Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, readers become ever more aware of Blanche’s promiscuity, specifically after the scene involving the paper boy and the discovery of her relationship with a student. However, her desire for these two boys can be seen as a “quick fix”, that is, it was something she had done in order to receive a little love and affection in that moment. On the other hand, her desire for Mitch is completely different in the sense that it is permanent and sincere, which can be seen when Stella confesses that, “she thought Mitch was—going to—going to marry her” (Williams 126). In her relations with the paper boy and the student, Blanche had no intentions beyond what was occurring in that moment, but with Mitch, she had plans and …show more content…
However, to a certain extent, Blanche is to blame for her ultimate fate because she was knowingly deceiving others, especially Mitch. Readers know that Blanche is aware of her own deceptive tendencies when she tells Mitch, “Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart…” (Williams 147), showing that she knew she lied although she truly didn’t mean it. Nevertheless, it can also be argued that Blanche was a victim of the times. In an era where women were expected to marry young, Blanche was already over thirty years old and a widow. As seen when she states, “But on the other hand men lose interest quickly. Especially when the girl is over—thirty” (Williams 94), there was a noticeable pressure on her to find another husband, but also a stigma attached to women her age. While attempting to live up to society’s expectations and marry, especially since she was a Southern lady, Blanche found it difficult to keep men’s interest, therefore resulting in her constant romantic endeavors to not only receive attention, but to also try to find a man she could
Both Mitch and Blanche have something in common, lonely. She told him that her husband was a gay. When she knew about it, he committed suicide. After she told Mitch about her past marriage, he is interested in the relationship with her. I strongly agree with notes that Blanche is a victim.
When Blanche meets Mitch, she realises that her is someone who can give her a sense of belonging and who is also captivated by her “girlish” charms. She deceives him into thinking her, as she would like to be –prim and proper – however, as she later tells Mitch: “Inside, I never lied”. Her essential nature and being have been changed by her promiscuity – She gave her body to any man, but it would appear, that to Mitch, she is ready to give her whole being. Mitch falls in love with Blanches world of
As part of her illness, flirting and promiscuity come into play during different parts of her life. At one point in the movie, it was told by Stanley to Stella how Blanche had been asked to
Throughout Tennessee William’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche Dubois exemplified several tragic flaws. She suffered from her haunting past; her inability to overcome; her desire to be someone else; and from the cruel, animalistic treatment she received from Stanley. Sadly, her sister Stella also played a role in her downfall. All of these factors ultimately led to Blanche’s tragic breakdown in the end.
Blanche, in the climax of the story, lies to her brother-in-law, Stanley, saying, “Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the one unforgivable thing in my opinion and it is the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty” (Williams 156-157). Blanche plainly contradicts herself when she admitted earlier to her boyfriend that a deliberate act of cruelty on her part led to the death of her first husband. She lies about this because it distances herself from the uncouth, unrefined behaviour she so
Blanche displays inappropriate behavior. She gets kicked out of the high school for mixed up with a seventeen year old boy. “They kicked her out of the high school before the spring term ended and I hate to tell you the reason that step was taken! A seventeen years old boy she had gotten mixed up with(122)”. By Blanche's inappropriate behavior she had lost her job and respect, moreover, it leads her to become broke. The mayor of Laurel forced Blanche to leave the town because she pretend that she was rich, and dated multiple men in town. After they found out the truth they quit but Blanche hadn't stop dating different men.” She's practically told by the mayor to get out of the town” (121). By her inappropriate behavior, she had been kicked
and self - pitying ways from the death of her husband and the lies of
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.
From the moment Mitch and Blanche met it was a strong connection, it had the sense of love, but that feeling of love changed to a feeling of betrayal and disgust; Once Mitch was informed of Blanche's web of lies and her horrible past. It started off with a little “fib” as Blanches says, about her age. From there it got worse, she betrayed Mitch by breaking his trust because she never told him about her dirty past. Blanche tried to cover it up by putting a filter over her personality, and that filter was her long gone southern morals. She had tried to hide her bad past from just lying to Mitch and deceiving him, acting as if he wasn't smart enough to find out. But the time did come for Mitch to find out about this ultimate betrayal of his trust, and once mitch confirmed the information about Blanche's past ; that feeling of love transformed to rear its ugly head of deception to symbolize what his relationship with Miss Blanche Dubois really was; just a
Additionally, because Stella chose not to believe Blanche, Blanche has delved into insanity and is therefore exiled from Stella and Stanley’s lives. Blanche visited her sister in order to start a new life in a new place, but was instead met with her utter destruction. She lost her motivation after losing Mitch because of her deception, and subsequently lost her free will after Stanley raped her. Because she had “cried wolf” so many times that no one believed her anymore, so she had no choice to give in to insanity. Since no one would listen to a word she had to say, Blanche gave up on life and reality.
Tennessee Williams was once quoted as saying "Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama...the purest language of plays" (Adler 30). This is clearly evident in A Streetcar Named Desire, one of Williams's many plays. In analyzing the main character of the story, Blanche DuBois, it is crucial to use both the literal text as well as the symbols of the story to get a complete and thorough understanding of her.
This later foreshadows her relationship with Mitch. As the readers know Blanche is five years older than Stella, Mitch does not. She tries to cover it up by wearing white cloths which represents purity and innocence, which she is not. After a whole summer of dating, Mitch realizes he hasn’t had a good look at Blanche, “You never want to go out till after six and then it’s always some place that’s not lighted much (Williams 144).” Blanche has been avoiding Mitch throughout the day time by making excuses why she cannot see him, when in reality she looks younger in the dark.
of scene 2; she says, "I ought to go [to the sky] on a rocket that
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
The play A Streetcar Named Desire revolves around Blanche DuBois; therefore, the main theme of the drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the tragedy of an individual caught between two worlds-the world of the past and the world of the present-unwilling to let go of the past and unable, because of her character, to come to any sort of terms with the present. The final result is her destruction. This process began long before her clash with Stanley Kowalski. It started with the death of her young husband, a weak and perverted boy who committed suicide when she taunted him with her disgust at the discovery of his perversion. In retrospect, she knows that he was the only man she had ever loved, and from this early catastrophe