Why Stella Should Stay with Stanley By the end of the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennesse Williams, most people criticize Stella for staying with Stanley after his abuse, but I believe Stella should stay with Stanley since she is emotionally attached to Stanley and after seeing what happened to Blanche from the societal norms in the 1940s. Throughout the play, no matter what Stanley does, Stella always goes back. She is emotionally attached to him, which makes the possibility of leaving nearly impossible. Stella can not see herself in a world without Stanley. The first time that we see Stanley become abusive is during poker night. After Stanley hits Stella, she runs to her neighbor's house. This is when the famous scene of Stanley begging …show more content…
Revealing that all Stanley has to do to get Stella back is get down on his knees and scream out to her. Stella easily forgives Stanley after he hits her, showing how she’s the powerless one in the relationship. She is blinded by her love, passion, and desire and looks past the abuse. If Stella were to leave Stanley, she would become so depressed that she wouldn’t know what to do. Stella is so emotionally dependent on Stanley that she is unable to leave him. Even if Stella isn’t emotionally attached to Stanley, it is more complicated than it seems. Societal norms in the 1940s were very different from how they are today. For example, most women did not work and relied on their husbands for financial support. Even if women did work, they were barely paid enough, which made it difficult to live by themselves. Blanche is an example of how societal norms in the 1940s ruined her. After her husband died, she started working as an English teacher. She was barely paid and could not support herself or Belle Reve anymore. Blanche tells Stella, “I was so exhausted by all I’d been through my nerves broke. I was on the verge of lunacy, almost!” (Williams
With Streetcar, Stella Kowalski tries to gain some more with from her husband Stanley. After Blanche arrived Stella started defending herself more and telling Stanley what to do. For example, in the poker night scene, Stella says “Drunk- drunk-animal think, you! All of you- please go home! If any of you have one spark of decency in you-” (Williams
Stanley’s biggest issue with Stella and Blanche is that they always “undermine” him. He struggles to remain in control and appear as the head of their household as Blanche encourages Stella to stand her ground with Stanley. Stanley hitting and yelling at Stella is him showing dominance and his “masculinity”. Stanley is always trying to portray an image of masculinity and control whether it is directed at Stella or Blanche. But with Blanche constantly insulting him and undermining his authority he has to strive even harder to show dominance. As the story progresses Stanley becomes more frustrated with Stella and becomes aggressive with her in order to appear in control of the situation. Stella: ”…You come out with me while Blanche is getting dressed.” Stanley: ”Since when do you give me orders?” (2.70-1) Once Mitch discovers that Blanche is not the pure woman she made herself out to be, he feels entitled to having the same benefits other men have had with her. When Blanche turns down his advances, he becomes angry with her and tries to force her to have sex with him. Blanche becomes scared and threatens to expose him by opening the window and screaming “fire!” until he runs out of the apartment. Blanche: “...What do you want?” Mitch: “What I been missing all summer.” Blanche: ”Then marry me, Mitch!” Mitch: “I don’t think I want to marry you anymore.” Blanche: ”No?” Mitch: ”You’re not clean enough to bring in the
In many modern day relationships between a man and a woman, there is usually a controlling figure that is dominant over the other. It may be women over man, man over women, or in what the true definition of a marriage is an equal partnership. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams Stanley is clearly the more dominant figure over Stella. Throughout the play there are numerous examples of the power he possesses of her. Williams portrays Stella as a little girl who lives around in Stanley’s world. She does what he wants, takes his abuse yet still loves him. Situations likes these may have occurred in the 1950’s and lasted, but in today’s time this would only end up in a quick divorce.
As Stanley continues torturing Blanche and draws Stella and Mitch away from her, Blanche’s sanity slowly dwindles. Even though she lied throughout the play, her dishonesty becomes more noticeable and irrational due to Stanley's torment about her horrible past. After dealing with the deaths of her whole family, she loses Belle Reve, the estate on which her and her sister grew up. This is too much for Blanche to handle causing her moral vision to be blurred by “her desperate need to be with someone, with ancestors for models who indulged in “epic fornications” with impunity, [Blanche] moves through the world filling the void in her life with lust” (Kataria 2). She also loses a young husband who killed himself after she found out he was gay when she caught him with another man. After that traumatic experience she needed “a cosy nook to squirm herself into because ...
