ipl-logo

A Streetcar Named Desire Identity Analysis

1170 Words5 Pages

Identity conjures up an image of self-regard statically set in the beholder’s environment. However, identity is an active interplay between self-regard and the environment. This interplay takes center stage in Tennessee Williams’ 1947 A Streetcar Named Desire, as Blanche Dubois moves in with her sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski in New Orleans. Upon her arrival, Blanche and her grandiose air offend Stanley. His identity centers around his masculinity, and Blanche and her presence challenge and physically obstruct his identity. As a result, Stanley’s personal insecurity burgeons, but he ultimately reaffirms his masculine identity by raping Blanche. After Blanche engenders his self-awareness and self-doubt, Stanley rapes Blanche as an attestation to himself of his own masculinity in order to restore his identity, evincing his vanity.
Blanche dehumanizes Stanley by heralding her superiority, and he self-consciously affirms his humanity in reaction. Blanche intimates the function of her frequent baths when she accuses Stanley of being incapable of understanding the emotions which warrant such a remedy. Justifying her baths as an emotional panacea, Blanche patronizes Stanley, explaining to him that “without a nerve” on his body he does not “know what anxiety feels …show more content…

Self-aware following Blanche’s dehumanizing ridicule, Stanley self-assuredly maintains his humanity, yet privately. Blanche obstructs Stanley’s capacity to sleep with Stella, consequently arousing his self-doubt. Stanley’s rape of Blanche demonstrates he is possessive in his desire to restore his identity. During her stay with the Kowalskis, Blanche punctures Stanley’s foundation, and he scrambles to restore it. Yet his quivering inner-dialogue demonstrates the futility of his conquest. His old identity submits before its shaper, even as he stifles

Show More
Related
1465 Words | 6 Pages

Stanley is a blunt, practical, and animalistic man who has no patience for subtleties and refinement. His animalistic character shows the moment he meets Blanche, when he, moving with “animalistic joy” (24), “sizes” Blanche up with “sexual classifications” and “crude image” in his mind (25). Under his stare, Blanche draws “involuntarily back” (25), a movement that foreshadows their later conflict and her subsequent demise. His practical and straightforward side shows when he interrogates Blanche about the sale of Belle Reve to make sure that his wife is not swindled. His straightforward, practical nature makes him “boom” out of impatience (46) and demands Blanche to cut straight to the point when she tries to talk in an indirect, subtle manner as befit a Southern gentlewoman.

Read More
1085 Words | 5 Pages

It is what is haunting Blanche’s life, it is what has made her mentally unstable. Throughout the play, she has been hiding her past from people so she looks like

Read More
978 Words | 4 Pages

Stella’s sister, Blanche, sees through the illusion and can see how toxic the marriage really is. Stanley and Blanche come from distinctly different backgrounds, Stanley is from the working class while Blanche comes from wealth. Williams uses these two contrasting points of views on marriage, to show the issues of possessiveness, class, and sexism. When it comes to Stanley’s marriage to Stella, one of the most notable characteristics is how possessive Stanley is. An example of this is when Stanley found out that Blanche and therefore Stella, lost their estate.

Read More
1065 Words | 5 Pages

Blanche’s final, deluded happiness suggests that, to some extent, fantasy is a vital force in every individual’s experience, despite reality’s inevitable triumph. This refers to her reality of how Mitch had came over to apologize to her, and she tells Stanley that she turned him down. This lie backfired, since Stanley knew exactly where Mitch was at this time. As well as Stanley saw through Blanches delusion of how she has received a wire, from Shep Huntleigh, inviting her to go with him down to the Caribbean cruise, in which Stanley later shuts down as

Read More
718 Words | 3 Pages

He desires a normal life with Stella, without Blanche in the picture. As told in A Streetcar Named Desire--Psychoanalytic Perspectives, “After exposing all of Blanches shameful secrets and destroying her plans to marry Mitch, Stanley completes her violation and subjugation by raping her, which drives her to insanity” (A Streetcar Named Desire--Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Silvio). Stanley desires a normal life without Blanche so bad, that he completely broke her to get it. Stanley also wants to be desired.

Read More
733 Words | 3 Pages

“A Daily Joy to Be Alive” discusses the importance to persevere in life .Blanche, Stella and the Speaker in “A Daily Joy to Be Alive” identities have been shaped through their past experiences and effect who they are today. Individuals are free to shape their own identities through familiarity, environments, and relationships as shown in A Streetcar Named Desire and “A Daily Joy to Be Alive”. In the play a common sense of familiarity helps to shape the identities of Stella and the speaker of the poem. It can be inferred that Stella replaced her sister Blanche’s bossy and authoritative behavior with Stanley’s.

