A Streetcar Named Desire: Relationship Between Stanley and Blanche

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”

Blanche’s death speech plays a vital role in the development of the play “A Streetcar named Desire”. In the monologue the tension between Blanche and Stella comes to a zenith as Blanch explodes with rage as she expresses her jealousy-driven feelings to Stella. In doing so Blanche reveals much more, including her unstable mental state, her emotional reaction to the lost of Belle Reve, and most importantly her preoccupation with the theme of death.

Stanley’s and Blanche’s worlds are opposite to each other. Stanley and his peers live in a working-class world. Life is simple for them. They work and entertain themselves with beers and card games in their spare time. On the contrary, Blanche is from Old South of luxury, where white people are

Finally, Stanley rapes Blanche because “he has tried and tried to keep her down to his level” (Kagan 26) but she cannot go there.  The rape is his way of getting her there.  In the powerful scene where Stanley loses total control of his actions and strikes the person whom he has sworn to protect, love and cherish, William's shows Stanley's lack of control and hatred of the new threat in his life, Blanche.  What makes this scene so important to the topic is the way that the three characters react once the party has broken up.  Blanche is in her usual state of panic; Stella has retreated upstairs, while Stanley stumbles around calling out 'Steeelllaaa' in a drunken sweaty animal-like manner.  Surprisingly Stella answers her mate's calls and embraces him, the two of them exchanging words of compassion and kisses.  Stanley then picks up Stella and carries her off to his den to make love, which is Stanley's way of apologizing.  Stanley has to be the dominant male figure in all his relationships, not only with Stella and Blanche, but with his friends as well.  He is a leader and instantly rises to the challenge whenever his status is threatened.

Stanley is a character in this play, whose perspective is clearly reality based. Since Blanche’s outlook on life is fantasy based, there is a lot of hostility between the two characters. Stanley is the one that always exposes the lies that Blanche is always hiding behind. He is constantly trying to get her to accept his perspective. When she finally begins to understand him, it’s too late. With such a huge change, she loses her mental state. Her personal beliefs get interchanged between fantasy and reality, to such an extent, that it seems as if she no longer realizes what is true or what is malign.

Blanche already throws a “low punch” at Stanley’s credibility without him even knowing. She is even more motivated by the fact that he travels sometimes, which could give her many opportunities to sulk to Stella about her problems and slowly disintegrate Stanley’s control of the apartment. Throughout the play, she continues to harp on Stanley's qualities, for instance, pointing out that she has not “noticed the stamp of genius even on Stanley's

Initially we sense her yearning for affection, her vulnerability and defencelessness. On (pg.195) she says of Mitch "I'm going to call him!" which uncovers her urgency for Mitch to come and her steady disarray. As a character, Blanche is initially portrayed as a moth, and moths shudder. One understanding here is that she is rippling and not able to remain faithful to something unequivocally and notwithstanding her endeavours to declare herself over Stanley she falls flat and is not able to pick up either control or force. Rather she is stomped on by Stanley when he astonishes her with the ticket once again to Laurel, and she closes the scene a wretched picture of madness.


Motifs: 
Inside/Outside:·In this scene, Blanche stays inside, where Stanley has the capacity go outside and smoke a cigarette. Blanche staying inside is noteworthy on the grounds that it reflects the thought of ensnarement – that she is by one means or another caught in the flat (she just ever leaves the loft went with). It likewise puts Stanley in a position of strength as he finds himself able to go inside and outside of the house freely. Insanity was another major part of the scene 8 (pg.194) [blanche tosses back her head and laughs.] after her entertaining anecdote about the Maid and the Parrot. Blanche is the only one who is chuckling, keeping in mind this joke basically speaks to her urgency to keep up the illusion that everything is okay and

Stanley could not stand the thought of being proved wrong by a woman like Blanche so he explodes into a fit of rage to cover up the pride he had lost in being wrong about Blanche. A particularly tense birthday dinner of Blanche leads to yet another episode of Stanley’s dangerous and violent fits of rage. After Stella scolded Stanley for eating like an animal, with his fingers, he erupts into a disastrous rage. “That’s how I’ll clear the table! (Seizes her arm) Don’t ever talk that way to me that way! ‘Pig-Polack-Disgusting-Vulgar-Greasy!’—Them kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister’s too much around here! What do you think you are? A pair of queens? Remember what Huey Long said—‘Every man is a king!’ and I am the king around here, so don’t you forget it” (Williams 107)! This outburst alone highlights the cruel and misogynistic ways of Stanley and further paints him in a negative and harsh light.

