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Essay On Blanche In A Streetcar Named Desire

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Williams’ major female character in A Streetcar Named Desire is Blanche. Blanche is an aging Southern beautiful woman who lives in a state of permanent panic about her fading beauty. Blanche is fatally divided, swinging between the desire to be a young, beautiful lady who concerned with old-fashioned southern ways and a bohemian erring excessive in her appetites. In New Orleans, Blanche hides her real age and vicious past as she tries to attract an appropriate husband to clean up her life (Abbotson50).The loss of security has sent Blanche on a desperate search for protection: “I’ve run for protection Stella, from under one leaky roof to another leaky roof –because it was storm –all storm, and i was caught in the center” (v.114). …show more content…

There is a rising action as Blanche and Stanley 's relationship becomes more and more difficult, with Blanche constantly belittling and insulting him, and Stanley becoming more aggressive and angry. Blanche grows to despise Stanley when she sees him beating her pregnant sister and Stanley permanently hates Blanche after he overhears her trying to convince her sister Stella to leave Stanley because he is common. There is also a rising action in Stanley’s revealing of Blanche 's secret past to Stella and Mitch. The climax of the play occurs when Stanley rapes Blanche. This brutal act marks the completion of her mental decline, pushing her over the edge from sanity to madness. The play’s final scene has "falling action" as after some weeks of the rape, Stella secretly prepares for Blanche’s departure to a mental asylum and Blanche leaves with the doctor after a minor struggle and after he shows her his kindness and tenderness. Stella’s reaction to Blanche’s condition and her decision to carry on her marriage because she knows that the fact that her husband had raped her sister would destroy a marital relationship on which she depends, constitute the play’s resolution. The play ends with an image of Stella sitting on the porch with her baby in her arms and Stanley comforts her after her sister has just been taken off to the mental asylum (Bloom

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A while after she got settled in, Blanche witnessed Stanley physically abusing her sister, Stella, and then started secretly rebuking Stanley to Stella. She saw their relationship as unhealthy and tried everything that she could to destroy it. After overhearing Blanche telling Stella to get rid of him, Stanley begins to steadily contemplate his revenge. He had made it his personal goal to dig deeper into her past and he found pretty much all the information that he needed in order to get rid of her. In order to preserve his relationship with his wife, Stanley came up with an amazingly credible plan to permanently get rid of

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The play “A Streetcar Named Desire” is about an emotionally unstable lady named Blanche. She moves in with her youngest sister and her husband because the landlord took the land away from Blanche because they could not pay for it anymore. After being their for a while Blanche starts remembering her horrible past which is something she was trying to do in the first place. The husband of Stella, Stanley Kowalski was also someone that made Blanche’s life miserable for complicating everything and harassing her in every possible way. Death is one of the most symbolic terms in this play.

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301617- A Streetcar Named Desire Lying as well as deception is a common theme in A Streetcar Named Desire for the characters. There is Blanche, whom, because of her deception and lying which has played a bigger role on the other characters than she goes and realizes. Blanche stated in scene two of A Streetcar

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One major similarity between Blanche and Stanley is that they both like to manipulate or control other people, to make themselves feel better. Even though there are different ways Stanley and Blanche take control of other people they still do it in a familiar matter. For example, Blanche takes power and influence over people by lying to others and herself, to make them believe in something that actually never happened, with fantacy, therefore makes Blanche feel greater, than she actually may be. To go deeper in depth, to prove that Blanche is manipulative she also says. ¨I don 't tell the truth.

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Stanley sexually assaults Blanche, along with humiliating her throughout the novel. This forces Blanche to mentally escape to somewhere else. A place filled with illusionary ideas and fantasy. She regresses back to her time with Shep Huntleigh, believing the oil millionaire is coming to rescue her from Stella's apartment. Yet, as the play progresses, it becomes clear that Shep will never rescue Blanche.

