Why Is Blanche Dubois Wrong

Blanche seems to be flooding her Ego with too much anxiety. The anxiety she has is caused by her insecurities. She’s insecure about herself because often she feels that even if she were to stick with one of the men they wouldn’t want her after awhile. Blanche has both neurotic and moral anxieties. On the neurotic side, she feels as if her instincts (for sex) will get out of control and make her crazy. She often feels like sex has taken over her life and that’s she’s become dependent on it. She knows that it isn’t good for her but feels like she has no other options. On the moral side, she fears that she’s going against her husbands wishes when she sleeps with all the men. Blanche’s ego is overwhelmed and she often uses the defense mechanism of rationalization to help that. She often tries to turn situations into to ones that are more acceptable. For example, on one show after she slept with a man who hadn’t had sex in awhile she made herself feel better by claiming that “he needed it” and that she did him a favor. On another show she says that she collects lingerie because one day she can pass it all down to other women who may need it. Blanche also seems to use the identification technique in order to reduce anxieties. She attaches herself to the idea of men and sex in order to increase her self-esteem and her self-worth. Blanche also uses the technique of regression. She lies about her age to everyone she meets. She even lies about her age to the

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

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.

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.

Blanche’s guilt, the principal force driving her downfall, stems from her involvement in the circumstances surrounding her husband Allan’s suicide. After finding her husband with

Blanche repeatedly lied to make herself look pure to others. It only served as a masquerade to hide her dirty, sinful reality. She lied about her age, alcoholism, promiscuity, and why she had to leave Laurel. When Stanley asked her if she wanted a shot, she replied, “No, I—rarely touch it” (Scene 1, page 1548). She could not confront her reality, so she retreated to her world of illusion. This was Blanche’s most prominent flaw. If she could have accepted things for what they are, she could have salvaged her sanity. If, from the beginning, she had been truthful to Stanley’s friend Mitch, he could have forgiven her. Dismally, Mitch would not trust her after finding out everything she said was fabricated. “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it” (Scene 9, page 1590). Blanche feared lights which symbolized her fear of reality. She claimed that with Alan’s death, all light had gone out of her life. “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.”

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 panorama towards gay people had interchanged with her beliefs and this lead to her biased opinion towards her husband. Most likely, things were probably said that weren't meant to be hurtful, but her husband still committed suicide. This misunderstanding of her own feelings as well as her husbands’ potentially lead to a guilt savaged life for Blanche.

The next major theme of the book is the relationship between sexuality and death. Blanche’s fear of death manifests itself in her fears of aging and of lost beauty. She refuses to tell anyone her true age or to appear in harsh light that will reveal her faded looks. She seems to believe that by continually asserting her sexuality, especially toward men younger than herself, she will be able to avoid death and return to the world of teenage bliss she experienced before her husband’s suicide. Blanche’s lifelong pursuit of her sexual desires has led to her eviction from Belle Reve, her ostracism from Laurel, and, at the end of the play, her expulsion from society at large. Sex leads to death for others Blanche knows as well. Throughout the play, Blanche is haunted by the deaths of her ancestors, which she attributes to their “epic fornications.” Her husband’s suicide results from her disapproval of his homosexuality.

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.

One of the memorable lines from the play of Blanche's is: "Whoever you are, I've always depended on the kindness of strangers." Blanche could be using the world "kindness" in an ironic way; from the kind of treatment Blanche desires and receives, it is likely that she has been treated the same and worse from other men (and women). Another take on the word kindness in that famous line is that perhaps she must really depend on strangers to be kind because her friends and family do not show her kindness. Blanche drinks because of how pessimistically she perceives herself and perceives her life. She fears and wishes to forget her past, so she drinks in the present, but drinks to the point where she extinguishes any chance for her future.

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.

Firstly, the reader may initially feel Blanche is completely responsible or at least somewhat to blame, for what becomes of

If Blanche had been given the support and understanding she desperately needed, her behavior would have been treatable. Instead, Blanche's humiliation and disgust for all she has done makes her unable to be truthful about her past and all she is running from. For instance, when confronted about her promiscuous past, she quickly adds to the web of lies for which she has already woven: “I’m afraid he does have me mixed up with this “other party.” The Hotel Flamingo is not the sort of establishment I would dare to be seen in.” (Williams 80) Blanche's trauma has not only created the problematic behavior from which she chooses to run but has made it so she can lie about it without much remorse.

Blanche deals with many issues the loss of loved ones, the loss of the family estate, the inability to deal with reality, rejection from others, and the rape by Stanley. Blanche has also become independent and assertive which is not the typical norm of a southern woman. She has been forced into a world she is not prepared for. Because of this Blanche begins to live in her own world, her own little fantasy. She also uses alcohol and sexual promiscuity to escape from the loneliness she has endured since her husband’s death. Williams shows us through the way Blanche speaks to the paper boy;