Gender Roles And Blanche 's Need For Attention And Company

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.

     This play takes place in New Orleans Louisiana. New Orleans is a very lively town that is known as a party town and for it being a rough town. New Orleans is a town in which inhibition is suppressed and people try to have fun all the time, while not worrying about the little things in life. This is especially true for the French quarter of New Orleans, which is the setting for this play. New Orleans is know for Mardi Gras and illusion, but it is also a city of reality. Blanche does not

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

While exploring Blanche’s character, it is necessary to find and analyze the roots of her mental instability and unpleasant behavior. I

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.

Blanches’ emotional state of mind is also conspicuous at the start of the play as she circumvents direct light, fearful of showing her fading looks and the light would make her vulnerable to the truth. Blanche is unable to withstand harsh light, calling the light a ‘merciless glare’(S1:pg.120*) because with Allan’s death, the light had gone out of her life and the effect this had is that she wanted dim lights hiding the reality of her painful memories. This links to the theme of dream and reality as Blanche, a delicate character, refused ‘to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion’ (*2), living on the borders of life similar to a moth which creates the image of Blanches’ fragility.

Through close research of this play, many quotes from both primary and secondary sources prove her dependence. We can assume that Blanche’s entire perspective is that men are her only source of happiness and success. First, Blanche is very conscious of her appearance; hiding herself under dim lights and make up, afraid of being judged by men around her. “Whoever you are I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (Williams 142), Blanche’s need for “kindness of strangers” refers to her miscellaneous encounters with men in the past to make her feel worthy. “She means what she says when she urges them not to notice her” (toles). Toles refers to scene 3, where it is evident that Blanche seeks approval from men around her even though they payed no mind to her. Another demonstration of her need for admiration to gain self- confidence is this excerpt “You haven’t said a word about my appearance” (Williams 21), where she urged Stanley to notice her to fulfill her desire to feel beautiful. Not only did Blanche believe a male’s opinion was almost a necessity, she also believed that they were the only thing that can save her despair. In scene four Blanche states “Y’know how indifferent I am to money. I think of money in terms of what it does for you but he could do it, he could certainly do it”(67) the reader can assume she believes that Shep Huntleigh can pull her and her sister Stella out their poverty. "Since she has shown a willingness to believe that shep huntleigh, a creature of fantasy, may be coming to rescue her……..” (toles) she makes believe that shep huntleigh, a man she no longer has a relationship with , is going to save her from her misery; again showing that without a man she can’t be successful. Moreover ,Blanche also sees Mitch as an opportunity to become successful seen in this quote “What does he …. What does he do for a living

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.

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.)

My first impression of Blanche is that she lets her emotions get the better of her and that she is insecure. She talks fast and barely lets Stella speaks, showing that she is either nervous or hiding something, she uses alcohol to calm her nerves. She constantly asks for attention and compliments. When Stanley finds Blanches letters from her husband she reacts in an outrageous way “Now that you’ve touched them I’ll burn them!” (42).

Blanche Dubois is a degenerated woman. Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety, Blanche is an insecure, dishonest individual. She claims to be –and acts the part- of a upper class woman. The irony of it all is that she has no class herself. After losing all of her family’s money, estate, and respect she looks for sympathy and pity in every nook and cranny she can find. This woman is a walking paradox. She claims many times she is not one to drink, but in multiple scenes she is drinking plenty of alcohol all with the excuse of her nerves. She pretends to be a high class woman with all of her fancy clothes and aristocracy attitude one would think she is a clean and proper person compared to the classes “below” her yet in various

One of the play’s main characters, Blanche, has by no means had an easy adulthood. She has had to deal with her sister setting off to New Orleans with her new husband, the death of her father, losing her own husband, and the loss of their family’s beloved plantation, Belle Reve. With all of this going on, Blanche disguises her pain and delusion, and pretends that is does not exist. In a way,

The first thing that plagues her in life was her husband Allen, who was once a nice and just man, was discovered to be a homosexual. When she discovered this, she got extremely upset because of her innocent attitude toward sex. When her husband turned to her for an excuse, she told him that his behavior “disgusted” her. Her decisions resulted in her husband’s suicide. So Blanche had been punishing herself in her mind for the decision that she made. Her family also endured many misfortunes. She was tortured by these misfortunes that made her gloomy and she could not face with the sharp decline in her life.

As we experience reading the tragedy we come to the conclusion because of Blanche’s mechanisms of running away from her issues, her issues come and haunt her one way or another. We can learn from this that dealing from our problems rather than running away from them is much more