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In “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Tennessee Williams suggests that a woman's sexuality is defined and restricted by stereotypical gender roles. Throughout the play, both Blanche and Stella depend on their male companions for their sustenance, self-image, and sexual desires: “When he is away for a week I nearly go wild… And when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby”. Adopting the typical housewife role, Stella proves to be fully reliant on her husband to such a strong extent to where she even jeopardizes her safety while being with him. When Blanche advises Stella that her life could be better without her physically abusive husband, Stella chooses to rely on a man instead of her sister, explaining that “there are a few things that happen

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In Scene 10, Blanche is begging Stanley to let her get by and he is not moving to let her through. Stanley says that he thinks Blanche would not be too bad to interfere with in a sexual way going back to Scene 6, when he would walk through the rooms in his underwear at night near Blanche. Blanche complained about the little bit of privacy she had in the house and that was exemplified when Stanley later picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. Blanche had thought in the beginning that her situation was frightful, but never to the degree in which she experienced towards the end of the

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In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the main characters, Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski, share a great dislike and distrust towards one another, ultimately becoming the basis for the story’s conflict. Their common contemption stems from their contrasting personalities and backgrounds, their incompatibility of being able to function under the same environment, and inability to adapt to the situations they find themselves in. Although Blanche detests Stanley and the manner in which he behaves in, she realises that he is a necessary part for Stella’s life in New Orleans, an environment that greatly differs from the southern aristocracy that Stella and Blanche once lived in. Blanche expresses this idea by stating, “Oh,

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In Blanche and Stanley’s initial interactions, there was an air of sexual tension. This tension dissipates completely as the play progresses, and their relationship turns into a resentful and hateful one. Throughout the play, Stanley has several violent outbursts towards Stella that worry Blanche. This allows Stanley to assert dominance over both women. At the end of the play, Stanley releases his pent up anger and frustration toward Blanche through a sexual attack.

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Tennessee Williams is acclaimed for his ability to create multi faced characters such as Blanche Dubois in the play, A Streetcar Named Desire. She comes to New Orleans after losing everything including her job, money, and her family’s plantation Belle Reve, to live with her sister Stella. During her time there she causes many conflicts with Stella’s husband Stanley and tries to get involved with the people there, all while judging them for their place in society, although she is imperfect too. Through her, Williams has created a complex character. She is lost, confused, conflicted, lashing out in sexual ways, and living in her own fantasies throughout the entirety of the play.

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In Scene 10, she deviously claims that she has just received a telegram from the millionaire, Steph Huntleigh, to explain why she is dressed up. At first, Stanley plays along, but once Blanche musters up the audacity to say that Mitch returned to their apartment seeking repentance, Stanley draws the line. He calls her out for her fictitious tales of her past, and states, “We’ve had this date from the start,” just before he maliciously rapes Blanche. Their natures root in primal, animalistic instincts, Stanley like a dirty hog, open and free concerning his sexuality, Blanche like a fox, sly and deceitful. Despite her incessant attempts to destroy her past, Blanche is unable to stop their sexual connection as she has had so many other men.

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757 Words | 4 Pages

As she was kissing him and reached into his back pocket, took the money for herself and then tucked it in her bra. I found their relationship very affectionate throughout the movie where I did not picture this when reading the play. However, I think that the director was very clever when incorporating their passionate relationship between Stella and Stanley. I believe this because it proved how sexually driven and aggressive Stanley was which almost had a foreshadowing affect on the end relationship between Blanche and Stanley. I also think this portrayal of raw emotion was an extremely important aspect of the film because inner emotion and motives drove every characters actions throughout the play.

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The Fight for Dominance In today’s society, gender norms convince men that unless they are able to control women, they are weak. Considered the inferior gender, women must find new ways to prove their own strength, whether it be through manipulation or their sexuality. The battle between the two continues as men strive to remain dominant, often by immoral means, and women attempt to gain the upper hand. In the screenplay, “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, the sexual tension and struggle for dominion between Blanche and Stanley is evident, and as the play continues, Blanche's promiscuity and Stanley's predatory nature foreshadow an inevitable confrontation.

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Tennessee Williams wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Williams, 1947) It is based in New Orleans a new cosmopolitan city which is poor but has raffish charm. The past is representing old south in America 1900’s and present is representing new America post world war 2 in 1940’s. Past and present are intertwined throughout the play in the characters Stanley, Blanche, Stella and mitch. Gender roles show that males are the dominant and rule the house which Stanley is prime example as he brings home food and we learn of one time when he got cross and he smashed the light bulbs.

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1397 Words | 6 Pages

Psychologist Sigmund Freud developed an idea that there is more than one aspect to the human psyche. The human psyche rather is structured into three separate parts including: id, ego, and superego. In a similar manner, Tennessee Williams has three main characters in his Southern Gothic play, A Streetcar Named Desire. In addition to the human psyche as the three mentioned categories, Freud introduced psychoanalysis, which is the belief that people could be cured through developing their unconscious thoughts or motivations into their conscious decisions, receiving insight (McLeod). Characters are shaped by their thoughts and actions, as this is present in A Streetcar Named Desire.

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