Though vanity tends to manifest as the outward expression of narcissism, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams employ this quality to reveal more tragic truths regarding the inner lives of their characters. For Mary and Tyrone, vanity virtually plays as a denial tactic in preventing cognitive dissonance. Mary cannot accept that her family stares at her with judgment, waiting for her to once again descend into the morphine-induced psychoticism they have come to expect, so she directs the attention towards her appearance (asking about her hair and/or gesturing towards it). However, Tyrone’s vanity is more achievement/action oriented; harboring on his professionalism in having “never missed a performance,” he relies on his past success to …show more content…
A woman whose internal self (a prim and proper gal from Belle Reve) is in disaccord with her actions. Blanche focuses on her beauty yet not because she fears reaching the end of her prime, it is all she has left of her youth, all she has left of the young and proper girl she one was. Whether through dialogic accounts, physical gestures, stage directions or symbolic props, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams both utilize vanity to reveal a deeper psychological truth beneath their characters; vanity defines them for it works to reveal the layers that subsist beneath it, the complexity that is amalgamated into its singularity.
In Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, we are presented with a broken family that has learned to sustain against all odds. However, what Mary must do to sustain (take morphine) lays the foundation for her vanity. In the first few acts of the play, Mary possesses the presence of mind to refocus her family’s suspicion towards her looks. Upon a family member’s staring, Mary will often ask about her appearance; however, her preoccupation mostly revolves around her hair: Mary’s hands tend to “flutter up to her hair,” “jerk nervously to her hair,” or “flutter up to pat her hair” as if ingrained (O-Neill 20; O’Neill 27; O’Neill 71). Would mere vanity so strongly center on a single attribute? Further, the reaction is not one of inquiry but rather depicted as a nervous impulse, she becomes struck “with sudden tenseness” (O’Neill 17).
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 Greek tragedian Aeschylus once wrote that “a god implants in mortal guilt whenever he wants utterly to confound a house,” and as the creator of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams is no exception. The guilt of Blanche DuBois makes the emotional, tragic, and often extreme circumstances of the play possible. Williams creates Blanche’s vulnerabilities, including her dependence on others and her inability to face reality, so that her guilt over Allan’s death becomes the primary cause of her promiscuity, neurasthenic behavior and ultimate downfall.
In Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois unveils the theme of the story through her representation of the struggle to maintain innocence in a tragically guilty world. The main theme of the story is that the façade of performed perfection will always be unsuccessful; fantasy cannot overcome reality. As hard as Blanche tries to hide in her fantasy, eventually truth persists and, in the end, overtakes the delusions she holds. Blanche uses her appearance to suggest innocence and youth, yet with a closer look, readers see that, though she attempts very hard to be, she is neither. She also has a symbolic relationship with Mitch; the further they draw apart, the further into madness she descends. While it is clear that Blanche is not entirely innocent, the author creates her as a symbol of such. This way, as she slowly loses her mind—and Mitch—she symbolizes the loss of said innocence. Blanche can also be considered an embodiment of Williams’s older sister Rose, who is known to have been institutionalized for her erratic behavior. Rose Williams’s inability to overcome her mental instability is directly represented through Blanche, a character who also cannot maintain fantasy and ultimately succumbs to reality. Had Blanche been able to sustain her pretense of innocence, it is possible she could have avoided the harsh realities of life.
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
Established as one of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams used his writing as a form of therapy. The author came from a troubled background consisting of alcoholism, mental breakdowns, and general unhappiness; Williams exploited these unfortunate events and allowed them to motivate his literature. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois’ struggles represent the reality of people’s lives, “an enduring concern of [Williams’] throughout his writing career (Henthorne 1). Blanche captures our focus with her seemingly sincere and fragile nature, but it is later revealed that this is just an illusion within her own mind. She resides in a world of fantasy to shield herself against the harsh threats of reality and her own fears. Blanche’s main objective in the play is to keep herself from falling apart in a world of cruelty through alcoholism and illusion. Through the characterization of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams depicts the coping mechanism of fantasy and its detrimental repercussions by exploring the specific experiences that eventually impede her happiness.
In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams explores the internal conflict of illusion versus reality through the characters. Humans often use illusion to save us pain and it allows us to enjoy pleasure instead. However, as illusion clashes with reality, one can forget the difference between the two. When people are caught up in their illusions, eventually they must face reality even if it is harsh. In the play, Blanche suffers from the struggle of what is real and what is fake because of the difficult events of her past. Blanche comes to her sister Stella seeking aid because she has lost her home, her job, and her family. To deal with this terrible part of her life, she uses fantasy to escape her dreadful reality. Blanche’s embracement of a fantasy world can be categorized by her attempts to revive her youth, her relationship struggles, and attempts to escape her past.
