Blanche Dubois: A Tragic Hero

Blanche needs Mitch as a stabilizing force in her life; if her relationship with him fails, she knows she faces a world that offers few prospects for a financially challenged, unmarried woman approaching middle age. She tacitly admits to Mitch that she needs him when she accepts his embrace, but her fears of acknowledging her past and current situation overpower her and prevent her from telling the full truth. She hides her past not only from Mitch, but also from herself because to acknowledge it is to also admit the unhealthy choices she has made. When Stanley tells Mitch about Blanche’s blemished past Mitch recognizes that Blanche’s deceptions have relied on a symbolic and literal darkness which obscures reality. When Mitch asks Blanche to be honest about herself she says, “I don’t want realism. I want Magic! I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be the truth” (145). In these lines Blanche clearly expresses her desire not to deal with reality; this inability to face her circumstances signifies that Blanche is not recovering from her mental stress, but rather descending further into it. Blanche becomes desperate and delusional and her descent into mental

Blanche’s financial decline, illuminating her vulnerability, links to Aristotle’s theory that the tragic heroine must fall, allowing the audience to relate to her. Her insecurities – “I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” stereotypically reflects the insecurities women feel about their appearance and age. The uses of imperatives and exclamatory sentences suggests Blanche’s obsession over her appearance, a flaw leading her to dismiss her true identity. Her inability to avoid drink and her compulsive lies, demonstrated in her frequent references to Shep Huntleigh’s letters, makes her a more authentic woman than Stella, who is described by Williams as the “gentle, mild and contented one”. Blanche’s loss of identity, dominated by her homosexual husband’s suicide, exacerbates her solitude – “The boy-the boy died. (She sinks back down) I’m afraid I’m – going to be sick!” The fragmented, repetitive speech Blanche uses illustrates her guilt and pain, whilst the physical act of “sinking” highlights the extent of her regret, giving a sense of foreboding for her downfall. Her guilt is also exacerbated by the implied physical act at the end which shocks the contemporary audience, who would not sympathise with homosexuals, evoking pity and reinforcing that “Streetcar” is a tragedy for Blanche.

The reader may view Blanche as someone who tried to escape her sordid past in Laurel and wanted to start a new life with her sister, yet due to the continuous investigations from Stanley, was unable to do so. Stanley reveals Blanches’ lies and deceits, commenting on them as her ‘same old act, same old hooey!’ This tells the reader that his research of Blanches’ past is way of stopping her from finding a new life. Blanche attempts to redeem her life by finding love with Mitch, yet Stanley again reveals to Mitch that she was not ‘straight’, resulting in Mitch not wanting to be with her and also contributing to her fate. Stanley, after mercilessly divulging all her truths and bringing her to the edge of her mental capacity, rapes Blanche which brought about her final collapse. The reader may view Stella as someone at blame for her sisters’ fate, as though she shows some moral support of Blanches’ situation and listens to what she has to say, Stella continuously throughout the play neglects to notice Blanches slow mental deterioration and ignores Blanches’ outcries and incessant need for attention. Stella chooses Stanley over Blanche, despite her warnings about him being ‘volatile, violent and sub-human which represents not

Blanche’s inability to face reality serves as another contributing factor to her insanity, encouraging her to invent additional fantasies which

It is clear that Blanche DuBois is willing to do what she believes is necessary to get what she wants. This often includes deceit. She feels that she needs to lie about herself in order to seem more appealing. Because Blanche is so afraid of aging, she keeps her age to herself. While she is dating Mitch, she often deceives him by never letting him see her in bright light in order to conceal her faded looks. When she comes to New Orleans, Blanche does not tell her sister that she was fired from her job; she says that she is merely taking a vacation from the job. She says this in order to keep up the fake persona she holds. Blanche is very open about her lies with her sister. “I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth.” (69) This shows that Blanche’s lifelong choice of avoiding harsh realities leads to her breakdown. With all of the lies and deceit Blanche tells, she is living an unreal existence.

Blanche’s death speech plays a vital role in the development of the play “A Streetcar named Desire”. In the monologue the tension between Blanche and Stella comes to a zenith as Blanch explodes with rage as she expresses her jealousy-driven feelings to Stella. In doing so Blanche reveals much more, including her unstable mental state, her emotional reaction to the lost of Belle Reve, and most importantly her preoccupation with the theme of death.

She tries to hold on to him but is unable to keep him attracted. Blanche is lost, confused, conflicted, lashing out in sexual ways, and living in her out own fantasies. She has no concern for anyone’s well being, including her own. Thus, this is her utter most harmful demise. She has no realistic outlook for the future.

