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“a streetcar named desire”, blanche essay
“a streetcar named desire”, blanche essay
“a streetcar named desire”, blanche essay
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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.
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.
A fragile victim of contempt, invasion of privacy, defamation, and rape attract one’s sympathy. In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, sympathy towards Blanche is attained. In the play Blanche is a mentally ill Southern belle, visiting her sister Stella in hopes of starting a new life. In Laurel Blanche loses Belle Reve, being unable to finance the funerals and house one her own when Stella leaves. Upon Blanche’s encounter with Stanley, he invades Blanche’s privacy, going through Blanche’s luggage and love letters.
The outro of the play is the final moment of Blanche’s mental breakdown that is shown in the play. After Stanley revealed all of Blanche 's lies which leads her to call the operator and trying to contact the man she knew that lived on a yacht. Blanche told everyone that she will be fine and that she will just contact an old friend to live with. She believed in her own lie of the man named Shep Huntleigh that did not exist. When a man knocked on the door she was expecting the man on that lived on a yacht while everyone else knew it was a doctor to take Blanche away because of her mental
Stanley as a main character however is an antithesis of Blanche in that he is very realistic about life, and exposes Blanche’s illusions, (for example “Blanche is no lily”) however he does seem to portray illusions when speaking about his own dreams, which could be blamed upon ignorance however it is evidenced that this is not the case. In Scene 2 Stanley exclaims to Stella “And diamonds! A crown for an empress!” This can be seen as critical due to the fact him and Stella have very little and Blanche seems to have diamonds, therefore portraying that he wishes to have the money that Blanche apparently owns and owes him. Use of the noun “empress” portrays Stanley’s ideas of the Old South as the people were seemed to be that of gentry and very
She refused to leave him when Blanche insisted and didn’t believe Blanche when it came to her being raped. Blanche, Stella, and Stanley all have the same want to be desired. The ways they act and treat each other back that up. Blanche feels the need to be desired by everyone around her, Stanley by Stella and others, and Stella by Stanley. Their lives revolve around desire.
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,
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee Williams, the main character, Blanche DuBois, travels to New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella, and Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski. Throughout the play, sexulaity is seen as a strong motivator for many of the characters actions. Early in the play, Stanley is introduced as a particularly sexual character, “ Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence... He sizes women up with a glance, with sexual classifications…” (Williams 25).
In A Streetcar Named Desire, there is an ongoing power struggle between Stanley and Blanche, which propels the narrative. Stanley has the power of masculine physicality and mentality whereas Blanche only has the power of her background, of which she feigns to be her class. As the battle between the two is predominantly over Stella, we begin to witness in scene 2, where Stanley openly accuses Blanche of hiding “legal papers connected with the plantation”. His aggressive nature, towards her, motivates the idea of his resentment towards her, as
The Destruction of the Belle Reve Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire is a wonderfully tragic story of the delusional Blanche DuBois, whose lies are unfolded and destroyed by the misogynist Stanley Kowalski. Throughout the play, Blanche frequently lies about her past, who she is, and what she’s done. Each lie she tells slowly unravels the next until she is caught, drowning in her own pathetic lies, forced to surrender to the malicious consequences dealt by Stanley. Similar to James Gatz, Blanche is obsessed with covering up her past actions, and creating a thin cloak of lies; however, James’ past is merely one of social degradation, Blanche carries the weight of her own horrible decisions.
A streetcar named desire was written by Tennessee Williams in 1947, in purpose to show the “declining of the upper class and the domination of the bourgeois middle class in the U.S.A. where the south agriculture class could not compete with the industrialization.” Blanche Dubois the protagonist of our story, a southern beauty that is trapped by the restrictive laws of her society. But she broke them, and eventually put herself in a state, where she had no job and no house. So she had to go to her sister, Stella and live with her and her sister’s husband, Stanley. While staying there, she created a façade for her to hide her flaws and kept acting as a lady, where she is anything but that.
In A streetcar named Desire, Stella is associated to this stereotypic role, she is an innocent woman and housewife who takes care of her husband by loving him in an outrageous way. Even if Stanley is hitting her, she still loves him. Whereas Blanche acts like a seductress, at first sight she seems to be pure by wearing a “daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice” (Williams 3). In reality the authors gives a false impression of her in order to affirm that stereotypes or first impression are not always true. Indeed, after several scenes Blanche uses her power of seduction in order to manipulate men and reach her objectives.
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.
This is made clear through Stanley’s insecurities about inferiority to women and his prolonged struggle to defeat Blanche. Again, this is evident with Blanche and even Stella. Stella is perceived as a static character with no real individuality, and Blanche, who is seemingly more independent, is characterized mostly by her sexuality. Tennessee Williams demonstrates society’s need for the superiority of men to women through the interactions of Stanley and Blanche in the play, their struggles, and their ultimate
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
