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Essay on blanche dubois character a-level
Study on the character of blanche dubois
Character analysis of blanche dubois
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Comparing the two characters from the novel The Awakening and the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Edna Pontellier and Blanche Dubois, there are clearly inherent differences between the two. Some differences being: Edna is an artist and Blanche is a teacher, Edna has two children and Blanche has none, Edna is married and Blanche is a widow. But, despite the differences the between the two characters there are also many similarities. The three most important similarities between the two characters are: both women are free spirited characters that give life to the novels they star in, they both have best friends that do not really understand them, and they both meet tragic ends at the end of their respective stories caused by men. Edna and Blanche are two characters that are very free spirited and youthful. They are spirits that are not to be tamed and do what they please regardless of what people think about them. Edna’s example of her most free spirited moment is when …show more content…
she moved from her house with Léonce, her husband, and children to live an independent life to express herself. This shows that she does not care about being a mother woman as much as she shows, but much rather be her own person who is in control of herself rather than being controlled by her husband. Blanche’s free spirited nature is not shown in her actions, but shown in her fashion. Her clothes are all expensive, bold, and are meant as outwardly express that she is a free spirited, fun, and attractive woman. While Edna and Blanche have very wild personalities, it is these same personality traits that cause them to be misunderstood by many.
The people who misunderstand them the most are their closet friends. In The Awakening, Edna’s best friend is Adele Ratignolle. Adele is a very traditional married creole woman who devoted to her husband and her children while Edna is not a mother woman and does not love her husband as much as Adele loves her. As a family oriented person, it is hard for Adele to understand how Edna is able disregard her family’s needs as much as she does. Blanche, on the other hand, her closest friend in the play is her sister Stella. Her sister is aware that Stella is someone who is a mentally and emotionally unstable, something Blanche spends a good portion of the play trying to hide, and as an older sister she worries about her younger sister. But even then Stella does not truly understand Blanche, because of how much of a jumbled mess her life is after her husband commits
suicide. Being misunderstood by the people they care about the most are factors that influence to the character’s ultimate demise in their respected stories, the biggest cause of their ultimate demise is caused by men they hold dear. In Edna’s case, in The Awakening, she develops a crush on Robert Lebrun, which he reciprocates. However, Robert ultimately rejects her love by moving away to Mexico and this ultimately leads to Edna committing suicide at the end of the novel. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche’s love interest Mitch finds out about what happens to her husband as well as the various people she has slept with back home, which causes him to leave her because he does not want to be with someone as ‘unclean’ as she is. This ultimately leads to Blanche having a nervous breakdown before being sent to a mental hospital. These tragic ends both of these characters experience in their respective pieces are what truly makes Edna and Blanche connected despite being in two completely different pieces. To conclude, despite having clear differences, Blanche Dubois and Edna Pontellier have clear similarities: they are both free spirited characters that give life to their novels, they both have best friends that do not really understand them, and they both meet tragic ends in their respected stories caused by men. Both pieces are incredible works of art, written by two talented writers who turn words into art. While they are both a little bit outdated, the messages both pieces have to offer are timeless.
