Blanche Dubois: A Streetcar Named Desire

Though Blanche doesn’t necessarily want Stanley, she still feeds off the attention given to her. Though what Blanche does may be immoral, there is evidence of her wanting to be clean and virtuous. Almost anytime Blanche’s clothes are described, they are white, an innocent color. The reader can see that Blanche wants to be the virtuous person she often pretends to be.

It is clear from the beginning that Blanche is not a very honest character. She lives in a fantasy world of her own design. One of the very first things she does when she enters Stella’s

The audience always had the feeling that Blanche was a little nuts, but we see her condition worsening as the play goes on. During the final scene we see Blanche go with a doctor and nurse to, presumably, a mental hospitable. Eunice

As she reveals to Mitch in the end of the play, intimacies with strangers was all she seemed to be able to fill her empty heart with after the death of her young husband, Allan (Baym 2349). What Blanche obviously has not realized is that the unnatural, “messed up” relationship to her own desire has made it destructive and thereby inextricably linked it to death.

Blanche’s fear of becoming undesirable has caused her to create an illusion in an attempt to revive her youth. Throughout the entirety of the play, Blanche is constantly worried about her appearance and looks for compliments from others. When she is first introduced, “her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district”

She tries to hold on to him but is unable to keep him attracted. Blanche is lost, confused, conflicted, lashing out in sexual ways, and living in her out own fantasies. She has no concern for anyone’s well being, including her own. Thus, this is her utter most harmful demise. She has no realistic outlook for the future.

In order to give a little insight of what Blanche is so desperately trying to escape, it is necessary to review her past. When Blanche was younger (approximately in her thirties) she married a young man ━named Allan━ that she desperately loved. In her eyes her marriage was filled with love and tenderness, however deep inside she knew her husband was not happy. Later on, during their marriage, she discovers her husband in bed with another man. When she depreciates and shows him disgust instead of helping him with his struggle, he becomes so pressured with his situation and commits suicide. Blanche blames herself for the death because she thinks she could’ve done something to

In this play Blanche has a praxis: She must get a companion to share her life with who can provide her with shelter, food, and financial support and that’s what makes the whole story happen. This praxis is created when two things happen: First, Blanche finding out that the man she married was having an affair with another man and he decided to shoot himself after she confronted him, and second, the loss of her house in Mississippi. These two things create her need of a shelter, financial support and food therefore she decides to stay with her sister Stella.

In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois desires to be viewed as a pure and innocent girl despite her sex and scandal filled past. In Scene 5, Blanche attempts to explain the way someone needs to look if they want to come off as innocent and appealing: “When people are soft---soft people have got to shimmer and glow---they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a---paper lantern over the light. . . . It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive” (79). By wearing soft, not harsh on the eye colors, particularly white, Blanche is trying to show that she is still young and virtuous. Blanche is playing the part of a wholesome and angelic woman in order to appeal to the men

Blanche made choices which are all wrong, like drinking alcohol and giving herself to other men. Her first bad choice was when her young husband died and she started drinking alcohol and became sexual indiscrimination. According to the book alcohol helped her to forget the pain that she went through. Blanche could of talked about her husband death to someone who she was close with in her town but instead she got addicted to this bad habit of drinking alcohol. My second point is that blanche gives herself to men. Apparently she had felt that she had in some ways and she had tried to alleviate her guilt by giving herself to a random men young men, Blanche said “intimacies with strangers was all I seem able to fill my empty

However, as we get to know Blanches character and situation, we begin to feel much sorrier for her and even begin to pity the situation she is stuck in. Having lost the family’s luxurious plantation house in Belle Reve, although we do not know whether this reclamation of the house is solely down to Blanche or just generally a family-wide debt issue that has forced Blanche from her home so cannot blame anyone specifically for this, Blanche has essentially ended up wandering around the area, looking for somewhere to stay before she ends up, literally on her sister’s doorstep at a last minute request. Her manic and slightly frenetic behaviour when she does arrive suggest that she is desperately nervous or getting increasingly desperate for support and some friendship, someone to rely on. She is however, a woman who is quite dramatic and emotional, as she is not someone who understands empathy. This is apparent when she has just arrived at Stella’s and is talking to her sister about where she lives. Now most people, when arriving in someone’s house at the last minute to stay there for an unspecified amount of time, would never dream of doing or saying something to insult the host. Yet Blanche, when asking Stella how many rooms there are in the apartment says ‘What? Two rooms did you say?’ in a quite demeaning and slightly insulting tone and to follow this comment up she laughs sharply, in an almost

Stanley is who really introduces to Blanche is by revealing her past. Williams writes “And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” (1819) Stanley goes snooping around into Blanche’s past and soon learns that she is living in a fantasy world. Stanley does not fall for Blanche’s lies and sets out to destroy her. Stella feels torn between her sister and Stanley but eventually stands with Stanley. Everyone has rejected Blanche, so when the doctor and his nurse show up to take her away to the hospital she feels accepted once more. “Whoever you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (1881) Blanche’s constant rejection from Stella, Stanley and Mitch leads Blanche to alienate herself and leads her to escape into her own fantasy.

I would like to analyze a tragic heroine Blanche DuBois appearing in a play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) written by Tennessee Williams. My intention is to concentrate on the most significant features of her nature and behaviour and also on various external aspects influencing her life and resulting in her nervous breakdown. I would like to discuss many themes related to this character, such as loss, desire and longing for happiness, beauty and youth, pretension, lies and imagination, dependence on men and alcoholism.

She had many ways to gussy up, Blanche always needed compliments and admiration to get throughout the day. Stella exclaims “and admire her dress and tell her she’s looking wonderful. That’s important with Blanche” (Williams 33). In the dimness preferred “she smells sweet and appears on the outside” (Clough n.p.). Blanche owned pieces of clothing that seem to be expensive but really were just cheap pieces of clothing. Not so promising to Stanley, “look at these furs that she comes here to preen herself in! Whats this here? A solid gold dress, I believe! And this one! What is these here? Fox pieces! Genuine fox fur-pieces, a half a mile long” (Williams 35). Blanche also had what was assumed to be expensive jewelry collection but was just simple costume jewelry. “And diamonds! A crown for an impress!” (Williams 36). “She perceives herself as a beautiful object which has to be properly decorated in order to sell well” (Oklopcic n.p.). Even with a great outer appearance Blanche was still ugly on the inside and she knew this. She hated looking at herself in the mirror or being in front of Mitch without being properly dressed. Blanche portrayed herself as having manners, she expected men to stand at her appearance and grant her with

        Tennessee Williams was once quoted as saying "Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama...the purest language of plays" (Adler 30). This is clearly evident in A Streetcar Named Desire, one of Williams's many plays. In analyzing the main character of the story, Blanche DuBois, it is crucial to use both the literal text as well as the symbols of the story to get a complete and thorough understanding of her.