Light is what exposes Blanche: “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I
can a rude remark or a vulgar action” (Williams 114). It seems like every time she comes close to the light, most people around her feel that Blanche would rather hide behind her good looks and petty politeness, living in her own little fantasy where she can be a flirt to other men rather than be a part of reality. The fantasy she becomes addicted into has been a way for Blanche to keep her beauty and looks without ever having the feeling the pain of getting old and not being wanted. However, when having the light shine upon her, Blanche feels like she is exposed to everyone around her even to the minor characters like Eunice, Stella, Mitch and Stanley. Although
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Tennessee Williams provides light on exposing Blanche’s life in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, there are others who can understand the desires that she is trying to have by hiding the pain from the past. Williams’ description on Blanche shows her not as a protagonist but more of a complicated one, a woman trying to escape from reality however, anyone and everyone can relate to her situation and how we all have problems that we tend to escape from. For example, Blanche’s point of view, she lived a middle class life where, as she says, “I don’t want realism. I want magic!” (143). Blanche’s escape from reality became triggered through her physiological problems after her husband’s suicide after being caught with another man, not to mention losing the estate Belle Reve. Problems that would include: becoming a prostitute towards other men that she would end up meeting as well as her obsession with alcohol. People can, however, understand the pain that she has been going through in her own life; the thought of losing a loved one can be tragic in their own lives which is why she chose to hide from her own past and start fresh. She may have attempted to hide her past life but it only lead to lies and deception. It’s no wonder why she tried to hide her life in the darkness, because of the things that happened to her that cause her to lose her sense of reality. Many people today can relate to her situation because they too have lost people they cared about much like did Blanche. While some of them have moved on, others find ways to which they can ease their depression: some ways that are good and others, like with Blanche, that aren’t such as: lies, drinking or prostituting for their own satisfaction. Like I have mention before, Blanche becomes dependent for alcohol to help calm her nerves, mainly the kind of nerves that were caused after the death of her husband and if she had had the support that she needed from Stella, she would not have had to resort to alcoholism but unfortunately she has her own issues with Mitch and their constant on-again and off-again romance. “No coke, honey, not with my nerves tonight!” (97). Blanche’s words support the idea on how she relies on alcohol to keep herself calm and help her escape from reality. Though she tries to hide her life in the darkness, what Blanche realizes is that what is in the dark can come to the light. Light becomes an important piece of imagery in unveiling the truth in Williams’ play but Blanche, hiding in darkness, tries to avoid reality since she realizes that illumination is what hides her vanishing beauty and youth as well as her escape from it by hiding in the shade of dimmed lights.
Whenever she became exposed to light, whether its candles or bulbs, it forces Blanche to confess towards the idea of hiding herself and creating this illusory image of herself with her own deception leading to lies towards Stella, Mitch and Stanley. For example, during the time Blanche has a Chinese lantern covering a light bulb and a conversation with Mitch near the end of the play where she says, “When I was sixteen, I made the discovery -- love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me” (132). To Blanche, light once represent to her as a symbol of love simply as turning a blinding light on, Love is what illuminates the world for her but then turns to darkness after her husband dies. From that moment on, Blanche intentionally lives out her false reality where she makes her desirable but it only lead to guys like Mitch, a man she has love for, distancing himself from her after he figures her out and even when Stanley tears the lantern off the bulb, exposing her to reality. Dressing the bulb signifies how she dresses up reality and though she is a liar but we all can understand and pity her for wanting to change reality though she does it from both deception and pitiable
