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A streetcar named desire- characterization of Blanche
Blanche's tragic flaws
A streetcar named desire- characterization of Blanche
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Briefly characterize Blanche Dubois. What evidence is there in the text that supports your characterization? Blanche Dubois seem like a rich person due to what she’s wearing, ”white suit,bodice necklace, earrings of pearl, white glove…”. She was also described as a moth due to the white and her beauty that will cause attention to her. 3) How does Blanche react to Stella’s apartment?
Blanche is projecting the self-image of a person who believes that they are above others. She acts as though she is of a royal family and demands the respect of everyone around her. She loses her family's home to the government and blames it on her sister who left in order to search for her own lifestyle. From the beginning of her visit, Blanche gets an off feeling about Stanley. When she arrives, he starts to stare at her with a sense of caution then soon begins inspecting the paperwork that she brought with her in order to validate her story.
Her image of a prim and proper Southern gentlewoman clashes with the down-to-earth, easy-going lifestyle of the lower middle class. Her incongruity as a refined Southern gentlewoman in an industrial, lower-middle class New Orleans neighbourhood marks her status as an outsider and contributes to her final
Blanche's role being a Southern Belle amongst the white elite which dominated the South during the early and mid-1900s displayed the deepness of Southern roots such as wanting to marry a respectable man, and being dedicated to her family and the community. During this time Southern Belles like Blanche “. . . have always depended on the kindness of strangers”, or relied solely on the income of their spouses, in which most obtained through the business of cotton plantations. Her necessity to the kind-heartedness of strangers instead of being self-dependent is the cause as to why she has not been well off in her life. However; due to the abolition of slavery and victory of the confederates the white elite struggled to maintain wealth which forced Southern Belles to seek other means to support their lavish appearance. Blanche who indeed maintained a lifestyle of wealth was forced to sell her cotton plantation after her husband completed suicide.
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
Blanche acts as if her life is not falling apart and carries herself as the same girl from Belle Reve. She carries herself as the most sophisticated, classy, pure and innocent than everyone else, however later within the play the readers witness Blanche’s true nature. A promiscuous, manipulative, former aristocrat with a poorly hidden drinking problem. “She springs up and crosses to it, and removes a whiskey bottle. She pours a half tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down.
However the main conflict is Blanche’s inability to accept reality or her inability to let go of her past. Blanche sees herself above her sister’s life and carries a sense of entitlement that no longer fits her environment like it did in her past. Underneath, Blanche is a liar and Stanley is not. Stanley and Stella are able to able to admit what they are while Blanche is constantly trying to hide who she is. She is unable to come to her desire and sees herself superior to the people around her.
Both Blanche's family and Belle Reve represent her dream to indulge in a sophisticated, high class, and luxurious life. When all of Blanche’s family dies and Stella leaves, Blanche loses the first piece of her “beautiful dream.” She no longer has the money to support herself, since her educational career provides insufficient funds. After the tragic loss of her husband, Blanche loses Belle Reve and loses her job, symbolizing that her “beautiful dream” has been fully crushed and the only remnants of her dream are the lies she feeds herself. This fall of social class leads Blanche to carry a tone of classism.
Another very common theme represented throughout both texts, is the constant allusion to light. Within “A Streetcar Named Desire”, the use of light reveals Blanche’s role and appearance as a character. One of Blanche’s biggest flaws is that she prefers to be only seen in the dark. She does not like to reveal herself in the light as she is afraid of people seeing that she is in fact aging.
She is, by far, in opposition with the theme of purity, the author reveals that Blanche is a liar. Indeed she is saying that she has been hiring from her job, which is not the truth. Blanche is one the most interesting character in the story because she does not fit to some gender stereotypes, this difference makes her attractive and
Blanche’s In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois is the main character and protagonist of the story. Blanche was a schoolteacher in Laurel, Mississippi until she got fired by her boss for having an affair with a student. Blanche tells Stanley later in the story that she lost Belle Reve, the house her and Stella grew up in, due to bankruptcy. Her husband killed himself because she caught him having an affair with another man. Blanche actively tries to persuade people that she is elegant, pure, and wealthy, but it is simply a facade.
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.
Blanche flees a failed company and a failed marriage in attempt to find refuge in her sister’s home. Through her whirlwind of emotions, the reader can see Blanche desires youth and beauty above all else, or so the readers think. In reality, she uses darkness to hide the true story of her past. In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Williams uses the motif of light to reveal Blanche’s habit of living in a fantasy world until the light illuminates her reality. Blanche uses darkness to block her past from onlookers as to shape her image.
Blanche is an old southern Belle who expects the man to be a gentleman and in her level of class, scene 10 “A cultivated woman, a woman of intelligence and breeding, can enrich a man’s life” (Williams, 1947) this is how Blanche intertwines the past and present as past women were only there to be seen, look after the house and provide children and present Blanche could be seen to be past her prime. Blanche is representing the past as she is still dress in grand dress white moth Ironically Blanche appears in the first scene dressed in white, “the symbol of
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