The bildungsroman ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J.D Salinger and the play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams are both post-World War Two narratives which incorporate protagonists that challenge contemporary American attitudes. Blanche DuBois and Holden Caufield are quintessential examples of characters who subvert societal expectations, impositions and hegemony of America in the late 1940s and early 50s, the author and playwright have the plot revolve around these characters and their itinerant lifestyles as they literally and socially move from one milieu to another. Both Salinger and Williams use a plethora of literary devices such as symbolism, juxtaposition and imagery whether it is visual, auditory or olfactory to highlight
In The Awakening, Chopin sets up two characters main characters and a subsidiary female character to serve as foils to Edna. The main characters are Adele Ratignolle, "the bygone heroine of romance" (888), and Mademoiselle Reisz, the musician who devoted her life to music, rather than a man. Edna falls somewhere in between the two, but distinctly recoils with disgust from the type of life her friend Adele leads: "In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman." Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, the two important female principle characters, provide the two different identities Edna associates with. Adele serves as the perfect "mother-woman" in The Awakening, being both married and pregnant, but Edna does not follow Adele's footsteps. For Edna, Adele appears unable to perceive herself as an individual human being. She possesses no sense of herself beyond her role as wife and mother, and therefore Adele exists only in relation to her family, not in relation to herself or the world. Edna desires individuality, and the identity of a mother-woman does not provide that. In contrast to Adele Ratignolle, Mademoiselle Reisz offers Edna an alternative to the role of being yet another mother-woman. Mademoiselle Reisz has in abundance the autonomy that Adele completely lacks. However, Reisz's life lacks love, while Adele abounds in it. Mademoiselle Reisz's loneliness makes clear that an adequate life cannot build altogether upon autonomy. Although she has a secure sense of her own individuality and autonomy, her life lacks love, friendship, or warmth. Later in the novel we are introduced to another character, her name is Mariequita. Mariequita is described as an exotic black-eyed Spanish girl, whom Edna looks upon with affectionate curiosity. Unlike the finely polished heroine, Mariequita walks on "broad and coarse" bare feet, which she does not "strive to hide". This strikes Edna with a refreshing sense of admiration. To her, the girl's soiled feet symbolize naked freedom, unconstrained by the apparel of civilization. Thus, Edna finds her rather beautiful. Mariequita is more like an unrefined version of Edna, that is, her instinctual self. At times, Mariequita ventures to express the thoughts that are secretly buried in Edna's unconscious.
Comparing A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof In the game of life, a man is given the option to bluff, raise, or fold. He is dealt a hand created by the consequences of his choices or by outside forces beyond his control. It is a never ending cycle: choices made create more choices. Using diverse, complex characters simmering with passion and often a contradiction within themselves, Tennessee Williams examines the link between past and present created by man's choices in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. "
Identity in Contemporary American Drama – Between Reality and Illusion Tennessee Williams was one of the most important playwrights in the American literature. He is famous for works such as “The Glass Menagerie” (1944), “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947) or “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)”. As John S. Bak claims: “Streetcar remains the most intriguing and the most frequently analyzed of Williams’ plays.” In the lines that follow I am going to analyze how the identity of Blanche DuBois, the female character of his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, is shaped. Firstly, we learn from an interview he gave, that the character of Blanche has been inspired from a member of his family.
In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the setting is in the late 1800s on Grand Isle in Louisiana. The main character of the story is Edna Pontellier who is not a Creole. Other important characters are Adele Ratignolle, Mr. Ratgnolle, Robert Lebrun, and Leonce Pontellier who are all Creole's. In the Creole society the men are dominant. Seldom do the Creole's accept outsiders to their social circle, and women are expected to provide well-kept homes and have many children. Edna and Adele are friends who are very different because of their the way they were brought up and they way they treat their husbands. Adele is a loyal wife who always obeys her husband's commands. Edna is a woman who strays from her husband and does not obey her husband's commands. Kate Chopin uses Adele to emphasize the differences between her and Edna.
When discussing the notion that “Love can often lead to the creation of an ‘Outsider’." there are cases in our literary examples that would agree with the statement, and some that would not. Outsiders in Much Ado About Nothing, Pride and Prejudice and A Streetcar Named Desire are created by both love and other themes, whether it be class, power, disinterest or a scandal.
During early times men were regarded as superior to women. In Tennessee William’s play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Stanley Kowalski, the work’s imposing antagonist, thrives on power. He embodies the traits found in a world of old fashioned ideals where men were meant to be dominant figures. This is evident in Stanley’s relationship with Stella, his behavior towards Blanche, and his attitude towards women in general. He enjoys judging women and playing with their feelings as well.
