Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Streetcar Named Desire

Blanche is a person of imaginative and false illusions, whereas Stanley is a creature of bestial reality. Although the binary holds firm throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche and Stanley are multifaceted and complex characters that preclude oversimplification. For example, Blanche's imaginative and false illusions are exacerbated and enhanced by her devotion to the drink. Her compulsive and excessive drinking prove to be expressions or symptoms of her imaginative and false illusions. Drinking also causes Blanche DuBois to intensify any imaginative or false illusions she might have had already. Because Blanche was once young and attractive, she still sees herself in that light. It is as if she has a false mirror before her like the stepmother in "Snow White." Blanche harbors false self-images, because those illusory self-concepts are more pleasant and comforting than the reality. Blanche can trick herself into believing her false illusions because she has been attractive; she has had relationships with men significantly younger than her. She has also been wealthy, and lives on a plantation that in many ways reflects and bolsters her sense of grandiosity, social status, and self-importance.

However deluded Blanche might seem throughout the play, her sense of self is at least in part grounded in reality. That reality is sometimes as bestial, raw, and primal as Stanley's. Blanche has experienced the type of hardship and pain that can be difficult to digest, but she knows the pain is there -- or else she would not need to drink or develop other dysfunctional coping mechanisms.

Stanley is very much a creature of bestial reality in the play, and he never actually proves himself otherwise. He only appears more sensible and logical than Blanche briefly, before it becomes apparent that he is actually out of touch with reality on a scale equal to that of Blanch. He remains, for example, unaware of Stella's suffering. However, it can be implied that his baser nature may at least be in part balanced by his love for Stella. The fact that Stanley and Stella have been together for a long time indicates at least some ability to make and keep emotional commitments.

Stanley is as much a victim of his own lower nature as Blanche is to hers, making the two more alike than they would admit. Their respective types of egotism create an explosive combination, which highlights how alike Blanche and Stanley actually are. Blanche's predilection for illusion actually covers up a keen sense of reality. Blanche knows that reality is difficult and painful. She might have internalized the pain, and is using alcohol to cope, but she is nevertheless in touch with that pain. Her having been hurt by her ex-husband shows that Blanche simply cannot deal directly with the power of her raw emotions: the bestial side of her is suppressed by alcohol but it remains lurking beneath the surface. For Stanley, a bestial mode of behaving seems to never be a mask for a deeper understanding of life and human relationships. He comes across as being much shallower than Blanche, given his lack of compassion remorse, sympathy, or empathy. Raping Blanche proves that Stanley is more egotistical than Blanche, even if the latter gets blamed more readily. Stanley might seem to be more grounded than Blanche, but actually he is not; his reality is one that is overly shallow and superficial. Blanche's reality is more complex. Illusion is part of Blanche's complex reality. Stanley is more animalistic and simplistic. He has no sensitivity to other people; whereas it is clear that Blanche does. Her awareness of the kindness of strangers, and her love for her sister, also show that Blanche may be more in touch with the reality of the human experience than Stanley is ever capable of doing. Stanley seems unaware of his own emotions, and completely out of touch with his wife.