Street Car Named Desire Essay

Finally in this last quote we can see that Blanche is a broken soul, and all she really wants is a man to love her again, for who she really is, her real honest self and personality; “Because of my hard knocks my vanity’s been given. What I mean is-he thinks I’m sort of- prim and proper, you know! I want him to deceive him just long enough to make him-want me. .

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.

As she reveals to Mitch in the end of the play, intimacies with strangers was all she seemed to be able to fill her empty heart with after the death of her young husband, Allan (Baym 2349). What Blanche obviously has not realized is that the unnatural, “messed up” relationship to her own desire has made it destructive and thereby inextricably linked it to death.

The play focused on the feeling of repulsion between them as Blanche grows to despise Stanley because he beats and strikes her pregnant sister and Stanley sees Blanche as a distributive force in his household as he despises Blanche’s sense of refinement. Blanche contempt and hatred for Stanley is far more evident throughout the play for example: her statement that she will burn Allan’s letters after he has touched them, and her descriptions to Stella and Mitch of his commonness and brutality. Moreover, Stanley’s hatred for Blanche is far more evident as he brings her the bus tickets to leave his apartment and return to Laurel, he attacks Blanche for losing Belle Reve, he destroys Blanche’s relationship with Mitch by telling him about her rotten past and the fatal scene which ends with raping her (Murphy

There are many external events alluded to through the text. It is hinted that the start of Blanche’s insanity was when she found out that her husband was a homosexual. Stella leaves Belle Reve, and Blanche is stuck to take care of their dying kin, while losing their family home. Before Blanche arrives in New Orleans, she is fired from her teaching job because the entire town knows of her as a whore. This is also what ruins her in New Orleans because the manager at Stanley’s job has passed through the hotel she used to live in. The internal events of the play begin with Blanches arrival. Immediately, Stanley assumes that Blanche sold Belle Reve for money, and believes that a share of it belongs to him. In an argument Stanley hits Stella, and Blanche uses it as an excuse to lure Stella away. Mitch and Blanche begin dating, and decide that they will wed. When Stanley finds this out he informs Mitch as a friend of Blanche’s past, and breaks up the engagement. Stella goes to the hospital to have her baby, and while she is there Stanley and Blanche have a fight, which ends with sexual relations. After Stella returns from the hospital, a nurse and a doctor come to take Blanche away. Mitch begins to cry, showing that he really did love her.

She later discovers Allan’s homosexuality and when she confronts him about it, he commits suicide. Blanche has been haunted with the guilt of her husband’s death ever since. This perhaps has motivated a lot of her actions. Allan’s death demonstrates the end of Blanche’s sexual innocence as she is constantly in search of comfort and kindness, which she receives while “meeting with strangers”. She has also lost her job as a schoolteacher when her affair with a young student was exposed to the school and the people of Laurel, and led to her exile. All of these events point to the fact that Blanche is a social outcast due to her continuous sexual behaviour. As the play develops, the reader can comprehend that Blanche is less proper and superior as she portrays herself to be. Blanche, herself, is ashamed of her true identity and life, so she tends to keep her past life a secret. She is also realising that she is aging very quickly and fears of losing her beauty. Her insecurities and infirmities lead her to find comfort in a world of illusion which she creates herself, as she refuses to face reality. By creating her own world, Blanche is able to close her eyes on reality and expand her imagination to build the mental self-esteem she needs to survive. She admitted herself when she said “I do not want realism, I want magic!” (Williams, 117) that she would rather live in her made-believe world than in the harsh reality surrounding her. Her fantasies

In the first scene we notice Blanche is very nervous and drinking alcohol to elude her reality. Then she tells her sister about the lost of Belle Reve, the family mansion. In this scene we see that she felt guilty for her

The play begins with Blanche moving to New Orleans, later revealing that she had lost everything to do with her previous life. Blanche´s complexity stems from the difference in the life she leads and the one she wishes to have. She lives a romanticised life in a world Williams dedicated to realism. She does her best to hide her age and insecurities through alcohol and bathing, only to come off as skittish and trapped by what haunts her. Blanche spends the majority of the play romanticizing that a man will come and sweep her away, whereas her surrounding characters see this as her naivety.

