay away. She smashes a bottle on the table and faces him, clutching the broken top (10.140). Stanley states Oh! So you want some roughhouse! All right, lets have some roughhouse!” (10.145) This marks the final step of Stanley’s breaking of Blanche’s mental state. ‘Tiger…! Drop the bottle-top! Drop it! We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning!” She moans. The bottle-top falls. She sinks to her knees. He picks up her inert figure and carries her to bed