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Blanche Dubois Case Study

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Mihaela Turcu, American Studies, MA, II Where are the Southern Belles? Case Study: Blanche DuBois and Scarlet O’Hara The history of the American literature knows multiple changes throughout time and has registered various influences. Regionalism is an example that could sustain this argument, marking the 19th century with its particularities and local color. The real time events that marked America during the period that preceded and followed the Civil War did not go unnoticed. Many writers portrayed in their literary works plots, settings and characters that were torn from real life experiences. The Southern Belle is one of the most recognizable examples of that era and even today it remains an intriguing study case for …show more content…

From this moment on she is forced to choose between exploring her femininity and doing what she can in order to provide for herself. These features and typology of character are represented the best by two famous writers: Tennessee Williams and Margaret Mitchel. Despite their different artistic visions the two authors have created representatives of the Southern Belle. Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire and Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With the Wind are the characters in charge of depicting the tremors of the Southern woman affected by the changes in society. Blanche DuBois is the fallen Southern Bell who cannot find her place in the post-war society. After the suicide of her husband she has become sexually promiscuous and she found herself forced to sell Belle Reve, the plantation home where she had been living since she was born. Blanche evocues certain features of the Southern Belle: she is accustomed to a certain standard of living and she cannot bring herself to comprehend …show more content…

Williams portrays Blanche as a female who has had to use her sexuality in order to survive. This is a result of the Southern education which prepared the young women for seducing men with the purpose of finding a husband. Therefore, when the financial support disappeared, women had to choose the way they wanted to continue living their life. Knowing to use only her sexuality, Blanche adopts promiscuity as a manner of gaining shelter but she is shortly renegaded by society and forced to leave Laurel. On the other hand, the depiction of Margaret Mitchell of her Southern Belle is a bit different from the classical Blanche. In Gone with the Wind, the portrayal of Scarlett O’Hara shows a more versatile Southern Belle that transforms and adapts to life in Atlanta and on the plantation. Scarlet is seen from the beginning as a pragmatic woman who fights for what she wants regardless of society’s rules. However, this feature turns her into a social outcast because she is permanently judged by society for her bold decisions (not wearing mourning clothes after her husband’s

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In literature, the presence the outsider can be traced from ancient Greek dramas to modern literature, from Medea to the Underground Man. Most of the literary works pertaining to the outsider focus on the conflict between the outsider and the insider, conflicts that arise from the Otherness of the outsider. For example, in Jane Eyre, the Otherness of the titular protagonist—her fiery spirit and her subverting idea of equality based on individual merits rather than social status—leads to her alienation and conflicts with the insider wherever she goes. However, Tennessee Williams, in A Streetcar Named Desire, explored a different dynamic—namely the conflict between two outsiders, Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois. In the domestic sphere

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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.

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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

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From the loss of Belle Reve to Blanche’s dark past in the Hotel Flamingo, Stanley becomes verbally abusive towards Blanche in what he perceives to be deception. In response, Blanche becomes defensive as well as physically, mentally, and emotionally deteriorated by the abuse. Blanche and Stanley also are polar opposites, sharing very contrasting personalities and backgrounds. Stanley is shown to be barbaric and masculine, while Blanche tries to be elegant, feminine, and aristocratic. Stanley comes from a Polish immigrant descent, while Blanche is the definition of a Southern Belle.

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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.

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Playwright Tennessee Williams once said “a symbol in a play has only one legitimate purpose which is to say a thing more directly and simply and beautifully than it could be said in words”. He seems to take his own advice to heart when writing such a thought provoking play as A Streetcar Named Desire. While Williams makes extensive use of symbols in Streetcar, the use of animals and animal-like characteristics as a symbol are constantly used to define Stanley Kowalski’s character and convey his desires as primal and ferine. Stanley has the first line in the play and is immediately characterized by Williams with the use of his stage direction “bellowing” (Williams 244; sc. 1). Like a wild animal, Stanley has a desire for unrefinement and

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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1534 Words | 7 Pages

This is presented by Blanches descent into madness due to her inability to act properly on her sexual urges. Lastly, Williams demonstrates how Blanche is not at fault for not knowing how to act on her desires. She was brought up in a world that told her that expressing her sexuality or even having sexual desires was wrong, she never learned how to deal with desire. This is why A Streetcar Named Desire should not be dismissed as a cautionary tale that warns individuals not to embrace desires. On the contrary, this is a story that blames society for not allowing people to openly express their sexuality and act of their most primal of

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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

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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

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Payton Lehnerz English B CP Final Essay American Literature: How it Changed Over Time Literature has been a constant expression of artistic emotion throughout history. Over the course of the years, Literature has developed and changed due to America’s evolution. These changing time periods can be classified into 9 eras: Colonial, Revolutionary, Romantic, Transcendental, Realism, Modern, Harlem Renaissance, Beat Generation, and Postmodern. Throughout the changing history, new literary eras have begun in response to previous eras and events. American Literature has changed over time by adapting previous values, beliefs, and literary characteristics when a new era presents itself; this progression is due to changing societal views in

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