idealism. Blanche practically threw herself towards other men only because of how she felt like she began fading from desire into death. Blanche may have been a liar but she only wants to have the attention because it seems like nobody else but men could give it to her. Even after she left home, Blanche figured that to survive was to be desired. Unfortunately, the idea made things worse as if she was just toying inappropriately with men all the time rather than falling in love. Her actions were influenced by all the grief in her past which drove her to madness. Some may call her a victim of her past and she couldn’t move forward from that, while others would call her a culprit of her own lies. It makes the play quite confusing to the readers as Blanche seems to have two sides; that being the woman escaping her past and the prostitute/desirable woman covering it with deception. Even if Blanche were to encourage the men, technically she is not in the right state of mind and therefore, I don't completely blame her for her actions as a character. Though I can understand why one would say that Blanche does victimize others; to changes the lives of the other characters in a negative way. Part of me considers her to be a woman to be hated for her own actions while another part considers her as someone who only wants to replace her old life with a different/better one but that doesn’t always happen depending on how that person tends to move on. For Blanche however, the truth confines her rather than help set her free. By the end of the play, Blanche is taken to a mental institution because the people around her either didn’t believe she was raped or being sane for she would only live in her own fantasy world. Obviously, Stella chose to not believe her story about Stanley. Blanche simply couldn’t handle reality and continues retreating to illusions. Her last words, “Whoever you are-I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (155), shows once again, her desire for strangers. Blanche went through many hard times in her life from losing her job, her husband’s death and receiving a shameful reputation from it all. Due to these kinds of events from her past, Blanche became a victim due to her own desires of living in her own little world and being the liar and conniving, story-telling woman that she had became. People today consider light as a reliable symbol of how to illuminate the truth behind everyone we know or read about. Blanche thought she can hide herself from reality after the death of her husband by covering every source of light she sees and stay within her own personal fantasy. Her own fantasy is where Blanche can go around with her looks and her talent for flirting and wanting to be loved by other men however, when exposed by the light, everyone, including her, can see the lies she had been living in. Blanche, to me, is like a moth to a strand of light which is temporarily protected by a paper lantern. She uses her sexuality in order to pursue a romanticized version of her past identity that unfortunately crumbles to dust after the death of her husband. While others can realize that one’s dreams and ambitions can never survive solely on fantasies that are contradictory to reality, no matter how hard one believes in them.
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.”
The loss of her beloved husband keeps Blanche’s mental state in the past, back when she was 16, when she only cared about her appearance. That is why at the age of 30 she avoids bright lights that reveal her wrinkles. Blanche does not want to remember the troubles of her past and therefore she attempts to remain at a time when life was simpler. This is reinforced by the light metaphor which illustrates how her life has darkened since Allan’s suicide and how the light of love will never shine as brightly for Blanche ever again. Although, throughout the play Blanche sparks an interest in Mitch, a friend of Stanley’s, who reveals in Scene three that he also lost a lover once, although his lover was taken by an illness, not suicide, and therefore he still searches for the possibility of love, when Blanche aims to find stability and security.
The loss of her beloved husband kept Blanche’s mental state in the past, back when she was 16, when she only cared about her appearance. That is why at the age of 30 she avoids bright lights that reveal her wrinkles. Blanche does not want to remember the troubles of her past and therefore she attempts to remain at a time when life was simpler. This is reinforced by the light metaphor which illustrates how her life has darkened since Allan’s suicide and how the light of love will never shine as brightly for Blanche ever again. Although, throughout the play Blanche sparks an interest in Mitch, a friend of Stanley’s, who reveals in Scene three that he also lost a lover once, although his lover was taken by an illness, not suicide, and therefore he still searches for the possibility of love, when Blanche aims to find stability and security.
In this play the character blanche exhibits the theme of illusion. Blanche came from a rocky past. Her young husband killed himself and left her with a big space in her heart to fill. Blanche tried to fill this space with the comfort of strangers and at one time a young boy. She was forced to leave her hometown. When she arrives in New Orleans, she immediately begins to lie and give false stories. She takes many hot bathes, in an effort to cleanse herself of her past. Blanche tries also to stay out of bright lights. She covers the light bulb (light=reality) in the apartment with a paper lantern. This shows her unwillingness to face reality but instead live in an illusion. She also describes how she tells what should be the truth. This is a sad excuse for covering/lying about the sinful things she has done. Furthermore, throughout the story she repeatedly drinks when she begins to be faced with facts. All these examples, covering light, lying, and alcoholism show how she is not in touch with reality but instead living in a fantasy world of illusion.
