...Orleans. The play starts when Blanche DuBois comes in New Orleans to visit her sister Stella after she lost the family plantation Belle-Reve because of money problems. She then meets her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, a World War II veteran. As soon as they meet each other, a mistrustful rivalry starts between them. A Streetcar Named Desire depicts the conflict between two opposing views as a poker game between Blanche and Stanley for control. From the beginning of the play, Williams starts distinguishing Stanley and Blanche by their mentalities. In fact, Blanche has the Old South mentality. She grew up in a plantation where she learnt how to behave as an aristocrat whereas her brother-in-law is an industrial and a Polish immigrant representing the New South. Blanche is described as delicate and fragile whereas Stanley is rude and violent. Blanche lives in a world of illusion. She acts as a queen and wants the men to treat her like it. Unlike Blanche, Stanley lives in a rude world, a world where if a person are strong enough physically and mentally, he or she can succeed. In addition, Williams opposes Stanley and Blanche by their description. First of all, he opposes their names. While Blanche means “white” in French and seems to represent innocence, Kowalski means “blacksmith” and represents the rudeness, the violence, and the primitive side of Stanley. Secondly, Williams opposes his main characters physically. Indeed, he describes Blanche...
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...is from an upper class family) however he comes from a very different and less elegant background, than both Stella and Blanche (Stella’s older sister). We can tell this from the first impression Blanche give ‘Where were you? In bed with your Polack!’ this shows the clear lack of respect that Blanche has not only towards Stanley but towards Polish people and people of a lower class, we know that Blanche shows no guilt in what she has just said as she said it in such a shocking and shameful gesture, she is also clearly referring to him as a ‘lower class working man’. In Scene 1, Stanley is shown as having ‘animal joy’ and being a ‘richly feathered male bird’ this shows his superiority and this is also shown in most of his conversations that he has with his friends and wife, Stanley is typically the dominant speaker, he refuses to accept that someone tells him that his actions are wrong and he shows this throughout the play when he uses Stella’s upper class status against her by mentioning his ‘Napoleonic code’ meaning that everything that his wife owns, or partly owns is his. This shows that his character is very dominant and has an aggressive side to him. Stanley’s ‘animal joy’ can also show us that he has animalistic qualities for example when in scene three (the poker scene), Stanley and Blanche have a disagreement about the radio playing out loud, Blanche wants to listen to some ‘rhumba’ music so that she can enjoy the calmness and forget about all the bad things affecting...
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...Kowalski, can only be described as down-to-earth and brutish. This is unquestionable, and is evident numerous times throughout the play. Stanley serves as the antithesis to Blanche who, in turn, is quiet, fragile, and deceitful. The conflict in the play arises from Blanche’s arrival to the Kowalski’s residence and is a direct result from the meeting of these two contrasting characters. As such, it is perhaps not difficult to see that the motivations for most of Stanley’s defining actions in the play stem from Blanche who, from his point of view, is just a disruptive presence that doesn’t belong and only serves to annoy him. Blanche’s occupancy, coupled with Stanley’s dominant personality, is the basis for his multiple signs of aggression and assertion in the play. Stanley, as is so often claimed by Blanche, is simple. His motivations throughout the play aren’t very complex: he wants to be able to do what he wants, and to maintain control while he’s at it. Stanley is evidently an alpha male; if someone is doing something that he doesn’t approve of, whether it makes sense or not, he’s going to disagree. This makes it very easy to understand his actions. Blanche came uninvited into his home – the place where Stanley dominates. This already puts their relationship off to a bad start. Throughout the play Blanche made changes to his home as well as ripples in his relationship with Stella. Stanley didn’t approve of the lampshade simply because it wasn’t his decision. Stanley didn’t...
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...Characters Blanche DuBois When the play begins, Blanche is already a fallen woman in society’s eyes. Her family fortune and estate are gone, she lost her young husband to suicide years earlier, and she is a social pariah due to her indiscrete sexual behavior. She also has a bad drinking problem, which she covers up poorly. Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety, Blanche is an insecure, dislocated individual. She is an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty. Her manner is dainty and frail, and she sports a wardrobe of showy but cheap evening clothes. Stanley quickly sees through Blanche’s act and seeks out information about her past. In the Kowalski household, Blanche pretends to be a woman who has never known indignity. Her false propriety is not simply snobbery, however; it constitutes a calculated attempt to make herself appear attractive to new male suitors. Blanche depends on male sexual admiration for her sense of self-esteem, which means that she has often succumbed to passion. By marrying, Blanche hopes to escape poverty and the bad reputation that haunts her. But because the chivalric Southern gentleman savior and caretaker (represented by Shep Huntleigh) she hopes will rescue her is extinct, Blanche is left with no realistic possibility of future happiness. As Blanche sees it, Mitch is her only chance for contentment, even though he is far from her ideal. Stanley’s relentless persecution of Blanche foils her...