Blanche made choices which are all wrong, like drinking alcohol and giving herself to other men. Her first bad choice was when her young husband died and she started drinking alcohol and became sexual indiscrimination. According to the book alcohol helped her to forget the pain that she went through. Blanche could of talked about her husband death to someone who she was close with in her town but instead she got addicted to this bad habit of drinking alcohol. My second point is that blanche gives herself to men. Apparently she had felt that she had in some ways and she had tried to alleviate her guilt by giving herself to a random men young men, Blanche said “intimacies with strangers was all I seem able to fill my empty

due to her past blanche’s actions are unusual and to many they are considered inappropriate. Blanche lives through some very dark and intense incidents before the play takes place, she witnesses the death of her entire family, she loses her family home, and to add to the misery she believes she is the reason her husband killed himself. In an act to move on she retreats into illusion acting as if these incidents never happened. Blanche decides to lie to everyone, from her sister to the man she potentially wanted to marry, she does not give them the truth. She wants to marry mitch but does not tell him about her past, mitch had all right to know, yet she led him on, actions like these in an environment of connection is inappropriate beyond a doubt. Because of her lies and illusions Blanche ends up losing everything, she loses her only chance at a future with Mitch and her freedom when she is sent to the mental institution. Blanches motivation by the past caused her life around her dissolve.

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, a tragic play, is based on the theme that desire leads to ruin. After losing her home and life due to her sinful actions, the main character Blanche DuBois travels to New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley. Blanche’s lies about her past and excessive drinking lead to the main conflict between her and Stanley. Blanche’s poor decisions from her past haunt her, and she continues to engage in self-destructive behavior during her time in New Orleans. Tension between Blanche and Stanley climaxes when Stanley rapes her in the tenth act of the play. Blanche loses her dignity, home, and hold on reality in this tragedy, and, as she is the main character, her downfall makes

It’s no wonder why she tried to hide her life in the darkness, because of the things that happened to her that cause her to lose her sense of reality. Many people today can relate to her situation because they too have lost people they cared about much like did Blanche. While some of them have moved on, others find ways to which they can ease their depression: some ways that are good and others, like with Blanche, that aren’t such as: lies, drinking or prostituting for their own satisfaction. Like I have mention before, Blanche becomes dependent for alcohol to help calm her nerves, mainly the kind of nerves that were caused after the death of her husband and if she had had the support that she needed from Stella, she would not have had to

            Blanche is not really lost in illusions; rather she uses them as camouflage. She wears them as she wears her clothes and her glass necklaces, as protection from a reality that she finds horrifying. One must not think of Blanche as just a fragile, delicate blossom. There is a fierce desire in her for life at any cost. Her masquerade may

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire the tragic hero Blanche Dubois is a “Southern Belle” from Mississippi who was born to a wealthy family. Blanche is a former schoolteacher who says that she lost Belle Reve (family estate) due to cost of the funerals and deaths of family members, but she avoids the fact that she does not have a job or money when she goes to stay with her sister Stella and bother in law in New Orleans. She seems to be on the run from her past because of her husband’s suicide after she expressed her distaste on his sexuality. She later had many affairs trying to numb her grief on the death of her husband.

The physical toll it has on her is shown when, “She claps her hands to her ears and crouches over”(96) as though to say that in life certain thing with time become hard to not acknowledge in life or to act as though it has not happened like the relationship between Allen Grey and his older friend. Just like in life there comes a moment when Blanche must admit what happened because of what she says, “boy I had married broke away from me… A few moments later- a shot”(96). This truth though may not want to be what she wants to believe did happen and so she must admit what she has done. Just as in life things might happen that people do not want to think about and do not want to admit but must because with time the guilt can be as big as a train and be blaring to come out. For Blanche truth may not always be what she wants to believe but is also something she must acknowledge and know that a reaction can make something even bigger and lead to an ending that would not want to be foreseen.

Tennessee Williams, “A Street Car Named Desire”, brings his readers in with the life and antics of one Blanche Dubois. Her promiscuous attitude toward life and men makes you dislike her one minute, but feels so sorry for her the next. Williams allows this character to be pushed to the brink by her brutal brother-in-law and finally push her over the edge. This play left me feeling angry and outraged; the law had been broken, yet the victim will be the one who pays for the crime. The entire play leaves the audience waiting for the climatic point when either Blanche of Stanley will win the affections of Stella. I gained knowledge and understanding of human emotions and how human nature may cope with tragedy, and I was not enchanted by the play. I did experience a sense of shock and frustration by the ending, and the recognition of Blanche’s behaviors does hit a little close to home with my family and dealing with mental illness.