This essay will describe whether or not Blanches’ unfortunate eventual mental collapse was due to her being a victim of the society she went to seek comfort in, or if she was solely or at least partly responsible. The factors and issues that will be discussed include, Blanches’ deceitful behaviour and romantic delusions which may have lead to her eventual downfall, the role Stanley ended up playing with his relentless investigations of her past and the continuous revelations of it, the part society and ‘new America’ played in stifling her desires and throwing her into a world she could not relate to or abide by.
Blanche’s immoral and illogical decisions all stem from her husband's suicide. When a tragedy happens in someone’s life, it shows the person’s true colors. Blanche’s true self was an alcoholic and sex addict, which is displayed when “She rushes about frantically, hiding the bottle in a closet, crouching at the mirror and dabbing her face with cologne and powder” (Williams 122). Although Blanche is an alcoholic, she tries to hide it from others. She is aware of her true self and tries to hide it within illusions. Blanche pretends to be proper and young with her fancy clothes and makeup but is only masking her true, broken self.
“I can 't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.” - Blanche (p. 60). The fear that bright light has the power to reveal the truth is a reoccurring theme throughout the play, embodying the threat that follows Blanche everywhere she goes. In scene nine, Mitch comments on this, saying that he has never seen Blanche in daytime. She makes a series of excuses after which Mitch points a light at her. When this happens, Blanche confesses she only says what ‘ought’ to be true. This doesn’t make Mitch any more sympathetic towards her and she carries on, saying “I don’t want realism, I want magic!” whilst still standing in the light. This makes it clear that it is her own choice to stay in the darkness, and reality would only cause her to suffer. Confirming this, when Mitch turns the light off again, she bursts out crying, as if allowed to pretend again, not being forced by the light to keep on showing her true self, especially her age. She might feel that the light on her face brings out the whole truth, which is too painful for her to bear. The other characters in the play feel it is not correct for her to hide the past and nobody questions whether it is acceptable to live in deceit. “And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that 's stronger than this--kitchen--candle.”-
Blanche’s lampshade is the filter for all the harsh realities of life that she would rather not deal with. In a scene with Stanley’s friend Mitch, Blanche tells Mitch to cover up a light bulb with a Chinese lampshade, “I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action” (1837). In this scene Blanche blatantly tells the other characters and the a...
...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.
This gradual fall and loss of her sense of reality is truly tragic. Blanche is a person largely driven by the part of her that wants to be liked and be accepted. She cares greatly about how she is viewed and how she looks which is seen throughout the play. Even at the end when she’s living almost completely in the imaginations of her mind she asks Stella and Eunice how she looks before being taken away to an insane asylum. Tennessee Williams, the author of the play, uses all the conflict between Blanche and others, specifically Stanley, to show that fantasy is unable to overcome reality. Stanley and Blanche are both the epitomes of fantasy and reality. Stanley is a man focused on sexual drive, work, and fighting. He is exhibited as animalistic and strongly driven by his desires which is shown when he says, “Be comfortable. That's my motto up where I come from.” Stanley loves and searches after reality which is why he is so set on breaking down the facade he sees in Blanche. Blanche on the other hand is running from her reality and her past. Her fantasy of being high class and chaste is the exact opposite of her reality which is why she wants a life like that so badly. She wants marriage and stability, two things she was jealous of Stella having after arriving in New Orleans. Her fantasy she was building in her new life is shattered when Stanley is able to learn of her past and bring reality crashing down on her. Williams
She looks for empathy in all the wrong places. She looks for it when with strangers, with Stanley, Mitch, and Stella. The tragedy of Alan’s death is a leading cause for Blanche’s desire for attention and empathy. After his death he becomes involved with the hotel “flamingo”. It is here where she mistakenly thinks that sex, is a form of empathy. This empathy causes her character to have a blackened image of how to gain empathy from others. Once she gets run out of the flamingo she attempts to gain attention from Stanley. “It 's mine, too. It 's hard to stay looking fresh. I haven 't washed or even powdered my face and here you are!” Blanche understands that Stanley is a man who can at least support his wife. She flirts with Stanley, in a desperate need to feel, safe and cared for. Stanley understands that Blanche is manipulative, and he does not give empathy towards her. The tragic Irony with Blanche is that she does not recognize true empathy when it is given to her, Mitch has a deep care for Blanche, to the extent that he is willing to marry her. “You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be—you and me, Blanche?” Mitch shows a great amount of compassion towards Blanche, but blanche cannot recognize this empathy and sees it more as an opportunity to manipulate him, which doesn’t turn out well in the end. Stella is the
