Blanche's Reality example essay topic

A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams. Character sketch of Blanche DuBois Blanche DuBois is one of the main characters of Williams famous play. The play has an array of symbolic but minor other characters, which enhance the uniqueness of the main character, like Stella Kowalski and her husband Stanley Kow laski and Harold Mitch Mitchell. The story revolves around the last two daughters of an old Southern dynasty The DuBois.

Blanche is the epitome of the southern charm. While Stella her sister is the polar opposite, who marries a working class Stanley Kowalski and severs almost all her connections to her illustrious primogenitors. Blanche's character has varying shades of delusions and inferiority, which were probably ingrained in her by her deep Southern upbringing that emphasized these weaknesses in females. She was to follow the example set probably by her mother to live like the lady of the house supported by her husband. Which was a very wrong stance to have when you are on the verge of a defunct dynasty and endless debt brought upon by squandering away all the family fortunes.

Her efforts to keep the pomp and the fanfare proved too meager and resulted in the auctioning of the Belle Never (her familial mansion). She even taught at a local school to make a living, but her spirit that never had been resilient enough was further degraded. Making her take cover in a world of her own where she could live in the same fashion without thinking about it. That she really did not mean to tell lies it was just that she believed that to be the truth. For somebody whose whole life has been a series of pretenses it was not very hard to do. She wanted to remain cocooned in her dis-reality where she did not sleep with men for money or never had a young husband who killed himself.

The husband who was a homosexual and his apparent suicide because of discovery were unimaginable to her. His death had led her in to a spiral of promiscuity probably to fill the chasm created by such a tragedy. All her encounters were anonymous and she filled death with desire to balance the misery of it all. In her reality she had taken a leave of absence from her school, not the fact that she was having a liaisons with one of her student; that she had left The Flamingo because of its squalid interior but because she was driven out by her flagrant prostitution. Blanche is very perplexing in the way that her taste in men is very un southern-like. She liked men more on the gentle side and she scorned any crassness, which reflects that she wanted to nourish rather than be cherished in a relationship.

It also may mean that she yearns for motherhood, a role that had never been bestowed upon her. Her choice of Mitch as suitor also reinforces her point, in him she sees the tenderness and quiet dignity that is missing in Stanley Kowalski. But she forgot one thing that he already had a mother. When Mitch finds about the real Blanche Dubois: Town Prostitute he balked at the idea of any relationship and confronted her with the truth. After that she snapped, the blurry line between truth and illusions completely gave away; it was just Blanche's reality now. Her whole life was marred by death and processions of Men which some how boosted her self-esteem and she envied her sister's marital life, because even though it was floundering, it was more solid than life had ever been for her.

Stella's pregnancy was like a blatant attack on her femininity as if it somehow belittled her existence. Her inability to come to terms with her own mortality and her age reflect how insecure she is, probably because of her objectification as an article of sexual gratification. It was like if Einstein had been told his mind was turning in to mush. She no longer views herself vital if she looks old or mature, because that would mean that she had lost her innocence as well.

Her sense of self had somehow dissipated without ever being born and her climatic rape bolsters that. Which signified why she shunned the reality in life. because of its harshness. The rape had been the last bit of reality she needed to succumb completely to insanity. And the fact that her sister did not believe her about the rape just makes it so bitter because her dishonesty had encompassed her truth. Blanche is so unstable but it is really hard not to like her, we can form camaraderie with her character because she was very human. Her flaws were just more magnified than the rest of us and she tried her best to find happiness but fate would not deal her a fair hand.

Her helplessness is so apparent that, she seems far more tragic than the Greeks.