The first, and in my own opinion, most important event in the play that made me sympathies with
The first, and in my own opinion, most important event in the play that made me sympathies with
The character Blanche is quite a complex member of the play; you do not see a true representation of her until several scenes in. The two opening scenes show different sides to the character depending on whose company she is in. Having come from a good family with a “proper” upbringing, it can be said that she has led a somewhat sheltered life and therefore finds it hard to relate and sympathise other characters that did not experience the same quality of life. Her actions are impulsive, spontaneous and often she acts without thinking of the consequences; this makes it difficult for the audience to feel difficult toward her and can ultimately be traced back to the fact that she has little self-awareness. However, just as there are examples of other reasons that she is disliked by the audience and other characters, there are also examples of Blanche feeling and showing sympathy.…
Tennessee William’s play A Street Car Named Desire offers a glimpse into the harsh reality faced by single southern woman in the 1940s. The 1940s was a time when females were viewed as delicate and fragile; therefore, it was understood that a male companion was a necessity to keep them safe and secure (Cook 84). The character of Blanche Dubois embodies the 1940s distressed female as she struggles with her environment. She is battling guilt, loneliness and financial insecurity when she arrives in Elysian Fields. Critics and audiences alike have mixed reactions to Blanche and her role as the tragic protagonist. In “The Space of Madness and Desire” Anne Fleche suggests Blanche is mad from the outset of the play. Others such as Leonard Berkman in “The Tragic Downfall of Blanche Dubois” argue that she symbolizes a fallen angel who descends into madness because she is victimized by surroundings that have condemned her to become a deranged concubine. I agree with Berkman’s position on her descent into insanity and will argue that Blanche descends into madness throughout her stay at Elysian Fields; post traumatic stress disorder resulting from the loss of her husband, lies and a past that prevents Mitch’s acceptance and rescue of her, and finally, the pitiless mental torment she faces at the hands of her “executioner” Stanley, culminate in her final descent into insanity.…
When the play begins, Blanche is already a fallen woman in society’s eyes. Her family fortune and estate are gone, she lost her young husband to suicide years earlier, and she is a social pariah due to her indiscrete sexual behavior. She also has a bad drinking problem, which she covers up poorly. Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety, Blanche is an insecure, dislocated individual. She is an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty. Her manner is dainty and frail, and she sports a wardrobe of showy but cheap evening clothes. Stanley quickly sees through Blanche’s act and seeks out information about her past. The notion of death is apparent through Blanches maiden name, Grey, which suggests bleakness and unhappiness. Indeed we are introduced to the fact that behind…
Arthur Miller said, The flaw, or crack in the characters, is really nothing-and need be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Blanche refuses to remain passive throughout the play, she continuously fights for her dignity by truly making herself and others believe that she is the “Southern-belle” should be. You can see this in the way she dresses and presents herself. “You come in here and sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume and cover the light bulb with a paper lantern, and lo and behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile!” Blanche…
Throughout the play, Blanche is living a lie and existing in a fantasy. Blanche DuBois, who is lost and confused, lies to herself through the entire play. At the beginning, Blanche lies to her sister, Stella, about taking a break from her school teaching job, when in reality, she has…
In ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, Tennessee Williams presents Blanche DuBois as an extremely multifaceted character who represents both old and idealist values in America. Appearances are deceiving, and this is clearly shown through the character of Blanche in the play, as she puts on a smug and arrogant front to conceal her fragile personality. To ‘blanche’ something is to ‘drain it of colour’ and thus the image she portrays in Act 1 and 2 reflects this idea.…
In the commencement of the play, Blanche is quickly described as a damsel in distress. She is portrayed as a wealthy woman “in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earing of pearl, white gloves and hat…” (5). She resembles an embellished white moth. The fact that she is forced to live with her younger sister Stella and her domineering husband truly shows that Blanche is in a truly desperate situation. Her overall character is depicted as a traumatized woman that is in complete desolation. Experiences such as witnessing her family on a “...Long parade to the graveyard” (21). Being forced to live with your family until their tragic demise would emotionally and mentally torment anyone. She lives inside of her own world in which she…
