Blanche and Mitch's relationship in "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams.

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English Coursework Essay – Blanche and Mitch’s relationship

Text studied: “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams

Blanche and Mitch are two very different characters but in spite of this they connect instantly. Mitch is one of Stanley’s oldest friends, and Blanche is Stella’s sister. The first time they meet, they both notice a unique quality to each other. Blanche detects an awkwardness around Mitch, that makes him different from the rest of the other, boisterous boys. Mitch is curious about Blanche. She is different to all the other girls he has known, and in his eyes, she is romantic, and graceful. They share common ground because they have both lost someone they loved and they understand each other’s feelings when it comes to death. I think they are drawn together because they see something in each other that they both need.  Mitch needs Blanche because his mother is dying and she wants to see him settled down before she dies. Also, I think when she dies Mitch needs someone to take her place. Mitch also likes Blanche because he knows his mother would approve of her charm, intelligence and sophistication. Blanche feels she is “played out” meaning her youth is over, and her looks are fading. Instead of becoming a lonely spinster, she would rather put up with Mitch. Because of these reasons, I think that the something they see in each other is loneliness. Loneliness is what brings Blanche and Mitch together and loneliness is the main reason they would have been a good couple – to keep each other company.

To understand them as a couple, you have to look at each of them and analyse them in turn. Blanche represents what ought to be. When we see her first in the play, she appears to be the essence of purity, seeming delicate and innocent. As she tells Mitch, she cannot bear vulgar language and we find out in scene nine she prefers magic to realism. During her childhood she was surrounded by wealth and she is well educated. However the wealth and her family home have been lost and she has had to pay the price. When she was 16 she married a young man who was gay. Once she found out he was gay, by catching him with another man, she told him he disgusted her and he committed suicide, an act that affected her for the rest of her life. This event scarred her, and she carried the guilt from his suicide from then on. I think that she feels she failed her husband, and she tries to find men who have some of his qualities and remind her of her dead husband. To ease her guilt, and fill the empty void after Allan’s death, she gives herself away to men as well as drinking heavily. She is ashamed of her drinking problem and covers it up poorly. All her family apart from Stella have died in front of her and she desperately looks for ways to escape the brutality and suffering of death and reality.

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I think that if you are aware of her past, you can understand why she acts the way she does. She has come to Stella not only because she had nowhere else to go, but for her help and love. Instead of this, she finds hostility and rejection, especially from Stanley.

To compensate for her loneliness and despair, she creates illusions. She wants to be seen for what she wishes to be, instead of who she really is. This is why she is constantly bathing and she puts up a paper lantern – to cover the harshness of reality, ...

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