ipl-logo

Blanche Dubois Character Analysis

814 Words4 Pages

Blanche DuBois is the protagonist of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, a tragic story of a woman that wanted to feel desire and love once more, even if short lived. She uses the excuse that Stanley is worse than her and that he is a brute and no better than her. Blanche is ambitious, anxious, fearful, inconsiderate, secretive, self-doubting, kind, quiet, visionary, careless, biased, underhanded. Blanche, who is in her late thirties struggles to find a man that will be with her for the remaining part of her life because of being too old for most men that simply use her. She had originally married off to a young man when she was 15. Ever since she found out he was homosexual and he killed himself, she has been wanting to find …show more content…

In Laurel, she used to have a stranger everyday, that she thought most of them loved her, but in reality only did it for their own desires and pleasures. In the end of the play, she states to the doctor, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers,” stating that she has not changed at all since the events that unfolded during the climax when Stanley confesses he found out about her past and raped her. In that sense, Blanche is what many consider a static character, never truly growing or experiencing a difference in her life, as when the play ends, she is right back at where she began, taking strangers hands and depending on them. Blanche’s character is very secretive, rarely talking about herself and her past affairs and talking more about other people’s problems like Stanley. Blanche mostly met strangers that were still during their teens, because she wanted to feel younger than what she was, and for that reason she was kicked out of her school teacher career. One of the mental health problems that Blanche might suffer from having ‘Fantasy Prone Personality’, which is a mental health issue in which the patient lives in a fantasy world where everything twists in their favor. Blanche shows most but not all of the traits of such personality, and she also showcases bipolar

Show More
Related
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
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
1166 Words | 5 Pages

Many literary criticisms have been written about Blanche and how she tends to lie about everything in her life. “Blanche disguises her desperation with lies- about drinking, her age, her reasons for coming to New Orleans, her sexual experience.” (Dace n.p.). Dace clearly describes Blanche as a liar and describes the fact how she lied about everything from the smallest thing, like her age to something as big as the reason why she went to New Orleans. “... in spite of the fact she’s somewhat older than I.

Read More
1526 Words | 7 Pages

Thesis: Light is symbolic of realism or to put it cruder the ugly reality. Darkness is symbolic of fantasy or the fabrication created by characters. Introduction: Throughout the play and film adaptation of, A Streetcar Named Desire, we view the main characters progression throughout the thought provoking story.

Read More
783 Words | 4 Pages

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,

Read More
778 Words | 4 Pages

It is Blanche’s obsessive desire for a clean slate that ultimately drives her streetcar into destruction. With each lie she tells, the last lie becomes a reality to her, and once her delusional reality begins to fade, Blanche recedes into a dark hole where neither she or anyone else could ever truly see herself

Read More
1266 Words | 6 Pages

To hide her true self, Blanche restored to duplicity, coupled with her voracious desire and ubiquitous deception caused her a breakdown. In the following paragraphs, there will be more events that led Blanche to such end. One of the things that led Blanche to her downfall is the past. The past, where she was the reason why she lost her husband, Alan, he

Read More
757 Words | 4 Pages

A Street Car Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams, which slowly uncovers Blanche’s prior life. Her troubled past causes her a lot of trouble when she tries to start over. She used to work as a teacher in Mississippi, however, she was forced to leave after she was caught having an affair with one of the students. This was typical behavior for Blanche since she had previously taken many lovers. Since she had such a hard time in Mississippi, she decides to move to New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella, and her husband, Stanley, in hopes of escaping her past.

Read More
1245 Words | 5 Pages

Not only has Tennesse Williams portrayed Stella and Blanche to be seen as delicate and dependent, our own society has created this image but this not only affects how individuals see themselves but affects relationships immensely. Tennessee Williams reinforces the stereotype in which women are often the victims of unfortunate fate within the usage of the character Blanche. Throughout the whole play, we have witnessed Blanche being on the bitter end of life's miseries as she has encountered the tough loss of Belle Reve, dealing with her ex-husband's suicide and the loss of her relationship with Mitch. Arguably, the expectations and beliefs of women were either to be a housewife or a mother, whereas Blanche shows neither, as a result of automatically feeling out of place possibly leading to her downfall. Blanche was constantly fantasizing about the traditional values of a southern gentlemen, proving her dependence on this sex.

Read More
895 Words | 4 Pages

The fragility of Blanche’s mental state is evident when her paper

Read More
698 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
769 Words | 4 Pages

Searching for Love Blanche Dubois, a woman portrayed as not having the American Dream, life challenges leaves her searching desirability. Blanche, as a child, was known as being good hearted and smart; a Southern Belle. She married young later ending in tragedy. She later lost her house, her family, her career, and her dignity. She traveled to the only place she had left, her sister and brother-in-law.

Read More
1000 Words | 4 Pages

Past and Present Intertwine Through Symbolism Tennessee Williams is a world famous playwright. He has won many prestigious awards. In 1947, Williams penned one of his most famous plays, A Streetcar Named Desire, winning him the Pulitzer Prize. William’s background greatly influenced his writing, and because of this, alcoholism and mental illness are issues strongly reflected in his works (Williams 1817). A Streetcar Named Desire is a story about a women with mental health issues, named Blanche Dubois.

Read More
608 Words | 3 Pages

In A Streetcar Named Desire, the author Tennessee Williams exaggerates and dramatizes fantasy’s incapability to overcome reality through an observation of the boundary between Blanches exterior and interior conveying the theme that illusion and fantasy are often better than reality. Blanche, who hides her version of the past, alters her present and her relationship with her suitor Mitch and her sister, Stella. Blanche was surrounded by death in her past, her relatives and husband have passed away, leaving her with no legacy left to continue. The money has exhausted; the values are falling apart and she is alienated and unable to survive in the harsh reality of modern society. Throughout the novel Williams juxtaposed Blanche’s delusions with

Read More
763 Words | 4 Pages

Does learner-centred teaching motivate learners to learn? What is learner-centred teaching? Learner-centred teaching, which at times referred to as student-centred teaching and learner-centred instruction, is a key concept in constructivism; a theory in which "learners construct and reconstruct knowledge, in order to learn effectively" (A. Attard, E. Di Ioio, K. Geven, 2010). Students are the protagonists in learner-centred teaching, unlike teaching-centred teaching in which teachers take the centre stage. In learner-centred learning, students "construct knowledge through gathering and synthesizing information and integrating it with the general skills of inquiry, communication, critical thinking, problem solving and so on" (Perumal, 2015).

Read More

More about Blanche Dubois Character Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document