During the 1940’s, there was a huge shift from the old southern fashion to a new and more abrasive style, which was caused by the fall of slavery. This caused many of the southerners to loss their homes due to the lack of free labor supplied to them through slavery. This loss and human desire for something better has been the theme of many plays with authors such as Tennessee Williams to take on these topics. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams contrasts the two settings of Elysian Fields and Belle Reve to emphasis the impact of loss and desire. Both Elysian Fields and Belle Reve are symbols for the new south of reality and old south of disillusion which can be see though the details of the play. Elysian Fields and Belle …show more content…
In Belle Reve, Blanche lived the plantation of white and pure beauty full of disillusion. The home like much of the old south was built on slavery, which shows the disillusion for the beauty. Belle Reve is quite ironic due to the fact that it was not a sweet dream for the slaves. This disillusion is then transferred onto Blanch and her actions as she tries to make those realties into her dream. This can be seen as she lies to all with her stories about her dream and she says to Mitch about her lies “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!” (Williams 145). She like the old south put out a façade of grandeur to hide the truth of the darkness underneath. So, in Elysian Fields, where reality is shown though colors and lights, Blanche must create a façade to survive reality. She therefore places paper lanterns and hides in the darkness to give the look of youth and pureness. However, when lanterns are torn off, like when the slavery was reveled caused, cause Blanche to crumble because the lantern is like her dream something without desire just
This can be symbolized by light. Blanche hates to be seen by Mitch, her significant other, in the light because it exposes her true identity. Instead, she only plans to meet him at night or in dark places. Also, she covers the lone light in Stella and Stanley’s apartment with a Chinese paper lantern. After Blanche and Mitch get into a fight, Mitch rips off the lantern to see what Blanche really looks like. Blanche angrily replies that she’s sorry for wanting magic. In the play, Blanche states “I don’t want realism, I want magic! [..] Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!”(Williams 117). Blanche wants to escape reality, but this only leads to her self-destruction. It is the men in her life and past experiences that is the main cause of her self - destruction. One of these being the death of her young love, Allen Grey. During their marriage, Blanche, attached to the hip to this man, walked in on him with another man. She then brought the incident up at a bad time; soon after, Allen took his own life, which I believe was the first step to this so called “self-destruction. Blanche could never forgive herself of this. This is the truth of her past, therefore,
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. Plays of Our Time. Ed. Bennett Cerf. New York: Random House, 1967. 145-235. Print.
The transitional importance of spring is the time of year when things change and are revealed to onlookers. Spring is a time where to cold of the previous winter is left behind in hopes of a new start. This applies to Blanch because she left Laurel for New Orleans in hope of beginning again in a different city with no preconceived notion of her character. The dusk used throughout A Streetcar Named Desire is another example of liminal space is the dusk. Dusk represents the beginning of the end, and the death to the light of the day. This is strongly supported in scenes seven through ten. These scenes all occur on the same day, but as the sun sets and becomes dark the tension increases and stakes become higher. Additionally, scene eight is set during the “golden dusk,” and this is the portion of the play when things begin to fall apart (Williams SD preceding 8.1). This liminal space of dusk gives enough time for character to make discoveries that change the tone of the show. Conclusively Williams writes A Streetcar Named Desire in a liminal space. The play was written in a time of transformation for dramatic and literary works. Criticism arose around A Streetcar Named Desire because of the lack of a “unified generic tone,” the fact that it is a “modern tragedy” (instead of a classical Aristotelian tragedy), and the absence of common ethics (Vlasopolos). Although, Williams had to combat the criticism surrounding his work, writing something controversial in the liminal space of transforming genres propelled his work into the pubic eye, and helped it become an American classic. Liminal space gives margin for change and A Streetcar Named Desire took full advantage of the space to make a dynamic work of
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire is a overly dramatic play that concludes in a remarkable manner. The play takes off by introducing Stanley and Stella, a married couple whom live in New Orleans. They have a two-sided relationship, very loving but abusive. Then suddenly Blanche shows up, Stella’s sister, and informs Stella that their home in Belle Reve was lost. A few days later, Blanche meets and becomes attracted to Mitch, a friend of Stanley. Blanche sees Stanley as an abusive husband and contrasts him to Mitch. Blanche immediately begins to develop deep emotions for Mitch because he is very romantic and a gentleman. Blanche begins to talk to Stella because she does not want her sister to be abused.