2. Blanche is the protagonist, had a great tragedy in her early life. She fell in love young and married, and discovered her husband was gay. Shortly after, her husband died and left her a young widow. “And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this—kitchen—candle.”(scene6) After her sister left, she had to take care of family members. Their deaths resulted in the loss of her familys Belle Reve, and Blanche being displaced and thrown into a society she did not understand. After all this tragedy, Blanche preferred to live in her own made up reality of denial where she is still the belle of the party; and life is full of small talk and manners. She tries to display herself as innocent.
To live in a world of illusion is to live a life of lies.Sometimes people try to escape reality, whether to avoid truths or to avoid their past. A Streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Williams introduces Blanche Dubois as the main protagonist and potential victim of the story. In the story, Blanche leaves her home in “Belle Reve” because it has been destroyed and takes a streetcar to to get to her sister’s (Stella’s) residence. She believes that she will find a new life as well as comfort and acceptance at her sister’s side. Unfortunately she is very wrong about it, in fact, it is the complete opposite. Blanche’s past life was very shameful for her and so in order to forget the tormenting truth, she resorts to living a fantasy life of her own, which causes problems for her later on (self-destruction).
“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces” (Sigmund Freud). Illusion can be a part of our lives; however, if taken to the extreme, it can lead one to forget reality. Every individual has problems in life that must be faced with reality and not with illusion, even though it might throw one into flames of fires. Tennessee Williams' play of a family reveals the strength of resistance between reality and desire, judgment and imagination, and between male and female. The idea of reality versus illusion is demonstrated throughout the play. Blanche's
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams’ portrays Blanch DuBoise as the character who suffers inner struggles all through her life. She is a fallen woman in the eyes of society. She would prefer to live in her own imagination. Her name is befitting for her in that she acts more as a woman of the night - she would rather be out at night or in the dim lights. She is a southern woman on all counts who lives in Laurel, Mississippi. Her life has been full of disappointments, death, and sexual propriety. Through her misfortunes, she becomes more unstable. She wants to create a life within her life to cope with all the stresses of her reality. Blanche is unable to find an escape from herself. She finds herself as a victim at the hands of her sister’s husband. Blanche hopes for new beginnings when she leaves Belle Reve from which she has been evicted. She moves to New Orleans to be with Stella, her sister, and her husband Stanley. Leonard Berkman “pities her and views her as a ‘misunderstood’ character, a tragic figure trying to start a new life for herself in New Orleans” (34). As much as she tries, she can never fully gain peace.
In the words of Sigmund Freud, “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” The legendary psychologist saw dreams as an avenue to study one’s underlying motives for action. Similarly, in literature one finds striking significance from the illusions of protagonists that often predict the nature of one’s psyche. Two such examples present themselves in Blanche, from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and the grandmother, from Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. The former tale follows a lady without a home who finds herself reliant on her belligerent and bestial brother-in-law. The latter traces a family’s road trip South and their encounter with a wanted fugitive. Both Blanche and the grandmother find themselves tethered to their idealistic and often times hypocritical fantasies which signify their underlying mental instability and foreshadow their eventual ruinations. Williams and O’Connor examine their protagonists’ delusions through gender, clothing, and nostalgia.
I would like to analyze a tragic heroine Blanche DuBois appearing in a play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) written by Tennessee Williams. My intention is to concentrate on the most significant features of her nature and behaviour and also on various external aspects influencing her life and resulting in her nervous breakdown. I would like to discuss many themes related to this character, such as loss, desire and longing for happiness, beauty and youth, pretension, lies and imagination, dependence on men and alcoholism.
Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire distorts truth within Blanche’s mind (“ I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be the truth”) to the extent that veracity itself is disintegrated unconsciously into her inner deceptive conflict of illusion and reality. Williams externalises this conflict in the typification of Blanche and Stanley as Nietzsche’s Apollonian-Dionysian dialectic in the inevitable destruction of Blanche in her lies, coerced by women’s suffering due to the onslaught of patriarchy. Back to secrets and lies The deaths that Blanche suffers engender her characterisation as the Apollonian in her world of delusion and lies.
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
Blanche experiences the opposite. Blanche with low self-esteem, immediately lies to her sister upon arrival. Ashamed of her past and living in denial, she focused on her appearance. Inclusive, she carries her nice clothes, jewelry, and her letters; written to her by her deceased husband. Blanche choose to live in darkness, therefore she can deny getting older. By here getting older, the American Dream fades away. She continues to hide the things of her past. She begins to redecorate her sister’s house, to make it look and feel better, therefore suiting her own standards of taste. She wants the house to fill more comfortable for her. Her sister has a husband, a life, and has a baby on the way. Blanche envy’s her for having what she does