BLANCHE DUBOIS: THE ANTITHESIS OF A MODERN WOMAN
"Blanche DuBois, in 'A Streetcar Named Desire', is what a critic Ruby Cohn calls Williams' 'masterpiece contradiction'". (Bloom 70) Tennessee Williams is considered to be one of the most renowned playwrights of the twentieth century in American Literary History. As a playwright, he is best known for writing 'A Streetcar Named Desire', 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', and 'The Glass Menagerie'. Williams' 'A Streetcar Named Desire', focuses on the declining sanity of his central character, Blanche DuBois. While Tennessee Williams considered Blanche DuBois to be a liberated, modern woman, many feminist critics contend that she is just the opposite.
Compared to other authors, Tennessee Williams' personal life and experiences were the inspiration for his plays. He used his past experiences as a way to universalize them through the means of the stage. In this manner, his life is incorporated in each and every piece of his literature. As a youngster, Williams spent most of his childhood growing up in the South, surrounded by its genteel culture. Williams was a rather delicate and sickly child, he was plagued with several childhood diseases, which prevented him attending a regular school. He experienced culture shock at the age of 12 when his family suddenly uprooted him to St. Louis, MO so that his father could work at a shoe factory. After Williams finished high school, he attended the University of Missouri for three years, but dropped out when he failed a class. His father secured a position for him at the shoe factory, where he worked for almost two years Williams worked at the shoe factory during the daytime, and spent his nights writing poems, stories, and plays. During that time p...
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...ed. If she had accepted it, then Blanche potentially could have become a modern woman. However, she continued living her life by engaging in meaningless affairs. This willful submission of her body indicates to the reader that Blanche is desperate for male companionship.
While Tennessee Williams considered Blanche DuBois to be a liberated, modern woman, many feminist critics contend that she is just the opposite. Williams portrays her as a victim who gradually loses her grip on reality. A modern woman, first and foremost views herself as an unique individual. She has the ability to deal with the problems that she faces, without having to rely on others. Blanche's unwillingness to deal with the events that occurred in her life clearly shows that she is anything but a modern woman.
Works Cited
Williams, T. A Streetcar Named Desire. Signet Books, NY: 2008.
McGlinn addresses the third dialectic taking hold of Blanche: illusion versus reality. McGlinn points out that, like all the women in Williams’s plays between 1940 and 1950, Blanche “refuses to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion.” [Tharpe, 513]. Although McGlinn is accurate in noting Blanche’s conflict between gentility and promiscuity, the result of which is “self-defeat instead of survival” [Tharpe, 513], she fails to see that Blanche lives in both illusion and reality simultaneously, and it is this dialectic that is the slow poison which destroys her. This death-instinct gives us the fourth and last dialectic in Blanche: her struggle between death and desire.”
To conclude, the author portrays Blanche’s deteriorating mental state throughout the play and by the end it has disappeared, she is in such a mental state that doctors take her away. Even at this stage she is still completely un-aware of her surroundings and the state she is in herself.
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire author Tennessee Williams writes about Blanche DuBois, a woman who is seeking help from her older sister Stella Kowalski. Blanche comes to stay with Stella and her husband Stanley after finding out that Blanche and Stella’s childhood home had been taken from under them. The play goes on to show the dramatic downfall of what is Blanche DuBois. Throughout the play we see her slowly break down till finally she is pushed over the edge. William's uses a great deal of allusion to convey a real meaning to why characters do what they do. It’s not just an example, each allusion has a deeper meaning to the character it’s associated with. Blanche DuBois is the character used associated with allusion. Williams uses allusion with Blanche to present how she masks her true identity to the real world, saying she’s a pure southern belle when really she is truly a lost lonely soul.
was lobotomised in his absence and later institutionalised leading. many critics to believe that the character of Blanche may have arisen. from events in his own life. Blanche's tragic past involving both the death of her "young" husband and her consequent promiscuity with. The "young men" created an overwhelming amount of emotion for Blanche.
Blanche filled the void her husband left by having sex with random, younger men. She was drawn to them because they reminded her of her husband, Allen. Blanche states that “intimacies with strangers was all I seemed to fill my empty heart with” (Williams 128). Even with the countless encounters with strange men, Blanche never found anyone to fill the void. She tried to use the intimacies to distract her from her husband's death. The death of her husband enforced a new level of madness upon Blanche. She became more promiscuous as a result, which further demonstrates why the suicide of her husband was an illuminating moment in the play and how her internal struggle caused by her husband’s death changed her into a sex
Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it. She was passionately in love with Alan; but after discovering that he was gay, she could not stomach the news. When she revealed how disgusted she was, it prompted Alan to commit suicide. She could never quite overcome the guilt and put it behind her. Blanche often encountered flashbacks about him. She could hear the gun shot and polka music in her head. After Alan’s death, she was plagued by the deaths of her relatives. Stella moved away and did not have to deal with the agony Blanche faced each day. Blanche was the one who stuck it out with her family at Belle Reve where she had to watch as each of her remaining family members passed away. “I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths—not always” (Scene 1, page 1546). Blanche lost Belle Reve because of all the funeral expenses. Belle Reve had been in her family for generations, and it slipped through her fingers while she watched helplessly. Blanche’s anguish caused her loneliness. The loneliness fueled her abundance of sexual encounters. Her rendezvous just added to her problems and dirtied her rep...