Blanche’s unexpected arrival at the entrance of the play is what stirs an even bigger monster in Stanley. Upon her entrance, she immediately causes trouble due to her and Stanley’s differences. Blanche is a southern belle from a very wealthy background. She is very proud of being brought up in the upper class while Stanley is proud that he lead his own life through the working class. This makes him a very rude and animalistic man with a lower level of education. Even their first conversation

It was not just her self that put her in the lime light of being a victim; it is also her new change of environment and people. Stanley is Stella's husband; he is described to be very masculine and aware of his sexual magnetism. “Strongly, compactly built”. He is mostly at ease with people however, if they lack loyalty and affection to him, he will bully them. Especially women, as he believes them just to be easy conflict. It is seen in scene 3 that Stanley has little respect for women. “I said to hush up!” This is addressed to his wife who is seen emotionless and impassive in this play. As for Blanche how is fussy and at edge, she would be very effected by the crude attitude that Stanley presents and so tries to hysterical take Stella away from her husband. Stanley does not forget of this act of interference and makes him all the more determined to be rid of Stella’s “charity case”. The real reason for Stanley’s bulling is that Blanche immediately received all Stella’s attention. “How about my supper huh? I’m not going to no Galatorires’ for supper” This made Stella dominant in power over Stanley and Blanche, something Stanley was not used to. “I put you a cold plate on ice”.

In the !0th scene we find out that Stanley will cause some serious distress on Blanche. That she will be scared for a long time after what he has done to her. Blanche was deinking a lot so she was telling Stanley about her imaginative man she will be seeing tomorrow. It is Sheap Huntly and she is so ready to see him and she wants him to take care of her needs she has.

The reader may view Blanche as someone who tried to escape her sordid past in Laurel and wanted to start a new life with her sister, yet due to the continuous investigations from Stanley, was unable to do so. Stanley reveals Blanches’ lies and deceits, commenting on them as her ‘same old act, same old hooey!’ This tells the reader that his research of Blanches’ past is way of stopping her from finding a new life. Blanche attempts to redeem her life by finding love with Mitch, yet Stanley again reveals to Mitch that she was not ‘straight’, resulting in Mitch not wanting to be with her and also contributing to her fate. Stanley, after mercilessly divulging all her truths and bringing her to the edge of her mental capacity, rapes Blanche which brought about her final collapse. The reader may view Stella as someone at blame for her sisters’ fate, as though she shows some moral support of Blanches’ situation and listens to what she has to say, Stella continuously throughout the play neglects to notice Blanches slow mental deterioration and ignores Blanches’ outcries and incessant need for attention. Stella chooses Stanley over Blanche, despite her warnings about him being ‘volatile, violent and sub-human which represents not

He likes to possess and control everything around him, he almost ‘owns’ Stella, and he has changed from her days at Belle Reve, pulling her “down off them columns and how [she] loved it”. But the arrival of Blanche, and her aristocratic ways annoys Stanley, as Stella begins to revert to her old ways. Blanche encourages her to stand up to him, and continually stresses the difference in their levels, although Stanley is not ashamed that he “was common as dirt”. Therefore, the only way that he can overcome Blanche and restore his authority is to beat her and triumph over her physically, which he eventually does. Although ironically, it is the effect of Stanley and his actions on her mind that finally provokes her downfall.

Similar to Stanley, Blanche also faces a power struggle. Her ultimate downfall is a result of Stanley’s cruelty and lack of understanding for human fragility. Comments about Stanley’s ‘animal habits’ and ‘sub-human’ nature act as the agent of Blanche’s downfall. Stanley cannot deal with her mocking him in his own home and is fed up with her lies. During the final scenes his

            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