Blanche Dubois In A Streetcar Named Desire

Blanche’s financial decline, illuminating her vulnerability, links to Aristotle’s theory that the tragic heroine must fall, allowing the audience to relate to her. Her insecurities – “I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” stereotypically reflects the insecurities women feel about their appearance and age. The uses of imperatives and exclamatory sentences suggests Blanche’s obsession over her appearance, a flaw leading her to dismiss her true identity. Her inability to avoid drink and her compulsive lies, demonstrated in her frequent references to Shep Huntleigh’s letters, makes her a more authentic woman than Stella, who is described by Williams as the “gentle, mild and contented one”. Blanche’s loss of identity, dominated by her homosexual husband’s suicide, exacerbates her solitude – “The boy-the boy died. (She sinks back down) I’m afraid I’m – going to be sick!” The fragmented, repetitive speech Blanche uses illustrates her guilt and pain, whilst the physical act of “sinking” highlights the extent of her regret, giving a sense of foreboding for her downfall. Her guilt is also exacerbated by the implied physical act at the end which shocks the contemporary audience, who would not sympathise with homosexuals, evoking pity and reinforcing that “Streetcar” is a tragedy for Blanche.

Blanche’s inability to face reality serves as another contributing factor to her insanity, encouraging her to invent additional fantasies which

In Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois unveils the theme of the story through her representation of the struggle to maintain innocence in a tragically guilty world. The main theme of the story is that the façade of performed perfection will always be unsuccessful; fantasy cannot overcome reality. As hard as Blanche tries to hide in her fantasy, eventually truth persists and, in the end, overtakes the delusions she holds. Blanche uses her appearance to suggest innocence and youth, yet with a closer look, readers see that, though she attempts very hard to be, she is neither. She also has a symbolic relationship with Mitch; the further they draw apart, the further into madness she descends. While it is clear that Blanche is not entirely innocent, the author creates her as a symbol of such. This way, as she slowly loses her mind—and Mitch—she symbolizes the loss of said innocence. Blanche can also be considered an embodiment of Williams’s older sister Rose, who is known to have been institutionalized for her erratic behavior. Rose Williams’s inability to overcome her mental instability is directly represented through Blanche, a character who also cannot maintain fantasy and ultimately succumbs to reality. Had Blanche been able to sustain her pretense of innocence, it is possible she could have avoided the harsh realities of life.

It is clear that Blanche DuBois is willing to do what she believes is necessary to get what she wants. This often includes deceit. She feels that she needs to lie about herself in order to seem more appealing. Because Blanche is so afraid of aging, she keeps her age to herself. While she is dating Mitch, she often deceives him by never letting him see her in bright light in order to conceal her faded looks. When she comes to New Orleans, Blanche does not tell her sister that she was fired from her job; she says that she is merely taking a vacation from the job. She says this in order to keep up the fake persona she holds. Blanche is very open about her lies with her sister. “I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth.” (69) This shows that Blanche’s lifelong choice of avoiding harsh realities leads to her breakdown. With all of the lies and deceit Blanche tells, she is living an unreal existence.

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.

Blanche lives in a fantasy world of sentimental illusion because reality would ruin her. Throughout the play, Blanche constantly bathes herself as if she can wash away the dirt of her guilt and she only appears in semi-darkness and shadows, intentionally keeping herself out of the harsh glare of reality. Her sign of purity is an ironic illusion because of her growingly evident promiscuity, but even that is just a part of her act and is not the real Blanche. Blanche exerts efforts to maintain the appearance of being an upper-class young innocent woman, even though she is, by all accounts, a “fallen woman” (Abbotson 47). She says to Mitch: “I don’t want realism. I want magic! [Mitch laughs] 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!”

Blanche deals with many issues the loss of loved ones, the loss of the family estate, the inability to deal with reality, rejection from others, and the rape by Stanley. Blanche has also become independent and assertive which is not the typical norm of a southern woman. She has been forced into a world she is not prepared for. Because of this Blanche begins to live in her own world, her own little fantasy. She also uses alcohol and sexual promiscuity to escape from the loneliness she has endured since her husband’s death. Williams shows us through the way Blanche speaks to the paper boy;

The play contains an aesthetic representation of the moral biases towards particular temperaments and comportments, using the strategy of a public shaming and destruction of a central character to reassert the dominance of particular, hegemonic values. This is accomplished by way of the text’s treatment of the protagonist, Blanche DuBois. Blanche is portrayed as a hysterical, narcissistic alcoholic that is marked by a grandiose and over-reaching self-conception that is divorced from reality. Now, while the language of psychological normativity has been utilised, here, this is not intended to be a justification of this normative language – a language that upholds the psychological differentiation between normative and deviant. If one wanted to venture further in a diagnosis of Blanche, one could regard her as bearing a narcissistic personality disorder, coupled with the dual diagnosis of alcoholism. Making these claims is problematic, however, because, as earlier mentioned, this is premised, and contingent upon, some conception or set of conceptions of what desirable human actions

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.

Ultimately Blanche is portrayed as a tragic character but not as a tragic heroine. Although she may think she is morally sin free on the inside as she tells Mitch; “Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart”, she does not fit the criteria for a heroine, she fails to save herself and whilst reading the play the reader feels as though she gets what is coming to her, and that she brought it all on

            Blanche is not really lost in illusions; rather she uses them as camouflage. She wears them as she wears her clothes and her glass necklaces, as protection from a reality that she finds horrifying. One must not think of Blanche as just a fragile, delicate blossom. There is a fierce desire in her for life at any cost. Her masquerade may

Many people would say that Blanche is innocent and pure. However her lies and difficult life experiences, it is proven that the way Blanche portrays herself is a pure show for the others. The play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams portrays Blanche’s dramatic shift in beliefs, which through her encounters literally destroys her. Blanche originally grew up as an innocent young girl, but life was just simply a tough journey encouraged this to change her and cause her to become insane. Blanche’s own actions is what lead her to her tragic downfall by the end of the story, but many may consider Blanche a “victim”. Blanche’s dramatic shift in beliefs, which through her encounters, figuratively and literally destroys her. From the beginning, Blanche considers herself to be innocent, but through many conflicts she begins to suffer and regress mentally and physically.

Audiences and critics alike harbor hugely torn opinions regarding the role of Blanche in this play which includes depicting her as an angel who is a victim of her surrounding and also portraying her as a disturbed harlot. The downfall of Blanche can be depicted as William’s empathy for her plight and a criticism by her society which destroys her. In the entire play Williams sympathizes with Blanche proving that William is non misogynistic but instead condemns the surrounding which led to tragic occurrences facing Blanche (Lant, pp53).

Blanche establishes her façade as a prim, nice upstanding, young lady as a means to escape true identity because she cares about what others think of her. When she goes on her date with Mitch, she blames her behavior on “the law of nature” which “says the lady must entertain the gentleman” (101). By blaming her actions on a law, she denies any personal responsibility for them. Therefore, if Mitch didn’t like her actions, the fault wouldn’t fall on her, but on the “law of nature.” She later tells him that she doesn’t him “to think that [she is] severe and old maid school teacherish” (108). The words “severe” and “old maid” have negative connotations associated with them, which she attempts to disassociate herself from. Subsequently, when Mitch