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
touches it shows her desire to depict herself different as she really is.
At the opening of the play she is already a depraved woman and has lost
everything. The only chance is to come to her sister because she has no one else to turn
to. She’s so desperate that she has chosen these undesirable surroundings and these
“unworthy” people. The one who immediately realizes her weaknesses is Stanley,
Stella’s violent husband. He destroys her sensibility even from the beginning with
pointed question about her earlier marriage. Thus, he touches her life’s most sensitive
aspect – he shows no discretion, no tact and attacks directly.
Similarly, Blanche’s frequent baths emphasize even more her ambiguous
behaviour. She bathes constantly, as she explains, to calm her nerves. Of course it is a
cleansing power but not only in the literally sense. By washing herself so often she tries
to get rid of her past sins. These never-ending baths annoy Stanley even more and push
him farther to his plan to destroy her and get rid of her.
While Blanche is disgusted by Stanley’s person and his animalistic behaviour, she
flirts openly with him. This attempt to seduce him is the only way she knows to achieve
success with men. She frequently uses her bodily charms, in spite of her fading youth, to
achieve admiration and appreciation. Eventually, she wants to tame this male beast and
to force him to acknowledge her superiority, the same as Stanley wishes. This is the only
similarity in their character; they both have wrong when they think that success can be
achieved only by possessing. Blanche in fact is shaken by Stanley’s harsh reality and he
is maddened by the provocative and contented woman who calls him a common and
bestial person in his own house.
By contrast, the only person who shows some compassion and understanding to
her is Mitch. She is immediately aware of his difference and recognizes a similar
sensitivity to hers in him. But this is not a sensitivity of an educated, intelligent and high-
spirited man but of one who had endured life’s trials and takes care of a dying mother.
They are similar because they both have lost a beloved person and can understand each
other’s suffering. But Blanche is obsessed with lies even when she is with him. She lies
about her reason for visiting Stella and about her age. As later turns out, she betrays the
only person who could save her from self- destruction. The intentional darkness in which
the two meet serves again her purposes because it hides her fading beauty and her guilty
conscience. Despite of avoiding light both symbolically and physically, she desires to be
in the center of attention all the time. Again she uses her body to attract, the only
occasion when she intentionally moves into the light: to expose her fleshly charms and to
arouse the attention of the present men.
Although, Blanche proves to be a morally rotten character, she is definitely
deterred by the coarse behaviour of Stanley, who beats Stella under the effect of alcohol.
The domestic violence she witnesses alienates her from this environment. What
eventually points out that she’s an outsider is her failure to protect Stella and to convince
her that this man would not bring her happiness. But Stella’s incomprehensible return
into Stanley’s arms explains clearly that their marriage is based on pure physical
attraction. Blanche is amazed and confused, becoming a threat to their marriage. At this
point she begins to feel her desperate situation and her dark past life piles up on her.
In scene 6 her last hope is presented, Mitch, as I mentioned earlier. She hopes to
capture him by presenting herself as a young, innocent and naïve girl. He, who seems to
aspire to some higher value and takes care of his ill mother is happy to find a worthy
woman to be his wife. Mitch is disgusted when a depraved woman is revealed to him.
Stanley’s revelation about Blanche’s past vanishes all her hopes. Her fantasy world is
shaken at its foundations.
In the meantime we learn Blanche’s tragic marriage with the young Allen Gray.
The beloved man turns out to have a homosexual affair with an older man. She feels
remorse because she caused his death by leaving him when Allen most needed her. She
says that the world was filled with a “blinding light” when Allen was with her and after
his suicide it disappeared for ever from her life. Consequently Blanche’s fear of light
relates as well as to this event. In face, the death of the husband brought her downfall.