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...the relationship between truths and hidden realities. The role of the absence of light is best seen in the relationship between Mitch and Blanche and how Blanche shies away from light in order to hide her age from Mitch, and in a more subtle attempt to hide her past and the reality of what actually happened in Laurel. The most literal “hiding” that occurs is Blanche’s hiding of her real age; she refuses to let Mitch see her in full light as she does not want him to know that she is older than she says she is, by hiding in the shadows she hopes to hide her wrinkles and her fading youth from Mitch. Her not allowing Mitch to see her in full light also plays a more meaningful role in the text, she is hiding her past from him, the details of her previous marriage and the fact that her first husband was homosexual and killed himself because of how she reacted to that fact. She is also hiding her history of being banished from the town due to her scandalous escapades at the Flamingo Hotel; she attempts to portray herself as a very well mannered, upstanding women....
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...A Street Car Named Desire Tennessee Williams suggests that Blanche represents the faded American past in a few different ways. One way is her difficulty fitting in with life in New Orleans. New Orleans is a modern urbanized city unlike Laurel, which is a small rural town where Blanche comes from. Blanche's life is crumbling just like the old south is crumbling. Blanche and Stanley were in two completely separate and different worlds, which caused major conflicts between the two. The biggest conflict is between illusion and realism. Blanche lives her life avoiding the truth and trying to erase her past. She lives for how things should to be, not for how they are. She prefers magic and shadows to facing facts in bright light as she says "I don’t want realism. I want magic". A lot of the things she does are to make her feel pure which she is not. She blames herself for the death of her husband and therefore constantly bathes to cleanse herself of her past. Blanche also doesn't accept the fact that she is getting older. She stays away from lights because "electric light bulbs go on and you see too plainly" and she does not want people, in this case Mitch, to see what she actually looks like. Stanley looks at the world as it is and not what he wants it to be. He doesn't buy into all of the things that Blanche says. When Blanche said that she lost Belle Reve, Stanley didn't trust her because she didn't have any proof. We see he didn't trust her when he said "In the state of...
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... Midge Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes) in Vertigo (1958) is a girl friend, fiancée and a mother figure combined into one. As Scottie Ferguson’s (James Stewart) fiancée she tries to pacify and help him when she finds him lonely and withdrawn in the hospital sequence after Madeleine’s death. She tries to be brave and amusing and adds more emotion. Midge as a girl friend stands by Scottie’s side at the time of the difficulties and during his mental breakdown. She is very much loyal to him. Like a true friend and mother Midge tries to console and embrace Scottie saying: Please try, Johnny. You’re not lost-Mother’s here . . . You don’t even know I’m here, do you? Well, I’m here.” (Spoto 289/qtd from the film). According to Spoto Vertigo is “as much the tragedy of a lost and exploited woman as it is the bizarre story of an abused man” (291), and in the end only one survives and the other is lost forever. The victim is the woman. These words suggest that woman is ready to sacrifice her life for the sake of others. Woman is just a plaything in the hands of a powerful, freedom-loving man. Hence Madeleine (Kim Novak) is exploited twice by Galvin Elster (Tom Helmore) and then by Scottie (James Stewart). Scottie loved blonde Madeleine just as Hitchcock. He was bothered about Judy’s red hair. He transforms her and wants her to wear dress that dead Madeleine used to wear. Judy (Kim Novak) is willing to do anything to attain Scottie’s love and attention. People try to transform others...
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...Named Desire - to change the original text. The censors of the Breen Office forced Kazan to omit the film’s raw and candid portrayal of human behavior and relationships. Because the Breen Office controlled of the film industry, it definitely took away the audience’s understanding of the characters and their relationships especially in Stella’s descending of the staircase, dialogue between Blanche and Stella,...
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...The overshadowing theme of wealth depicts how the setting influenced the characters and the playwrights context. In A Streetcar Named Desire, the Dubois family came from a very wealthy aristocrat family but after many generations, the money ran out. The day after Blanche encountered Stanley’s anger episode, she went looking for Stella because she went back to him even after he beat her. Stella wakes up the next day as if nothing has happened while Blanche is planning all sorts of ways to leave. In the middle of her speech, Stella says, “I know how it helps your morale just having a little pocket-money on you” (Williams 4.79). Although money cannot buy you happiness, in this play, it seems like money can buy Blanche some confidence. She loves...
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...Insanity of Blanche Dubois The movie “A Streetcar Named Desire” contains many elements of insanity. The character that displays the most tragic insanity is Blanche Dubois. Blanche is from Laurel, Mississippi were she loses her home Belle Reve, after the death of her relatives. She then travels to her sister’s home where her actions lead her to insanity. She goes to her sister home as a fallen woman of society. She has a difficult time distinguishing between what is real and what is fantasy. Blanche Dubois is a complex individual who provokes strong reactions from other characters. The main factors are her lying, drinking and infatuations with men. Unfortunately, these actions drive her to the final breaking point and lead her to an insane asylum. Upon her arrival to Elysian Fields, Blanche is unimpressed with the surroundings. Here she hopes to escape her poor life and bad reputation. As she enters the apartment, she meets Eunice who leads her to her sister’s apartment. Stella and her husband Stanley arrive home, and Stella greets her sister warmly. She leads her sister to believe she is one who has never lived indignantly. Blanche is not there long before she begins to lie to her sister to make herself seem better. She leads her to believe she is there on a leave of absence from her job as a school teacher. However, the reality is that she was fired for having relations with a seventeen year old boy. Blanche also reveals that her family home, Belle Reve, has been lost...