Read More
778 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
903 Words | 4 Pages

In other words, Stella is very aware that her sexual relationship with Stanley can help her sort out any problems between them. Also, shortly before Stanley rapes Blanche, Williams says in the stage directions that there were “inhuman voices like cries in the jungle” (399; sc. 10). Blanche, which means white wood, is out of her element in this jungle of Stanley’s and it is she, who once called Stanley “bestial” (322; sc. 4) and “sub-human” (323; sc. 4), who has now found herself being stalked and charged like prey being hunted by an animal. With his sister-in-law present, Stanley has been unable to fulfill his sexual desires and so he releases them out on Blanche.

Read More
1697 Words | 7 Pages

Stanley continues to impose his reality onto Blanche, which causes her more anxiety relying more and more on herself to create more of an illusion by creating an admirer for herself, saying that she ended it with Mitch because she does not deserve “deliberate cruelty”, and crating this alter ego for herself as being pure. While Stella is in the hospital, he and Blanche are left alone for the night as she continues bragging about her admiration coming from Sheep Hunt Leigh and how she just got a wire from him. Stanley catches her in her life, finally tearing apart Blanche's illusions. Although Stanley has been a threat to her through his suspicion and empowering masculinity over her, the last scene is where he finally takes final control over her, or symbolically where reality has a final triumph over her illusions. While catching her in the midst of her lies she reveals to Blanche that “[he’s] been on to [Blanche] from the start!”

Read More
652 Words | 3 Pages

The themes of violence and power in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ hold an important role in the criticism of 1940s American society. Conflicts perpetuated by violence and power, such as abusive relationships and violent oppression are projected through the characters within the play.  Williams uses these conflicts to highlight his criticisms of faltering values and social norms, from the perspective of an individual constrained by the expectations of a strict, Southern society. To begin with, there is an indefinite violence between men and women within ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Stanley Kowalski, a focal character, is the epitome of male dominance and primitive aggression.

Read More
698 Words | 3 Pages

As soon as Blanche steps into the Kowalski household and meets Stanley, it is evident that her appearance is a threat to his superiority. Both characters attempt to establish dominance through their control over Stella, a minor character who exists mainly to deepen the contrast between Blanche and Stanley. In scene four, Blanche advises Stella to leave her abusive husband and attempts to influence her by saying “I have a plan for us both, to get us both—out!” (69).

Read More
1371 Words | 6 Pages

Williams uses the expressionist technique “The ‘Varsouviana’ is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle” to parallel Blanche’s inner mind and depicts Blanche’s deranged mental state after Stella’s betrayal. The imagery ‘Lurid reflections appear on the walls in odd, sinuous shapes’ highlights her mental turbulence and the stage directions ‘mysterious voices behind walls, as if reverberated through a canyon of rock…the echo sounds in threatening whispers’ heightens tension, positioning the audience to witness the overwhelming fear and exaggeration of her senses, further emphasising the detrimental impact Stella’s decision made. The Streetcar Named Desire also examines the influence that a person’s social standing can have. Stanley’s statement in scene 2 ‘The Kowalskis and Dubois have different notions’ indicates their social upbringing has influenced the way they think, hence disrupting their connection and loyalty towards one another. The use of their family name is metonymic for their ancestry and social standing, addressing the barriers derived from a social hierarchy which have affected their relationship.

Read More
1547 Words | 7 Pages

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.

Read More
608 Words | 3 Pages

he says: “not once did you pull any wool over this boy’s eyes!” Not only Stanley had broken her world of illusion, but also Mitch who is influenced by Stanley and destroys the protection of darkness by exposing her to the bright light. Stanley bringing up the past contributes to how Blanches ends up, alone and insane expressing the theme that what happened in the past determines the present, and illusion and fantasy directly correlate. Though reality triumphs over fantasy in A Streetcar Named Desire, when the truth comes colliding down on Blanche, she has no choice but to go insane ultimately avoiding the acceptance of

Read More
847 Words | 4 Pages

“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a very elegant film in which the Southern gothic culture is demonstrated profoundly. Tennessee Williams uses the characters in the play to bring about a sense of how corrupt society truly was in the 1940’s in the South. The 1940’s was marked by an immense amount of violence, alcoholism, and poverty. Women at the time were treated as objects rather than people. Throughout the play Tennessee Williams relates the aspects of Southern society to the characters in the play.

Read More

More about A Streetcar Named Desire Identity Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document