Her appearance in scene one echoes this sense of purity, as Blanche is ‘daintily dressed’ in a ‘white suit’ with ‘white gloves’. By covering herself in white, Williams may be implying that her body is virtuous which may carry a sense of foreboding as she has arrived into Elysian Fields- the place of death for the virtuous in Greek mythology. Blanche is also compared to a moth, a Lepidoptera with an ‘uncertain manner’, a sense of fragility and also a propioceptive attraction to that which will a cause their demise. Williams notes that her beauty must ‘avoid strong light’ outlining the vulnerability of Blanche and later on, her insecurities with her appearance. This makes Blanche appear fragile, as a veritable moth which can be wounded beyond-repair from even the smallest of touches to its wings. During our introduction to Blanche, she appears
The play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams takes place in the late 1940’s in New Orleans. Blanche DuBois is the protagonist of this play. She arrives at her sister’s home and puts on an air of conceit and purity. Her invented personality is in contradiction to her past actions. Blanche, a disturbed woman, is living between reality and fantasy. Her alcohol addiction amplifies her fantasies. Due to her haunted past, Blanche has a strong need for attention, so she dresses in fine clothes, speaks with eloquence, and prides herself on propriety. Blanche DuBois is not the conceited woman that she pretends to be. She is a victim of her painful past and has allowed guilt to consume her life.
In this play the character blanche exhibits the theme of illusion. Blanche came from a rocky past. Her young husband killed himself and left her with a big space in her heart to fill. Blanche tried to fill this space with the comfort of strangers and at one time a young boy. She was forced to leave her hometown. When she arrives in New Orleans, she immediately begins to lie and give false stories. She takes many hot bathes, in an effort to cleanse herself of her past. Blanche tries also to stay out of bright lights. She covers the light bulb (light=reality) in the apartment with a paper lantern. This shows her unwillingness to face reality but instead live in an illusion. She also describes how she tells what should be the truth. This is a sad excuse for covering/lying about the sinful things she has done. Furthermore, throughout the story she repeatedly drinks when she begins to be faced with facts. All these examples, covering light, lying, and alcoholism show how she is not in touch with reality but instead living in a fantasy world of illusion.
Character Conflict in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play wrought with intertwining conflicts between characters. A drama written in eleven scenes, the play takes place in New Orleans over a nine-month period. The atmosphere is noisy, with pianos playing in the distance from bars in town.
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...
In Tennessee William’s play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, he uses two of his main characters to show the juxtaposition of the upper and lower class societies in the late 1940s. Blanche is an upper class woman with an air of sophistication and pretentiousness in everything she does and says. Stanley is a lower class man who is full of crude remarks and vulgar habits. They are, in every sense of the word, opposites. Through his descriptions of the characters, and the obvious power struggle displayed between them, Williams is able to capture the shifting of power in the southern societies in the aftermath of the depression and World War Two.
During the late nineteen-forties, it was common for playwrights such as Tennessee Williams to use symbolism as an approach to convey personal thoughts, through the attitudes of the characters and the setting. Williams' actors have used symbolism to disguise the actuality of their thoughts and to accommodate the needs of their conservative audience. A Streetcar Named 'Desire' has a few complicated character traits and themes. Therefore, they have to be symbolised using figures or images to express abstract and mystical ideas, so that the viewers can remain clueless. Williams not only depicts a clear personality of the actors
Thus, Williams has Blanche state, “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! – Don’t turn the light on” (Williams 145). Blanche only relies on her own fantasy because she fears reality. By the same token, a subtle clue to her fear of reality is her fear of the light. As can be seen, Blanche feared reality because she feared the truth; thus, her fantasies had led her down a path of lies, manipulation, and
Written in 1947, A Streetcar Named Desire has always been considered one of Tennessee William’s most successful plays. One way for this can be found is the way Williams makes major use of symbols and colours as a dramatic technique.
...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...