This can be symbolized by light. Blanche hates to be seen by Mitch, her significant other, in the light because it exposes her true identity. Instead, she only plans to meet him at night or in dark places. Also, she covers the lone light in Stella and Stanley’s apartment with a Chinese paper lantern. After Blanche and Mitch get into a fight, Mitch rips off the lantern to see what Blanche really looks like. Blanche angrily replies that she’s sorry for wanting magic. In the play, Blanche states “I don’t want realism, I want magic! [..] Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!”(Williams 117). Blanche wants to escape reality, but this only leads to her self-destruction. It is the men in her life and past experiences that is the main cause of her self - destruction. One of these being the death of her young love, Allen Grey. During their marriage, Blanche, attached to the hip to this man, walked in on him with another man. She then brought the incident up at a bad time; soon after, Allen took his own life, which I believe was the first step to this so called “self-destruction. Blanche could never forgive herself of this. This is the truth of her past, therefore,
The writer, Tennesse Williams uses symbolism and imagery to help convey the idea that Blanche is deceptive, egotistical and seductive. We can clearly discover how deceptive Blanche is by the symbolism that Williams uses throughout the play. One can note how Blanche continually wears white dresses or a red kimono when she is being especially flirtatious, so that she makes people think that she is innocent and pure. In Scene Five Blanche's white dress, a symbol of purity is stained which is symbolic of the fact that Blanche if far from being pure. Blanche's world hinges on illusion and deception as can be seen when Blanche pours her heart out to Stella in scene five, "soft people... have got to be seductive... make a little - temporary magic". Blanche feels that she must trick and deceive in order to survive in a world where she is "fading now!" and her looks are leaving her. We are introduced to Blanche as a "delicate beauty" that "must avoid strong light". Williams, portrays Blanche as an uncertain character who hides behind the veneer of outer beauty and who when is placed under the spotlight, fails to live up to the person she would like people to think that she is. Williams also provides strong imagery of her as a moth, as she is dressed in white clothes and is fluttering. This imagery of Blanche as a moth is further emphasised when Blanche herself later states, "put on soft colours, the colours of butterfly wings and glow".
After Mitch forcefully removes the paper lantern from the light bulb, Blanche “utters a frightened gasp” (1.9.14). Within the scene, the paper lantern serves yet another symbolic function. The night when Blanche meets Mitch, she asks him to place the lantern onto the light bulb. Just as the lantern protects Blanche from the light which reveals her age, it creates a façade which conceals her past. With Mitch’s love Blanche believes that the proper persona which she invented for herself could become her identity, thus magic becomes reality. However, as Mitch undresses the light bulb, he exposes Blanche vulnerabilities. Even though Mitch possesses masculinity, he does so to a lesser extent than Stanley. This passage is mildly reminiscent of Stanley and Stella’s wedding night when Stanley smashes the light bulbs in the apartment. Even though Stanley’s actions are more extreme than Mitch’s both carry a sexual connotation and reveal animalistic tendencies. Furthermore, as Mitch stares intently at Blanche in the light, “she cries out and covers her face” (1.9.25). By turning on the light, Mitch for the first time has gotten a good look at Blanche, but to do so he is violating her sense of self-worth. Although Mitch continues to berate Blanche for lying to him, he is still physically attracted to Blanche. Mitch’s cruelty is accepted by Blanche and later in the scene still asks if Mitch
Thus, Williams has Blanche state, “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! – Don’t turn the light on” (Williams 145). Blanche only relies on her own fantasy because she fears reality. By the same token, a subtle clue to her fear of reality is her fear of the light. As can be seen, Blanche feared reality because she feared the truth; thus, her fantasies had led her down a path of lies, manipulation, and