Blanche’s developmental history or character development points to her diagnosis. Blanche comes to New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella after being fired from her job as a schoolteacher due to having an inappropriate affair with a teenage student. When she arrives to see her sister, she is consumed with insecurities regarding her appearance and is condescending to her sister’s humble lifestyle. Stella’s husband Stanley immediately has distrust and dislike for Blanche and treats her
Stella, Stanley's wife in the play, is a passive woman. She is displayed this way through how she responds to the people and situations around her. When she is beaten by Stanley, she understands that his drunkenness takes hold of him and he has no control over his actions. She knows he never means her harm and his intentions are good.
She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and shields her past. The essential conflict of the story is between Blanche, and her brother-in-law Stanley. Stanley investigates Blanche’s life to find the truth of her promiscuity, ruining her relationships with Stella, and her possible future husband Mitch, which successfully obtain his goal of getting Blanche out of his house. Blanche attempts to convince Stella that she should leave Stanley because she witnessed a fight between the two. Despite these instances, there is an essence of sexual tension between the two, leading to a suspected rape scene in which one of their arguments ends with Stanley leading Blanche to the bed.
Stanley’s treatment of Blanche leaves her alone once again, with what little dreams of returning to her previous status destroyed like the paper lampshade that once gave her the shield from the real her she desperately craved. Stella, the one person Blanche believed she could rely on, sides against her husband after Blanche’s ordeal, leading Blanche to be taken away, relying on the “kindness of strangers”. This final image that Williams leaves us with fully demonstrates that Blanche has been cruelly and finally forced away from her “chosen image of what and who” she is, leaving an empty woman, once full of hope for her future.
Her rendezvous just added to her problems and dirtied her reputation.... ... middle of paper ... ... Stanley was angry when Blanche told Stella that she did not like him, but he never gave her a chance. Stanley despised her from the beginning.
Stella Kowalski’s character, parallels to Stanley’s and represents the ego in the play. herself from her hometown and start a life in this vigorous world made by Stanley. she stands for the ego who wants to create a balance between desires and ideas, between body and soul, heart and mind to have a normal life. Blanche is the only one who wants to warn her of what she does. Loving Blanche, she also dislikes her and at the same time fears her. She hopes Blanche marry Mitch for her sister’s sake and for herself too. Actually she wants to get rid of
In contrast, Stella is overly mild-tempered and always striving to please. Generally, she is able to adapt to all situations. This ability to adapt proves to be useful, as both her husband and her sister, Blanche, have such strong personalities. From the beginning, it is apparent that Stella often plays the peacemaker. She was able to foresee that Stanley and her visiting sister would clash. In hopes of avoiding any confrontation, she warned them both to be on their best behaviour. Stella is soft-spoken, speaking only when it is needed, and expressing her grief only when it overwhelms her, whereas Blanche is the opposite: an outspoken woman, with many opinions.
Stella represents an important part in this drama by providing a contrast to how life can change people when they go down different paths. In Contrast to her sister, Stella is bound to love. Although she fell in love with a primitive, common man, she most definitely loves him. Stella desires only to make Stanley happy and live a beautiful life together. She wants to find peace between her sister and her husband yet instead she finds conflict afflicting her on both sides. Blanche uses her dilutions and tries to sway Stella away from Stanley yet Stella takes all these slanders and belittles them. Stella does this because she loves Stanley and since she is pregnant with his baby.
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
In A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams, each character is best represented by how they react with the other people in their home. One of the stronger relationships in the movie adaptation is between Stella and Stanley. They are in love toward the beginning of the movie but the relationship is toxic and it take a third party to point out that Stella is in an abusive relationship. After that there is more fighting and in the end Stella abandons Stanley. Williams characterizes Stella as a
To stand or not to stand is the question that has been presented to every United States citizen in response to the decision to kneel during the national anthem by former NFL San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick. However, there is more than what meets the eye in terms of the effects of Kaepernick's actions. Kaepernick decision to kneel was rooted in protest of racial injustices along with recent and past events of police brutality. While many find that Kaepernick's actions are justified and even legal, others believe that it is disrespectful towards this nation and could even be illegal, the real problem here is the tension and division that is deepening the divide in a nation that prides itself on being united. While Kaepernick's