Blanche Dubois Research Paper

Blanche Dubois’s obsession with embellishing and hiding the truth in A Streetcar Named Desire reflects the negative effects of society’s oppressive gender norms in the late 1940s. The time period was the pinnacle of gender (George). Patriarchal post-war American society valued women mostly on their youth and beauty and restricted female sexuality.
The character of Blanche Dubois demonstrates a woman reduced to youth and beauty. The main reason for Blanche’s concern over her looks is because she is 30 years old. A woman was expected to marry and have children as soon as possible during this time. Blanche is older and does not want Mitch to know her past or her age, because neither will be to her credit. She lies and omits the truth about herself

regularly to incite some interest in her potential suitor. Blanche says, “I want to deceive him [Mitch] enough to make him--want me” and that her vanity has been given some hard knocks, proving that Blanche has been judged over such trivial things as age and beauty many times in the past (Williams 95).
Traumatic past experiences have caused Blanche to change her whole way of being.

After being honest with Allan and watching him commit suicide, Blanche has decided that a beautiful lie is far better than a harsh truth. Garish light represents to Blanche the truths she has buried within herself. In the light she can be seen as she truly is and not as the illusion she has projected to Mitch. To maintain her facade, she refuses to see him during the day or in a well-lit room. When Mitch points this out and attempts to see Blanche in the light, Blanche cries out, “I don’t want realism, I want magic!” and begs him not to turn the light on (Williams 145). Society has forced Blanche to mold herself into who others (specifically men) want her to be and to turn the light on would break the beautiful illusion Blanche has been brought to

live.
While Mitch claims not to mind Blanche’s age when her true face is revealed to him, he does little to disguise his disgust when he learns of her past. Ms. Dubois is an unmarried woman who has been quite promiscuous during her life. When Mitch confronts Blanche about her past, she tells him that after the death of her young husband, intimacies with strangers were all that seemed to fill her heart. She became known as a woman of loose morals and she was consequently thrown out of her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi. This revelation leads Mitch to view Blanche in a whole new light. He had respected her and believed her to have old-fashioned ideals, but now he views her as impure. He grabs her waist and says, “[I want] what I been missing all summer” (Williams 149). Mitch’s attempt to use Blanche for sex, his view of her as a harlot who was unfit for marriage, and his aversion to bringing her home to his mother demonstrates society’s restriction of female sexuality.
When Stanley and Mitch discover the truth about Blanche’s past, Stanley feels vindicated and Mitch’s entire perception of her changes.

Stanley takes an immediate dislike to Blanche and searches for validation of his intuition. Mitch, however, had been quite taken with Blanche before this new information arose. Promiscuity was all but expected of men during the time. The invasion of Normandy during WWII has been referred to as “an erotic adventure” in which men took the spoils of war in the form of women’s bodies (Sweetman). Mitch, who served in the armed forces as an engineer, would likely have been quite familiar with this method of spoil collecting. He may have participated in some spoil collecting himself; therefore, his use of Blanche’s sexual exploits as a disqualifying characteristic is hypocritical, and shows the double standard that women were held to sexually. Having this sexual standard ingrained in her, Blanche attempts to keep her history from Mitch. During Mitch and Blanche’s date, Blanche tells Mitch, “I have--old-fashioned ideals” (Williams 108). She also refuses to do more than kiss Mitch in an attempt to seem pure to him. This is because society already scorned her for her exploits once (when she was kicked out of Laurel). Blanche is seriously interested in marrying Mitch and does not wish for her past to interfere with her chances of becoming Mrs. Harold

Mitchell.
Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire displays the unique and difficult experience of women during the 1940s. Williams uses Blanche to demonstrate the toll youth and beauty standards can take on a delicate woman. She is also demonstrative of the demeaning sexual repression women suffered under. Oppressive societal standards lowered Blanche’s self esteem to a point in which she could only feel some worth if a man expressed romantic or sexual interest in her. Ultimately this left Blanche mentally and emotionally unstable and unfulfilled as it did to many women during the time period.