Blanche Dubois Monologue Essay

Blanche’s Ranting
This is Blanche Dubois’ monologue is self-revealing. After the previous night’s poker game, drunken Stanley cruelly abused Stella in public. However, Stanley’s sweet words and frank actions promote Stella to forgive him. She returns home and spends the night with him in the end. Blanche does not understand why Stella decides to tolerate Stanley’s brutal behaviors and continue to live with him. She exhorts Stella to leave her beastly brother-in-law Stanley but Stella does not care much when Blanche ranting. Through this ranting, Blanche articulates her dissatisfaction, discomfort, and fear due to Stanley’s propensity for violence.
In terms of Structure, this remark is placed in the early stage of her stay in Stella’s apartment.

Blanche seeks peace and security after being expelled from the school. Being an old southern lady she does not forget about her well-kept manner cultivated in her family. She looks down upon Stanley for his low class, ungentlemanly conduct. She is hard to bear with Stanley’s “brutish” behavior. Having seen his violent act toward Stella, she desperately needs to seek a way out of it. But Stella laughs it out and disregards her. Stella thinks Stanley’s violence is just a bad form to express his love to her. Stella does not accept Blanche’s accusation. Blanche continues to rant about Stanley’s violence and thinks it is a big issue. It is not merely his bad habit for her. Here lies the basic difference between Blanche and Stella. She feels she is only an outsider in her sister’s life. Her past noble status is in the thing of the past. She dies not have the power of control and her suggestion is unheeded. Stella does not realize that violence and lack of respect are problems. In her remark, she tries to alienate Stanley from Stella and expresses her anxiety.
Furthermore, Blanche is emotionally unstable.

She turns from soft persuasion to sharp denunciation. Part with anger and confusion. Blanche presses hard to make Stella take action. Worse, she is financially striated: she is destitute and helpless. Thus, she can only use the power of language to divert her inner discomfort is fear. Blanche is intended to avoid naming Stanley. She points her finger at a direction to refer to this ‘hateful’ man with anger and contempt. She thought Stanley was not at home. She loses composure and needs to release of emotional outburst. She hugs Stella in the end of her remark. After all, Stella is her only hope. The hugging clams Blanche down. But a sense of fragility and vulnerabilities is still visible. Stella’s love is her last resort.
With twists, Blanche sees Stanley as a savage and a brute animal. She remembers what happened last night and Stanley’s brutal behavior makes her feel contemptuous forward Stanley. She rants: “Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one!” For Blanche, Stanley’s essential nature is common, bestial, and vulgar. Blanche feels that she is different from him. Meanwhile, she emphasizes, exaggerates, and ridicules Stanley’s physical actions. Blanche sees Stanley as a survivor of the Stone Age. She says emphatically, “thousands and thousands of years” and what he does is “bearing the raw

meat”.
Interesting, Blanche uses the evolution of humankind to explain that Stanley is not at the same level as she is. She blames herself for nowhere to go and endure it all. She claims that Stanley’s behavior is not a human but an ape. Blanche keep reminds her that she has accepted civilized world knowledge and she belongs to the advanced level in the world. She does not want to relegate herself to the status like Stanley. Ultimately, she cries, “Don’t—don’t hang back with the brutes!”
In a word, Blanche remark reveals her inner angst and mental instability. It is also having something to do with the plot and the theme of the play. It is a length speech by a single person to express his or her private thought (Abrams 188). Blanche’s ranting shows her tense relations with doomed fate for Blanche. Blanche is an antiquated relic of tradition of the old Southern society. Stanley stands for the generation of the new immigrant. He lacks in formal education, in social manners. Blanche’s remark suggests that the end of South’s agrarian culture and the emergence of the different type of people and different value systems.
After all, Blanche’s ranting sows two of confrontation between Blanche and Stanley that bear the ill product later. But the invisible divide and conflict between class and social values are brewing or in the making. Blanche’s early ranting foretells her later tragedy.