Everyone has experienced a situation in life where it's like a rug has been pulled out from under them. Well, T. Williams’ novel A Streetcar Named Desire portrays a similar situation of three unconventional characters whose reality is not the American Dream that they are striving for. Blanche, Stella, and Stanley approach life hoping for different outcomes in their lives. But what is the American Dream they were striving for? Simply put, by looking at the principles of America, the primary dream for everyone is to have a well-lived life. For some people this includes a family, success, happiness, independence, money, and love. If these are T. Williams’ constructs of the American Dream, then Stella and Stanley Kowalski may never find their
In Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses the suicide of Blanche's husband to illuminate Blanche's insecurities and immoral behavior. When something terrible happens to someone, it often reveals who he or she truly is. Blanche falls victim to this behavior, and she fails to face her demons. This displays how the play links a character’s illogical choices and their inner struggles.
The two important female characters in the "poetic tragedy"(Adler 12), A Streetcar Named Desire, are Stella and Blanche. The most obvious comparison between Stella and Blanche is that they are sisters, but this blood relationship suggests other similarities between the two women. They are both part of the final generation of a once aristocratic but now moribund family. Both manifest a great deal of culture and sensitivity, and because of this, both seem out of place in Elysian Fields. "Beauty is shipwrecked on the rock of the world's vulgarity" (Miller 45). Blanche, of course, is much more of an anachronism than Stella, who has for the most part adapted to the environment of Stanley Kowalski. Finally, both Stella and Blanche are or have been married. It is in their respective marriages that we can begin to trace the profound differences between these two sisters.
Although the two critics share the above ideas, their theories, although quite similar, embrace the homosocial relationships of Edna and the other women of the novel to varying degrees. They both agree, however, that having lost her mother at an early age and being under the care of her conservative, overbearing sister and strict Presbyterian father, Edna had little experience in having relationships with other women. We know that when she first encounters the culture of the Creole people, she is quite taken back and not generally pleased with the openness of the women ...
Written in 1947, by playwright Tennessee Williams, the play A Streetcar Named Desire opens in the 1940s in the well-known city of New Orleans. Readers are presented with the young couple Stan and Stella Kowalski who live below another young couple, Eunice and Steve. While Stan and Stella manage to maintain a relationship, it is abusive. Stella reunites with her alcoholic sister Blanche, after learning that the family plantation had been lost due to bankruptcy. Blanche, a widow often finds herself in difficult and unforeseen circumstances. Blanche’s poor choices and vulnerability leads to an affair with Stan’s poker buddy Mitch. Coinciding with his abusive nature, Stanley rapes Blanche. No one believes her until the very end, causing her to get sent away to a mental institution. While the play and film were smashing, each had their similarities overall, in regards to setting, plot, and characters while differences concerned narrative technique.
Throughout Tennessee William’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche Dubois exemplified several tragic flaws. She suffered from her haunting past; her inability to overcome; her desire to be someone else; and from the cruel, animalistic treatment she received from Stanley. Sadly, her sister Stella also played a role in her downfall. All of these factors ultimately led to Blanche’s tragic breakdown in the end.
She cleans, entertains, and takes care of the children. Her diversion from her usual routine as a mother woman is started by her own inward questioning when she goes down to the beach with Adele Ratignolle and she asks her what she is thinking. Edna expresses a want to know herself, even though Adele and many others tell her that it is a useless wish. Edna has no one who truly understands her; she is isolated from society by a barrier of self knowledge that they deem madness. The only person who might understand is Robert, who she loves. But even he turns pale when Edna speaks derisively of his want for her husband to give her to him, saying that she can give herself to whomever she chooses. There is no one in the novel who has the same mindset as Edna. The isolation and pressure from society and her husband adds to her madness, cumulating in an eventual breakdown where she smashes a vase and throws off her wedding ring. The casting away of her ring symbolizes Edna throwing off the shackles of society and a loveless marriage to be her own person. She stamps on the ring, showing her distaste for her path in life and her choices in the past. Edna’s madness, and break down, show her deteriorating patience with her life and the mothering façade she wears day to day. Society views her as mad when she moves out of her husband’s house to live on her own. She breaks away from her life to set herself
There are 3 major themes in the play A Streetcar Named Desire, the first is the constant battle between fantasy and reality, second we have the relationship between sexuality and death, and lastly the dependence of men plays a major role in this book.