Blanche and Stanley want to destroy each other from the start. Their personalities clash too much for them to get along. Blanche describes Stanley to Stella:
“He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There’s even something – sub-human – something not quite to the stage of humanity yet!”
Blanche is a very delicate, wealthy looking woman. She is quite good looking but tries to avoid light as it brings out every wrinkle in her face and shows off her real age. She pretends to be young, although she is about five years older than Stella. She tells lies to people who don’t know her because that is how she thinks things should be.
Stella and Stanley came to be together with Blanche because Blanche was sacked from her teaching job for having an affair with a seventeen year old student and lost her plantation, Belle Reve, due to lack of money. She went to stay with Stella and Stanley because she needed somewhere to live where she can have someone to look after her.
At first, Blanche acts quite nervously around Stanley although before long she starts to flirt with him. Stanley doesn’t like Blanche too much at first but is friendly towards her because Stella tells him to be. However, after a while Stanley gets angry with Blanche because of her expensive property and long baths in the mornings. He is often shouting at her and even goes as far as raping her nearer the end of the play. Blanche is disgusted with Stanley’s behaviour and starts to think of him as an animal.
Stanley finds out that Blanche has lost Belle Reve. He also notices Blanche’s collection of fine clothing and jewellery of which he exclaims:
“Open your eyes to this stuff! You think she got them out of teacher’s pay?”
This makes me think that Stanley believes that Blanche got the money for her clothes and jewellery from Belle Reve. It is at this point when Stanley takes control of the relationship between the three and brings up the Napoleonic Code:
“In the state of Louisiana we have the Napoleonic Code according to which what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband and vice versa.”
Stanley becomes angry when he doesn’t receive any money from the loss of Belle Reve. Stanley uses Stella as an attempt to get Blanche to leave. Stanley knows that if he can’t persuade Blanche to leave then Stella can. He is constantly trying to find “th’ dope” on Blanche.
Simultaneously, Blanche tries to convince Stella to leave Stanley:
“Don’t – don’t hang back with the brutes (referring to Stanley)!”
Also, Stanley refrains from Stella’s wishes and decides to give Blanche a hint. For her birthday he gives her a one way ticket back to Laurel, the city in which Belle Reve was based, showing heartlessness and selfishness.
This destroys Blanche.
Throughout the play, Blanche taunts Stanley as a Polack:
“You healthy Polack, without a nerve in your body, of course you don’t know what anxiety feels like!”
To which Stanley replies angrily:
“I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is a one hundred per cent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack.”
Stanley complains about Blanche’s constant bathing. He mimics her; “washing out some things”, “soaking in a hot tub’.
Stanley’s friend, Mitch becomes a victim of the relationship when he falls for Blanche. Blanche lies to him about her age and background. Just as Blanche believes that she shall get married to Mitch, Stanley destroys the relationship by revealing the truth behind the lies which were told to Mitch. Stanley defends Mitch from Blanche and although the relationship between the two had finished, Mitch still became angry at Stanley and went as far as threatening to kill him when Stanley had her taken away by a doctor and his matron.
Whilst Stella is giving birth to her child Stanley goes back to Elysian Fields
drunk. When he gets back to the apartment he meets Blanche, wondering, dreamily about the rich life. In his drunken state he tries to seduce Blanche but when she is having none of it he rapes her. This is a major point in the story because it symbolises the strength of Stanley, the fragility of Blanche and how much more power he has over her.
Stanley had gradually destroyed Blanche from the moment he found out about Belle Reve and, at the end of the story, he managed to get her to leave by using her own weaknesses against her. Therefore, Stanley ‘triumphed’ over Blanche.