Her sense of guilt made her throw herself into men’s arms and to refuse to acknowledge
the painful reality. Her world is of a mentally and spiritually ill person who cannot find
peace, harmony and security. Her sexual affairs were a kind of search for that vivid light
born out of love. The semi-darkness that rules her world signifies her disillusionment
and sexual maturity, a maturity that made her dreary and unscrupulous. By having affairs
with young men she longs her youthful innocence and revives Allen’s memory.
When she panics and feels remorse for Allen’s death the Varsouviana Polka is
heard in her mind. It is the polka tune to which Blanche and Allen were dancing before
his suicide. Earlier she discovered him in bed with an older male friend. They pretended
that nothing had happened and went out for dancing. In the middle of the dance she told
Allen that he “disgusted” (Williams, Scene Six) her. He ran away and shot himself with
a gun. The first time when we here it is in scene 1, when Stanley wants to find out about
her husband by putting questions to her. Next, it appears when Blanche tells the story of
Allen’s death to Mitch and we learn that it ends only when she hears the sound of a
gunshot in her head. From now on the polka tune can be heard more and more often,
meaning that her final mental breakdown is approaching. The music and the gunshot
becoming so constant can be interpreted as an allusion to her fate: perhaps her own life
will be ended by a gunshot.
The popular ballad, “It’s Only a Paper Moon”, that she sings while bathing
describes best her fantasy world. The song’s lyrics are about a make-believe world that
has no place for pain, suffer and memories. The song says that if you believe in an
imagined reality, it finally does become reality. She doesn’t consider her actions harmful
because she is not involved emotionally and she never lies in her heart, as she tells to
Mitch. While singing in the bathroom, Stanley reveals to Stella the details of her
sexually corrupt past. At this very moment her magical and imaginary self is confronted
with Stanley’s description of her real nature. Once Stanley tells the truth to Mitch and
Stella, they can no longer believe in her honesty and love, Mitch is horrified and cannot
understand Blanche’s behaviour and lets her down. He pushes her under the strong light
to see her true age and to reveal her inner nature. By doing so, he “rapes” her illusion
and makes her see things as they really are and her life as it is instead of “what ought to
be”. (Williams, Scene Nine)
Before the last scene, Stanley fulfills his victory upon Blanche: destroys her
physically too by raping her. He establishes his superiority by stigmatizing her as being
“his”. After trying to humiliate him and ruin his marriage, he needs a cruel revenge.
Actually the rape is the cause of her madness, no matter that Stanley thinks it has no
importance, after all she is like a prostitute. It is true that she slept with strangers but from
her free will and not forced by an “ape” as Stanley is. Her fragile nature cannot cope with
deliberate cruelty as she admits just before the incident. When she tells Stella about the
rape she makes her to be definitely sure that she has gone insane and her place is in a
mental hospital. I think it can be interpreted as well that she conveniently saved her
marriage by getting rid of her.
The last moment of the play when Blanche is taken to the mental institution
echoes her life philosophy: as she leaves, she says, “ I have always depended on the
kindness of strangers” (Williams, Scene Eleven), and she goes with the doctor who is a
stranger and seems to be a gentleman. Her life was ruined by a man and ends in another
man’s hands. Her illusions, aristocratic sensibilities and desperate search for emotional
stability had no place in a world of Kovalskis, where illusions must be destroyed and
primitive desires dominate.
On the whole, there remains only one question about Blanche’s real nature: what
kind of person was she, a depraved, wicked woman who fell in her own trap or an
innocent, naïve girl in a world that is not able of understanding and compassion?
Probably she would like to be such a girl but the unfortunate events of her life and her
weak character lead her on the wrong way. Despite the wish to dominate and seduce all
men, she ended as an object in their hand. She needed them to survive because a woman
could not live a successful life on her own those days (?), so became inferior to them.
Blanche is unable to get over the past and she fails to face the present or the future, thus
slips into insanity.
Works cited:
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire.
Works consulted:
Lichtenstein, Jesse and O'Dwyer, Deirdre. SparkNote on A Streetcar Named Desire.
4 Jan. 2006 <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/>.