Character Analysis of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire

Blanche tries to conceal the secrets of her past from her new found life in New Orleans; however it is only a matter of time before the truth comes out. Stanley is the one to reveal her true reason for coming to New Orleans: she was essentially kicked out of her town because there were only so many men. Her numerous sexual relations recounted by Stanley depict Blanche as a gold digger and the epitome of the party. Stanley crashes all of Blanche’s hopes to recreate a new life for Blanche. He forces Mitch, her almost lover, to leave Blanche and stoop her down to even more disparity in her

The arts stir emotion in audiences. Whether it is hate or humor, compassion or confusion, passion or pity, an artist's goal is to construct a particular feeling in an individual. Tennessee Williams is no different. In A Streetcar Named Desire, the audience is confronted with a blend of many unique emotions, perhaps the strongest being sympathy. Blanch Dubois is presented as the sympathetic character in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire as she battles mental anguish, depression, failure and disaster.

One of the roles of this excerpt is to provide the background towards understanding Blanche, and the justifications for her mental state and actions. It is evident that in the past she belonged to a higher class where extravagance was common. But when her family in

Blanche is committed to a tradition and a way of life that have become anachronistic in the world of Stanley Kowalski. She is committed to a code of civilization that died with her ancestral home, Belle Reve. Stella recognizes this tradition and her sister's commitment to it, but she has chosen to relinquish it and to come to terms with a world that has no place for it. In a sense, Blanche is frantic in her refusal to relinquish her concept

Blanche’s desire for youth links with her desiring her past where she had money, a man, security and a good reputation, before it was sullied by desire. We learn of her youth and past being tainted by desire

In this play Blanche has a praxis: She must get a companion to share her life with who can provide her with shelter, food, and financial support and that’s what makes the whole story happen. This praxis is created when two things happen: First, Blanche finding out that the man she married was having an affair with another man and he decided to shoot himself after she confronted him, and second, the loss of her house in Mississippi. These two things create her need of a shelter, financial support and food therefore she decides to stay with her sister Stella.

Blanche's devistating past is just one of the reasons I felt sympathy for her. Troubled from her past, Blanche has a sence of falseness, which increasingly becomes apparent to Stanley. Her secrets are revealed, and this unveals a haunting past, and insecurities which were unknown to Stella. It would appear that the lies and desperate clutches to hold onto

As the play begins it tells how blanche arrives at New Orleans with one goal, to find her sister named Stella. After many years of not seeing her sister Blanche had found her in a place called “Elysian Fields”. Blanche’s first thought about that area was unpleasant, but as she was alone her sister appeared and tears of joy came roaring down both their eyes. It had

According to Blanche’s story, in her hometown of Laurel, she had lived in the Hotel Flamingo after the plantation was lost. While living there, she was surrounded by admirers, the same as she always had been. However, what Blanche really did was sleep around, pretending she had several admirers, but always winding up alone.

She begins to ramble on more, have more delusions and lie about crazy things such as Shep Huntleigh inviting her on a cruise to the Caribbean. She begins to shower more often or “hydrotherapy” as she calls it, because it “is necessary for her probably to wash away the feeling of guilt as also the stains of her promiscuous life” (Kataria 96). As the play comes to an end, Blanche becomes more psychotic and no one is on her side. Blanche appears to swirl into oblivion towards the end of the play when a fiight with Stanley gets physical. “She finally realizes to her dismay that she has lost her reputation, a place to go to, and what is worse, her charm. This realization, painful as it is, coupled with the rape, sends her reeling into a world of shadows from which she was never really far away” (Kataria 182.)

Upon entering Stella’s house, the first thing Blanche does is criticize it. She criticizes the house not once but several times throughout the novel showing her disapproval to live in such a place despite residing in it. Even though physically she is present in New Orleans, mentally she is still living in Belle Reve. Belle Reve, which means “beautiful dream” in French, is in fact like a dream to Blanche – a dream that she wants to experience forever. Her letter to Shep Huntleigh reveals the kind of life she desires to live. The letter consists of only lies but it shows that had she still been in Belle Reve she would have been “spending the summer on the wing, making flying visits here and there”. It gives the reader an idea of Blanche’s incapacity

Blanche periodically takes baths to “soothe her nerves”. Rather than Blanche being out facing the day; she decides to take a bath in hopes of cleansing and briefly forgetting her past. She thinks that the washing of her body can help her escape reality. Everything like her divorce, her affair with her student, and losing the Belle Reve can all be washed away

Set in the French area of New Orleans, America, just after World War Two, it is the story of Blanche DuBois, a slightly crazed and deranged woman on a search for a place to live in her time of need.

Beaten down by her past challenges, Blanche Dubois comes to the realization that in order for her to change her destiny, she must alter her personality. After arriving at Elysian Fields, at the home of her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley Kowalski, Blanche immediately reassumes her Southern Belle image. Throughout her stay with the Kowalski`s, Blanche is continuously haunted by the “Varsouvian melody” that played the evening of Alan Grey`s death. Through her constant bathing, it is evident that she is trying to cleanse herself of the past events in her life. The bathing also represents Blanche’s need to scrub herself clean of her “impurities”, which contradicts the persona she was trying to emit of being a pure, virginal women. She finds her life in the Kowalski household far from the refuge she had imagined. However she soon encounters Mitch, a good friend of Stanley’s, who immediately becomes Blanche’s final hope at finding a salvation. Unfortunately for her, their relationship is based on Blanche’s fake personality, which could not last its entirety. As Mitch finds out about her past, he in turn refuses to marry what he presumes is an “impure women”.

Which is ironic because Blanche is anything but clean. Blanche believes that if she takes these baths then she is cleaning herself but since she a person who has an abundance of dirty secrets she is not cleaning herself fully. She is simply sitting in her own filth. This could tie into Blanche as a character because she is trying so hard to keep up this perfectly white facade that she would try anything to mask her own faults in life. Also when Blanche says, “... feeling like a brand new human being,” she believes that since she sits in a bathtub of her own secrets that once that water goes down the drain then all the lying and sleeping with multiple men would also go down the drain as well. Also with Blanche’s statement, a reader could compare it to a snake. With a snake, after a while, the snake would shed their dead skin and the skin would feel brand new, but snakes shed their skin frequently, so it does not matter how brand new they feel because later on they would shed their skin. This relates to Blanche because she thinks that if she takes baths then she is brand new but any glimpse of her secrets being revealed she would go back into that tub and try to wash the dirtiness away.