The play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” by Tennessee Williams is set in the city of New Orleans in a building called Elysian Fields. One of the main protagonists in the play is a woman named Blanche DuBois. She comes to Elysian Fields to visit her sister and escape her promiscuous past. However, the past catches up to Blanche in spite of her desperate attempts to avoid it. Blanche DuBois’ traits-insecure, weak, and deluded-led her down the path of the ultimate reality she feared so much. Blanche DuBois shows a lot of insecurity in the play. She is constantly avoiding the light to hide her appearance. Blanche told her sister, “You haven’t said a word about my appearance” (“A Streetcar”) because she knows that her looks are slipping, and …show more content…
Ever since her ex-husband killed himself, she has been spiraling in an ocean of guilt and emptiness. When people found out about her husband, Blanche’s reputation was gone. People saw her as a widow of a gay man and sympathized. She also had feelings of guilt because of her words caused Allan to kill himself. After this, she began to have sex with strangers in hotel rooms to obtain money. Alcohol was included in her actions to erase the past. Her mental state started dwindling faster when she lost her money and heritage home. This only got worse when she visited her sister in New Orleans. She saw the abusiveness of Stanley and Stella’s relationship, and how Stanley treated her. When she met Mitch it was a moment of opportunity. Even though he was in the same working class as Stanley, Mitch had a gentleman-like quality that seemed superior to Blanche. When Blanche first met Mitch, she said, “That one seems-superior to the others” (“A Streetcar”). Blanche thought of herself as superior because of the way she acted and dressed. Mitch dressed and acted the same way until he found out about Blanche’s reputation. Everything started going downhill when her reputation was revealed to everyone. Her magical dream was coming into light and revealing who she truly is. This was the tipping point of her mental state because she created this delusion to protect herself. It continued to spiral uncontrollably after Stella’s husband, Stanley, raped her. When Blanche told her sister, Stella didn’t believe her. This was the breaking point of Blanche’s mind. She made up a delusion that an old suitor named Shep would come and rescue her. A final hope for Blanche that someone will save her from this hole she dug herself in. In the end she was confronted by the doctors that would bring her to a mental hospital. She ended with a quote saying, “Whoever you are- I have always depended on the
In Tennessee Williams's written play, A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the most symbolic characters is Blanche DuBois. Blanche represents one of the themes of the play, too much desire and not enough control can end very badly. She has very little self-control and too much desire for attention, particularly from men. Blanche is a victim of many men in the play who take advantage of her, use her and deceive her. She often puts herself in the position to be used by men, but she is also a victim of
Every person in their life has been a Blanche at some point or another in their life. I know that I have done this personally and am working on bettering that part of myself but I too have been unrealistically optimistic, or in the word of Mrs. Dubois “I don’t want realism I want magic.” In the beautifully tragic story of A Streetcar Named Desire we find that Blanche Dubois has stepped into the next level of fantasy and has not only tried to make others believe the lies she tells but has begun to
Tennessee Williams’, A Streetcar Named Desire, follows Blanche DuBois as she leaves her life in Laurel, Mississippi to try to create a new start for herself in Elysian Fields, New Orleans. Blanche lives in a world of illusion which contrasts that of her sister Stella and brother-in-law, Stanley. Her reliance on the self-made fantasy, and even delusion, is revealed throughout each scene. Blanche’s illusions are placed into different symbols of A Streetcar Named Desire and when rigorously investigated
Summary: In the play “A streetcar Named Desire” it centers on a women named Blanche Dubois. She travels from the railroad in New Orleans to a street formally known as Elysian Fields, where she meets her pregnant sister Stella and her husband Stanly Kowalski. Having lost her homestead, husband and fortification, Blanche turns to her only close relative for support. Reaching middle age, Blanche emotionally is unhinged and is in financial crises with the loss of her southern bell life. After explaining
In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Dubois learns that strong desires consumes your life and can drive you to insanity, through, looking back at her life while living with her sister and brother-in-law. In the book, Blanche’s desires are mentioned and how they became was shared, Williams writes, “… the boy I had married and an older man who had been his friend for years.” Finding out that her husband had been cheating on her with another man had been the beginning of her desires. She felt like
The character of Blanche Dubois in the play A Streetcar Named Desire is depicted as a victim of her traditional southern upbringing, she struggles to find her place in society where the values of a Southern Belle are no longer relevant nor exist. Blanche Dubois is portrayed as the weaker sex, who is then over powered by Stanley Kowalski, her sister’s working class husband. Blanche Dubois shows a great psychological instability when she is unable to live up to the expectations of a classic and proper
The character I chose to write about is Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. From the opening scene I was intrigued by her character and was compelled almost immediately to continue watching her story develop and to pay close attention to her erratic behavior. Five minutes into the film and you recognize Blanche that she displays a wide range of emotions, and those rather quickly. What was most fascinating to me was the lack of congruence Blanche had between her actual self and her ideal
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
In A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, Blanche Dubois’ destruction and eccentric behavior can be justified through a psychoanalytic lens, arguing that her unhealthy interactions with others and her eventual departure from reality can be attributed to societal factors that affects her upbringing and molds her personality. Psychoanalytically, it is her lack of self-realization as well as failure to balance her psyche to achieve her desires that causes mental chaos. Altogether, Blanche’s
and the Self-Destructive: Willy Loman, Blanche DuBois and the Illusion of the American Dream Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is a withering critique of the American Dream. As Eleanor Clark writes, Miller shows the tragic consequences of Willy Loman’s illusory belief in the American drive toward progress and success, “living in a dream world” and not facing “reality” (62). Similarly, Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire attempts to maintain her past luxurious
20 What Blanche means when she says “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” that due to her past issues and conflicts that Blanche experienced she desires that attention and compliments from strangers and eventually counted on the kindness to make her feel more confident and fulfill her emptiness along with all the insecurities she had. Blanche usually wants someone to be with her to say they love her in order for her to feel happy. The reason for that is because Blanche doesn't all
Blanche is living in a time where it is a lot more difficult for women than it is for women in the present time. Blanche’s situation is one side of the representation of the play’s juxtaposition between the gender roles of men and women. As a woman, Blanche is meant to be the character that showcases women’s struggle. She was married but her husband died. She inherited an estate but had to sell it to pay off debts and creditors, “The four letter word deprived us of our plantation…” (Williams 2314)
Throughout his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Tennessee Williams uses symbolism to create the characterization of certain individuals. Blanche is certainly one of the most complex of characters, and readers over time learn more and more about her mysterious and even suspicious background. There is much evidence throughout the play to support the idea that Blanche longs to share the secrecy of her past with someone, but because she is fearful of being vulnerably truthful, she hides herself in the
When looking into Thomas Williams “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Blanche is forced out of her hometown after sleeping with a seventeen year old student and goes to New Orleans to live with her sister Stella and her husband Stanley. Blanche’s has over came a lot through her life her husband killed himself, and she lost her childhood home to foreclosure. To try to deal with the bad things that has happened to her she makes up an illusion to live out her life. Blanche’s personality traits carry a large
Like many people in the world, the characters in Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, are troubled by anxiety and insecurities. Life in New Orleans during the 1940s was characterized by the incredible variety of music, lively and bright atmosphere, and diverse population while in the midst of the ongoing World War II. Culture was rich and fruitful because the city developed into a “melting pot” of people from all over the world. Due to the wide-range in population, the people of New