The Causes of Blanche’s Death

The Causes of Blanche’s Death ——【10外11】10041001 尹芳欣 ‘They told me to take streetcar named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields.’ These words are Blanche speak to others when she arrives at Kowalski. From this journey, the precursor to the play, we can easily anticipate the trajectory of Blanche’s life and smell the potential tragedy of her more or less. Combing both its plot and background, what are the exact factors that led to her tragic ending? Now, let’s probe into this question in the sequence of how it happened in the play. In the first instance, it has much to do with her young husband, Allan Grey’s death. Throughout the play, Blanche is haunted by the death of him, which she thinks is caused by her detestation and intolerability to homosexuality and feels deeply remorse for it. Since then darkness has overwhelmed her and on the thought of he was basically killed by her and she was no longer getting any younger, Blanche began to plunge herself into affairs with different men and even a 17-year-old boy in the school where she taught English before she was dismissed and her sexual history is in fact a cause of her downfall. Thus, we can say that the suicide of the young husband Blanche loved dearly was the event that triggered her mental decline. In the second place, Stanley who possesses an animalistic physical vigor is a direct factor to Blanche’s tragedy. His intense hatred of Blanche is motivated in part by the aristocratic past Blanche represents. He also sees her as untrustworthy and does not appreciate the way she attempts to fool him and his friends into thinking she is better than they are. Under this suspicion and considering she cheated her sister of money gained by selling their old plantation Belle Reve, despised him for his lack of nurture, being brutish, primitive, apelike, rough and attempted to convince Stella to leave him who are the elementary sexual union, Stanley immediately seeks out information about her past. Knowing the past of Blanche who is a sham that feigns propriety and sexual modesty, Stanley began counterattacked Blanche forcefully by giving a ticket as her birthday present and sabotaging her relationship with Mitch. What’s more, Stanley also takes the final stabs at Blanche, destroying the remainder of her sexual and mental esteem by raping her then committing her to an insane asylum. As here her efforts to forget and shed her illicit past in the new community of New Orleans were ended with failure. So it was Stanley who‘s relentless persecution of Blanche foils her pursuit of Mitch as well as her attempts to shield herself from the harsh truth of her situation and results in her tragic ending as we see in the play. Next, Mitch is also an important factor who brings about the downfall to Blanche. As men’s exploitation of Blanche’s sexuality has left her with a poor reputation which makes her an unattractive marriage prospect. Thus, for herself, Blanche sees marriage to Mitch as her only chance for escaping bad reputation and destitution, although he is far from her ideal. However, as Mitch says in the play that ‘No, I don’t think I want to marry you anymore. No, you’re not clean enough to bring into the house with my mother.” Thus, by doing so, it just destroys the fantasy which Blanche catches hold on. Therefore, Mitch, the person who puts on the lantern also tores it off at last. Or in other word, it was Mitch who brought hope of marriage and hence settlement to Blanche and also him who shattered her illusions. Thus，the departure of Mitch is an indispensable factor to the collapse of Blanche’s mental. Besides the outsides causes mentioned above about her tragedy, there’s also something that relates to the inner cause—Blanche’s character. Firstly, illusive. From her says ‘I don’t want realism. I want magic! I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth’, we can see that she lives for how things ought to be, not for how they are. She prefers magic and shadows to facing facts in bright light. She just lived in her own imagination of the decent life of the past and didn’t have the courage to face reality. This kind of personality was doomed to a tragic end. Secondly, independent. As she put it ‘Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’, this revels that she always place her dependence on man, for both their sustenance and self-image, without realizing it and has no realistic conception of how to rescue herself. This mistaken concept just leads to her downfall rather than salvation. Therefore, her inability to act appropriately on her desire and absurd dependence just push her off the abyss. Finally, in the last analysis, we should trace back to the background for reasons. On the one hand, I think it has much to do with the people’s prejudice against homosexuality. If it hadn’t for the suicide of her young husband— Allan Grey, I think Blanche would not deteriorate to the present state. On the other hand, it is a historical inevitability. Stanley, who represents the new, working class are getting prosperous with every passing day. While on the contrary, Blanche belongs to an old Southern family which stands for civilization on the decline. Therefore, the tragic ending of Blanche is not difficult to see. All the things mentioned above are all my humble opinions about the causes of Blanche’s tragedy. Obviously, it’s not perfect and needs polishing up. All in all, the play just worth us watching once or even twice more if we want to study in a deep-going way. ——THE END