“Just remember what Huey Long said - that every man’s a king- and I’m the king around here” QUELLE!! With this statement Stanley Kowalski, one of the protagonists in “A Streetcar Named Desire” a play published in 1947 by one of the most famous authors of the South Tennessee Williams, the character captures the critical issue at stake – the underprivileged and repressed role of women in American society at the time right after the Great Depression and World War II. The theme of an older, decadent and back then dying plantation society whose values and virtues were challenged by a new male-dominated and aggressively materialistic society of immigrants gained more and more in importance (Zapf 298).…
1. Blanche who is homeless, comes to her sister’s house at the beginning. Blanche had been a schoolteacher, married Allan, a man she later discovered to be gay. Her reactions to his sexual orientation caused him to commit suicide. Lonely, she becomes a prostitute, who loses her teaching career when her sexual relationship with a teenager is found out. After the family plantation Belle Reve is lost, she turns to her little sister Stella, who lives in with her husband Stanley in a poor area of New Orleans. She is a very deluded character; She hides her past and fragility behind her Southern aristocrat clothes and manners and is very harsh and mean to Stanley, calling him “bestial” (71). When her past is revealed, she loses a guy named Mitch’s love and the possibility of getting married to him. At the end of the play, she is raped by Stanley (Stella’s husband), goes crazy, and is taken to the state mental asylum. Blanche is the main focus of the play. She is a complex character. “If a single character in contemporary American stage literature approaches the classical Aristotelian tragic figure, it must surely be Blanche DuBois. Deceptive, dishonest, fraudulent, permanently flawed, unable to face reality, Blanche is for all that thoroughly capable of commanding audience compassion, for her struggle and the crushing defeat she endures have the magnitude of tragedy. The inevitability of her doom, her refusal to back down in the face of it, and the essential humanity of the forces that drive her to it are the very heart of tragedy. No matter what evils she may have done, nor what villainies practiced, she is a human being trapped by the fates, making a human fight to escape and to survive with some shred of human dignity, in full recognition of her own fatal human weaknesses and the increasing…
Blanche Duboise reenters Stella’s life with expectations to be welcomed. She is quickly mistaken upon meeting Stanley. As a result of Stanley and Blanches differences, they did not share any form of a positive relationship. Because of this, Blanche does not approve of her way of living nor the man she is in love with. Blanche states with a superior attitude, “Well if you’ll forgive me- he’s common!” (82). Stella, insulted by her sister, is left unsure of whom to side with. This unapproved notion of Stanley, adds to the sympathy towards Stella as she is not receiving the respect and trust of judgment from Blanche. As a victim of verbal abuse, the empathy for Stella is caused by Blanche’s actions.…
Blanche is an English teacher, but she's one of a kind. You'd never forget her if you took her course. Shortly before the play begins, Blanche has lost her job. She wasn't fired for poor teaching skills, however. The superintendent's letter said Blanche was "morally unfit for her position." That's probably a fair evaluation of a teacher who seduced one of the seventeen-year-old boys in her class. Also, Blanche's sexual exploits so outraged the citizens of Laurel, Mississippi, that they practically threw her out of town. You don't know all these facts about Blanche until late in the play. At first, she seems to be just a high-strung, but refined, woman who has come to New Orleans to pay…
Based on my reading thus far, Blanche proves the most antagonistic characteristic. She is sister of Stella and came to meet her unexpectedly. She lost her husband few years earlier and she is a social pariah due to her indiscrete sexual behavior. She also seeks for people attention and wants them to complement her. She has bad drinking habit which she tries to hide from everyone. Blanche's flirtatious behavior causes a lot of problems in Stella and Stanley life. Blanche displayed cunning, manipulative, and mendacious types of personalities which makes her antagonist.…
Lant, Kathleen Margaret. “A Streetcar Named Misogyny.” Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1991.…
Dubois shows a mixed array of actions that confuses the audience into whether she is to be sympathized or not. At the beginning of the play, the author Tennessee Williams shows us the arrogant and demanding side of Blanche, provoking the audience to dislike her, but as the play goes on, Williams gradually reveals more about Blanche’s troublesome past, making the audience sympathize her more. Blanche arrives at the Kowalski household— Elysian Fields, dressed fancily. “She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and ear-rings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district.”…
Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire” explores the conflicts of loss throughout the characters. We can see this through Blanche and Mitch from the audio excerpt from the play, we can also see in Stanley throughout the play. Williams conveys the idea of loss in blanches monologue on page 66. She expresses a loneliness and longing for love due to the loss of her dead husband whom she loved very much. Her husband was a homosexual, and Blanche had caught him with another man.…