Blanche has arrived to spend the summer with her newly married sister Stella. Dispirited and penniless, she initially maintains a cover-up of a gentility lady, but this soon crumbles to reveal a desperately lonely, unstable woman yearning for a safe harbour thought out the book. Regards Blanche as the representative of "tradition and idealism, seeing herself, as she would like to be, denying what she is, trying to appear special and different.
The background of Blanches relationship with Allan gradually unfolds during the course of the play in various scenes. It outlines the main event of their relationship and decried how these have shaped Blanche’s life since Allan’s death.
I think that Blanche’s attitudes towards alcohol help her believe in her illusion and it helps her nerves. I think that blanche has done some things in Laurel that she was the influents of alcohol, that why she try to conceal her drinking. e.g. before Allan death. ‘No, ones my limit.’
Blanches often has as hot bath because she feel herself dirty. She cleans her self with the water. Water is a symbol of purification. The heat is to calm her nerves. Blanche background is show early in the book. Blanche has a very upsetting background life. She was marriage at a young age. She was sixteen and fell in love. She married a ‘young boy name Allan’. Blanch fell in love with Allan because he had a sort of gentleness about him that make him different. : "There was something about the boy, a nervousness, a tenderness, an uncertainty that I didn't understand." We soon find out that Allan was a homosexually. Despite that fact Blanche wished to satisfy her need to protect and help the young boy: "He lost every job. He came to me for help. I didn't know that. I didn't know anything except that I loved him unendurably."
She regretfully blames herself for driving her husband to suicide by cruelly rejecting him – “Suddenly in the middle of the dance floor, the boy I had married broke away from me and ran out of the casino. He stuck a revolver into his mouth and fired. It was because, on the dance floor, unable to stop myself I said - 'you're weak! I've lost respect for you! I despise you!"
William uses the polka dance song in this scene that replays in Blanches mind that is a symbol of Blanche and her past. The Varsouviana is a classical waltz, which is show high class ‘we danced the Varsouviana!’
Blanche has been extremely traumatised by this event. Blanche then on in life experience many deaths. There had been her father, mother, Jessie, Margaret and then Allan. Which then bring us to the stage when she lost Belle Reve and the part Stella play.
Stella had a part to play in blanches downfall form the very beginning. Blanche was indebt at Belle Reve. Herself carrying the entire burden descended her on her shoulder. Belle Reve was lost because of the expenses made for the funnels. Blanche was lost in her own world when she describes Belle Reve; Stella describes it as a hysterical outburst. Blanche blames Stella for losing belle Reve because her leave.
‘But you are the one that abandoned Belle Reve, not I! I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, also die for it.’
The technical skill used is sound and colours are added to the scene. The music of the blue piano grows louder. Stanley cannot be solemnly responsible for the traumatised Blanche. There is also the account that Stella chose to marry Stanley and stayed with him no matter what. I feel that blanche sees this as act of violence and her upbringing frowns upon this. She can understand Stella’s decision:
‘ Life with such a man is to go to bed with him! And that’s your job-not mine!’
Stella still defends him at his worst last night. Stella shows a hold different side of her.
‘ Things happen between a man and a woman in the dark-that sorts of makes everything seems-important.’
Blanche describes this as a brutal desire and gives the streetcar name as an example for a One-night stand.
‘The name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bang through the quarter, up one old narrow street and down another……….’
William uses many pauses in this scenes showing some important of the script and uses train as a dramatic after so that you will picture the train in her head.
Then on Blanche describes her feeling toward Stanley in this scene after the attack. Stanley is the husband of Stella. Stanley Kowalski name comes from Pole land.
Mitch was Blanche last pieces of hope of love. Blanche know constantly that her looks are fading away and that she getting older. All she wanted to do is settle down.’ All I want to do is rest’. She needed somebody and thanks the lord for Mitch because she could see the gentleness inside him.’ a cliff in that the rock of the world that I cloud hide’. Mitch feat the same way as Blanche.’ You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be you and me, Blanche?
They huddle together and embrace, feeling a mutual need for each other - they kiss on the lips. Stanley could see that Blanch and Mitch was getting closes so he started to research about her background. Stanley found out about past and tell Mitch and Stella. Blanche is let down by Mitch by not showing up to her birthday party. A drunk and vindictive Mitch arrives to confront Blanche while Stella and Stanley are on their way to the hospital. she fearfully notices his strange appearance and finds him to be an unrepentant suitor:
Oh, my, my, what a cold shoulder. And what uncouth apparel! Why, you haven't even shaved!
The polka tune starts up in Blanche's mentally-disturbed head Stanley takes extreme offense at Blanche's denigration of his ethnic nationality: "I am not a Pollack. People from Poland are Poles. They are not Pollacks. But what I am is one hundred percent American. I'm born and raised in the greatest country on this earth and I'm proud of it. And don't you ever call me a Pollack!" Cruelly, he presents Blanche with a "little birthday remembrance," a Greyhound bus ticket back to where she came from: "That's a ticket back to Laurel on the bus. Tuesday."
Stanley believes that sister-in-law Blanche has upset their good times since her arrival. He remembers back to earlier good times before she arrived and deceptively told them of the majestic Belle Reve and its columns:
Listen, baby, when we first met - you and me - you thought I was common. Well, how right you was! I was common as dirt. You showed me a snapshot of the place with them columns, and I pulled you down off them columns, and you loved it, having them colored lights goin'! And wasn't we happy together? Wasn't it all okay till she showed here? And wasn't we happy together? Wasn't it all OK? Till she showed here. Hoity-toity, describin' me like an ape.
Suddenly going into labor, Stella asks to be taken to the hospital to have her baby delivered
