Explain what you have learned about Blanches' character and her past - A street car named desire.

Explain what you have learned about Blanches’ character and her past

Blanche Dubois arrives in scene one carrying a valise, looking at a slip of paper, and seeming quite lost. It is clear from her description that she is in sharp contrast to the settings she is in. Blanche is ‘daintily dressed’ in a complete white ensemble as if she were attending a ‘summer tea or cocktail party’ whereas her surroundings consist of ‘rickety outside stairs’ and ‘the faint redolences of bananas and coffee.’ Blanche has been raised in the lap of luxury and she expresses how distasteful she finds Stella's current living conditions, commenting that ‘only Mr Edgar Allen Poe’ could describe more of a horrific setting.

Blanche admits that she wasn't so good the last two years or so, after Belle Reve had started to slip through her fingers. When Stella asks if Blanche is really interested in Mitch, Blanche replies, "I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again! Yes--I want Mitch . . . very badly! Just think! If it happens! I can leave here and not be anyone's problem...”

It is evident that Blanche has had a colourful and rather traumatic past many terrible things have happened to her since Stella left and they have affected her nerves and mental ability, for ...

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It is evident that Blanche has had a colourful and rather traumatic past many terrible things have happened to her since Stella left and they have affected her nerves and mental ability, for instance she is obsessed by her appearance and needs constant compliments from anybody willing to provide them, she is also a heavy drinker and has the constant need to bathe. Her sister Stella says of her current mentality that ‘nobody was as tender and trusting as Blanche’, but people like Stanley ‘abused her and forced her to change.’

Blanche craves attention from males and Mitch falls straight into this trap as her class and charm awe him. Blanche asks Mitch, in French, if he would like to sleep with her tonight. But he, of course, does not understand the foreign language, and when he attempts to touch her in any way, she reproves him for not being a gentleman. "I guess," she says, "It's just that I have old-fashioned ideals." Mitch tells Blanche about his dying mother, and suggests that she wants him to marry and settle down before she passes away. This is, of course, just what Blanche is after. Blanche tells Mitch about her first husband, the boy who wrote her the poems. Apparently, the boy had committed suicide after Blanche caught him having sex with another man.

Another part of Blanche’s life that has affected her immensely is the loss of Belle Reve, the home where she and Stella grew up together and they were both happy. Blanche is really very cruel to Stella and doesn’t hesitate to let her sister know that she blames her for the loss of the plantation, Blanche accuses her of having abandoned the family home, of having left her to struggle alone.

BLANCHE: I, I, I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! So big with it, it couldn't be put in a coffin! But had to be burned like rubbish! You just come home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths–not always.

In conclusion, Blanche is not a bad person; she has just had a lot to cope with on her own for a long time and I personally feel sorry for her. When explaining her colourful past to Mitch she says, "After the death of Allan, intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with." This shows that Blanche is just a fading southern belle who wants to stay beautiful forever and she says to Mitch before their devastating break up that she doesn’t want ‘realism’; she wants ‘magic.’