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...Blanche: A sympathetic Character she is Blanche in "A Streetcar Named Desire" is a character that throughout the play stirs all type of emotions. It can be difficult when trying to figure out if someone is a sympathetic character or not. With that being said despite the flaws that Blanche possesses she is still a sympathetic character. This can be supported examining the play. The beginning of the play Blanche automatically generates sympathy, as she is portrayed as the Southern wealthy woman who has a problem speaking to a black person in a normal manner. She has lost the family home Belle Reve and all the family members have died. She has come to stay with her sister Stella and brother in law Stanley (Williams 2191). This quote generates much sympathy for the character that have watched everyone die 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( )” Blanche goes on a spree trying to turn Stella against Stanley throughout the play. During Scene 4 Blanche is desperate to turn them against each other. She says to Stella: "He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits. Stella cruelly rejects Blanche, in favor of Stanley. Stella ignores Blanche...
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...have. In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, the theme of power is very evident throughout the play. Stanley Kowalski’s hunger for power has led him to violence. He is a man who takes pride in what he does and his role as the head of his household. His brutal and abusive attitude is one that readers are made aware of the moment he comes into the scene. In the first seen he is seen hurling raw meat to his wife showing his animalistic approach to life. All of his authority is put into question when Stella’s sister Blanche comes over for a stay. Always Stanley’s power upon others is served with a side of violence. In scene three we witness what happens when he feels that he is losing power. Stanley has been losing money from the poker playing and needs to save face with his buddies. He complains that that the women are talking too loudly, and then complains again when Blanche turns on the radio. He gets up and switches it off himself. Blanche, who obviously doesn’t see Stanley as a threat, turns it back on and begins to waltz with Mitch. Then Stanley who has been drinking takes the radio and hurls it out the window as a sign of superiority and putting his foot down. When Stella tells his friends to leave he chases her and beats her. Stanley has been losing money from the poker playing and needs to save face with his buddies....
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...How does Williams present Blanche in scene 1? From the beginning of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams, it is evident that Blanche will demonstrate a contrasting persona to that of the other female voices, ‘her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit.’ The introduction to Blanche through the stage directions makes it apparent to the reader that Blanche will not blend in with her new surroundings and will believe herself to be superior to that of her peers: ‘looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district.’ The conventional techniques used by Tennessee Williams such as stage directions and language devices allow the audience, from the offset, to understand the contradictory and hysterical personality that Blanche will show throughout the play- with the implication that her lies will lead to not only a physical, but mental deterioration. The other women in Scene 1 appear to be of a confident nature who will converse with one another, no matter the race or hierarchical status. However, when we are first introduced to Blanche it appears she is reluctant to talk to people of a different race, or of women who seems more lower class than herself. The audience are made aware of this from the stage directions ‘wearily refers to the slip of paper’. The word ‘wearily’ connotes the idea that she has a lack of enthusiasm to partake in conversation as she, perhaps, perceives herself to be of a superior...
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...Desire' where Blanche DuBois and desire are inextricably linked. Indeed, she arrives in Elysian Fields after taking a streetcar named desire. One critic has said that the journey which Blanche takes to get to her sisters apartment on a streetcar named Desire and and then changing to a streetcar named Cemetries reflects her overall journey through life. For example, in her youth she rode on her desires and during as well as after the play takes place, she changes to a morbid route, described as "Cemetries". In some sense, her quest for desire was as short lived as her tram ride. Another moment where the idea of desire is evident is when Stanley tells Stella that "I (he) am the king around here, so don't forget it." which reflecs his desire to have power and control over everyone in his 'domain'. This is one moment in the play where Stanley's true controlling ideas are shown to the audience. Through Stanley, Williams presents us with the idea that he is one who has achieved his desrie of being unnapposed in his society. An example of this is at the end of the play where Stanley isn't held accountable for a crime he has committed (the rape of Blanche) and his life goes back to how it was at the beginning of the story with him keeping control of his life and the lives of the surrounding characters. This also gives the audience a sense of futility of the life and how so much can change but at the end of an episode the status quo isn't guaranteed to change. Blanche has a pressing...
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...marxism, and psychoanalytical, to enhance the importance of each character's actions in order to create a masterpiece that consumes you instantly. Feminism is the most prominent literary criticism within A Streetcar Named Desire. Patriarchy is seen repeatedly in almost all of the interactions Stanley has with his wife Stella and her sister Blanche. In scene two of the play Stella doesn’t want Blanche around when Stanley has his poker night so she tells Stanley, “I'm taking Blanche to Galatoire's for supper and then to a show, because it's your pok'r night.” (Williams 32) and he replies, “How about my supper, huh? I'm not going to no Galatoire's for supper!” (Williams 32) to her. This portrays feminism because Stella knows that Blanche would call...
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