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a play about a woman named Blanche Dubois who is in misplaced circumstances. Her life is lived through fantasies, the remembrance of her lost husband and the resentment that she feels for her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Various moral and ethical lessons arise in this play such as: Lying ultimately gets you nowhere, Abuse is never good, Treat people how you want to be treated, Stay true to yourself and Don’t judge a book by its cover.
...es and thinks that her hopes will not be destroyed. Thirdly, Blanche thinks that strangers are the ones who will rescue her; instead they want her for sex. Fourthly, Blanche believes that the ones who love her are trying to imprison her and make her work like a maid imprisoned by them. Fifthly, Blanche’s superiority in social status was an obscure in her way of having a good social life. Last but not least, Blanche symbolizes the road she chose in life- desire and fantasy- which led her to her final downfall.
Superficial is the first impression that Blanche gives when she enters the play. Consumed by appearance and face value, she is unable to see that Stella’s new lifestyle is not as horrid as she imagines. In comparison to Belle Reve, it is true that these New Orleans slums may not meet Dubois standards, but Blanche is unable to see beyond the way things appear in order to realize that Stella’s world does not revolve around material items. This flaw is intertwined with her vanity and her need keep up appearances. On the surface, Blanche appears to be snobbish and conceited.
One cant imagine how it must feel to lose the ones they love and hold dear, but to stay afterwards and mourn the loss of the many is unbearable. Blanche has had a streak of horrible luck. Her husband killing himself after she exposed her knowledge about his homosexuality, her advances on young men that led to her exile and finally her alcoholism that drew her life to pieces contemplated this sorrow that we could not help but feel for Blanche throughout the drama. Blanche’s desire to escape from this situation is fulfilled when she is taken away to the insane asylum. There she will have peace when in the real world she only faces pain.
After two world wars, the balance of power between the genders in America had completely shifted. Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a harsh, yet powerful play that exposes the reality of the gender struggle. Williams illustrates society’s changing attitudes towards masculinity and femininity through his eloquent use of dramatic devices such as characterization, dialogue, setting, symbolism, and foreshadowing.
Blanche consider herself as a Southern Belle, despite the changing of her status. Her life changed when she is facing financial difficulty and she has to pay for the cost of the funeral of her relatives.Blanche has lost Belle Reve
Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American dramatists of the 20th century. Most of his plays take us to the southern states and show a confused society. In his works he exposes the degeneration of human feelings and relationships. His heroes suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in the society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes of his plays are racism, sexism, homophobia and realistic settings filled with loneliness and pain.1 Tennessee Williams characters showed us extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior.2 One of his most popular dramas was written in 1947, and it is called A Streetcar Named Desire.
Blanche is driven by her sexual desire but also wishes for stability and a fresh start instead. Blanche states “It was the other little familiarity that I felt obliged to discourage, I didn’t resent it!.. I was somewhat flattered that you desired me” (Williams 87). For the first time she doesn’t succumb to her body’s physical needs for her wish to be able to settle down with Mitch. If Blanche answered her body’s need for sex she would have killed her act of being a Southern belle looking for a suitor. This again brings out the close line between death and
During scene one, the audience is introduced to Blanche as Stella's sister, who is going to stay with her for a while. Blanch tries her best to act normal and hide her emotion from her sister, but breaks down at the end of scene one explaining to Stella how their old home, the Belle Reve, was "lost." It is inferred that the home had to be sold to cover the massive funeral expenses due to the many deaths of members of the Dubois family. As Blanche whines to her sister, "All of those deaths! The parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way!" (21). The audience sees this poor aging woman, who has lost so many close to her, and now her home where she grew up. How could anyone look at her, and not feel the pain and suffering that she has to deal with by herself? Williams wants the audience to see what this woman has been through and why she is acting the way she is. Blanche's first love was also taken from her. It seems that everyone she loves is dead except for her sister. Death plays a crucial role in Blanche's depression and other mental irregularities. While these circumstances are probably enough for the audience to feel sympathy for Blanche, Williams takes it a step further when we see Blanche's...