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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...
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…
Work Cited
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire.
But on the other hand, men lose interest quickly" (Williams 81). She believes the way to catch a man (which she believes she must do to stay alive), is to act innocent and girlish, and she is not innocent and girlish at all. This shows how tragic her character is, and how self-defeating her dreams and hopes are, because she is setting herself up for failure, and she will
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Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play by Tennessee Williams that explores the relationships between Stella (DuBois) and Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois, Stella's sister. In the play, Williams analyzes how social constructs and expectations influenced Blanche's behavior and the factors that contributed to her mental breakdown. Blanche's mental breakdown piques towards the end of the play, however, it can be argued that Blanche was psychologically damaged before she arrived
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