Desperate and lonely, Blanche arrives at Elysian Fields in New Orleans to seek refuge with her sister. Stanley resents her presence and her interest in Mitch. He and Blanche engage in a struggle for Stella's loyalty- a struggle which Blanche cannot win. Stanley reveals the sordid details of Blanches past to Mitch: she has been fired from her job and driven out of Laurel. Mitch later refuses to marry Blanche. On her birthday, Stanley presents Blanche with a one- way ticket back to Laurel and Blanche's instability veers towards madness. Alone in the apartment when Stella goes into the hospital to give birth Blanche is raped by Stanley. Blanche is forcibly escorted to an asylum as Stanley plays cards and Stella weeps inconsolably.

Blanche’s character is shrouded in smoke and mirrors. She never really tells the truth about anything and avoids the other character’s questions important or not. Blanche evades important questions with her sister by blurting out the question before Stella could ask and deflecting the blame. This deflecting behavior is exhibited when she reveals the unsolicited lies about her position as a teacher, this is the first time in the play when Blanche shows she is not a truthful person. Her excuse for not working as a teacher is “I was so exhausted by all I'd been through my nerves broke. [Nervously tapping cigarette] I was on the verge of lunacy, almost So Mr. Graves--Mr. Graves is the high school Superintendent-he suggested I take a leave of absence.

When Blanche moved in with Stanley and Stella there were immediate problems. Upon meeting Blanche for the first time, Stanley questioned her about her past and what happened to her marriage. The barrage of questions being directed are her, made Blanche upset and physically sick which caused her to leave the room and end the conversation. The next evening, Blanche and Stella made plans to go out to dinner and see a movie while Stanley played poker at their home with his friends. Stella informed Stanley that she made him dinner and placed it in the ice box which upset Stanley because he did not like eating cold food. Stella then asked Stanley to compliment Blanche on her dress to improve her mood after the loss of her home, named Belle Reve. Instead, this made Stanley even more upset and he demanded to see a bill of sale or a document to prove the loss or sale of her home. Stanley then noticed that Blanche was wearing furs and a lot of jewelry. He demanded to know where Blanche received the money to have purchased such expensive items. Stella insisted that all of them were fake, which Stanley did not buy into and insisted he would have someone investigate. Blanche never provided Stanley with any documentation for the sale of the house or to prove the furs and jewels were not real. Later that night, after Stella and Blanche returned, Blanche was playing a radio loudly with one of Stanley’s poker friends. This infuriated Stanley so he threw the radio out of the window. This caused Stella to yell at Stanley. The yelling did not last long as Stanley struck Stella. Stanley hitting Stella led to many problems. This family was very dysfunctional. There was a lot of tension between

Stanley makes it clear to Blanche that he can see through her. Her unwillingness to stand in direct light and her `fishing for compliments' do not go unnoticed in his eyes and he asks Blanche directly about what happened to Belle Reve, her family home and an allusion to heaven, forcing Blanche to face her ruined past once more. Blanche, distraught, gives Stanley all the papers she has available about Belle Reeve while imputing her disgrace on the sexual desires of the generations before her:

Description of Blanche shows that she is out of place, looking for an extravagant social event. She is clearly confused by the look of the town.

In contrast to Stella, Blanche has very little submission to men, especially Stanley. Her inability to do so leads to her rape. Blanche’s continual fights with Stanley only made him hate her more. From the very beginning their relationship was rocky and only intensified with time. Particularly after making rude remarks about Stanley including “madman” (64), “common”, “bestial” (71), and “animal” (72), Stanley develops a despise for

Stella and Blanche grew up on a wealthy plantation, in small town of Belle Reve. Stella wanted to start a new life for herself; while Blanche decided to stay in the small town. In like manner, as a young woman Stella decides to move starting that new life in New Orleans; where in time she meets her now husband, Stanley. Stella had been gone from her hometown for ten long years, without return. Blanche expresses "...the summer you left Belle Rev... the summer dad died and you left us" leaving Blanche the responsibility to attend to her elder, sickly father (Williams 2157). Blanche, hurt by Stella's act of deciding to leave, is left with the burden to upkeep the large plantation and take care of her ill and soon to die family members. Whereas Stella, whom only visitis for funerals; does not witness the beforehand suffering, that Blanche must endure. Watching a family member pass away; lying by their bedside comforting them.