The Analysis of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

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The Analysis of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

  Blanche Dubois is a schoolteacher from Laurel, Mississippi who arrives at the

 New Orleans apartment of her married sister, Stella Kovalski. Despite that they already  

 lost close contact with each other, she intends to remain there for a long time. Blanche

 tells that she had to leave Laurel after loosing their old home, Belle Reve because of the

 death of all their relatives. She also left her teaching position because of her bad nerves.

 She seems to be very disillusioned and unsatisfied with the Kovalski’s home and the

neighborhood they live in,  though she cannot afford a hotel as she’s out of money. She is

quite unaware at first that with her snobbish social pretensions she criticizes them and

 cannot even realize that she is ‘a monkey on their back’.

In the beginning of the play, Blanche is depicted as wearing white clothes and  

 having a moth like appearance, becoming this way the symbol of purity; even her name

 suggests this – Blanche means white. This kind of appearance hides the best her past sins

 and her ambiguous, immoral character. The scene describes the surroundings with a tone

 of commonplace brutality and cold reality, into which Blanche appears as a sensitive

 

lady- like figure. Her outlook can be associated with light in this sense, but as we learn

later on she is definitely not attracted by light.

Another key fact in this scene is the road she took to arrive here, in the French  

quarter. She says that she took a “ streetcar named Desire, and then … one called

 Cemeteries”. (Williams, Scene One)  So, by this, the author already suggests that desire

 leads to something tragic, perhaps death and Blanche cannot escape her fate after she

 passed on the road of Desire.

The symbolic home, Belle Reve and Blanche’s  “reality” is also in close    

connection. The name of the plantation home means ‘beautiful dream’, so by loosing the

 ancestral home, she lost her innocence and would-be happy ending of her life. However

 the fact that all the Belle Reve-ian relatives died, implies the morally corrupt background

 of the family. This way the play is similar to a Greek tragedy, in which the protagonist

 cannot escape the destiny of her family.

The first reference to Blanche’s fear of light is present in her first meeting with    

 

 Stella. She asks her to “turn that over-light off!” (Williams, Scene One)  This is a hint

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 that she certainly hides something from her sister. She prefers instead semi-darkness,

 that gives a background to her false, illusionary world, in which she retreats during her

 nervous crises.

Another destroying element in her life alcohol, however she tries to hide her sick      

 attraction to whisky throughout the play. She is at a point of desperation and as usually

 alcoholics do, tries to escape from her problems into drinking. Running away in an

alcohol- steamed world helps her to endure the harsh reality. By lying that she rarely

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