Art & Identity in New Orleans

Up until the literal ending itself, both versions of A Streetcar Named Desire, the script and the movie adaptation, generally stay pretty similar. In the script, there’s a few additive mentions such as the specific notes about how Mitch was supposed to sit with him looking dazed and “dissolved into space,” and how “There is a moment of silence–no sound but that of Stanley steadily shuffling the cards.” Little notes like that would hardly be intentional gestures the audience watching the movie would likely notice, but it wouldn’t necessarily change the feeling, outcome, or final thoughts that the ending would leave its audience with regardless of whether they were reading the script or watching the adaptation.

Where the two versions drastically differ is after Blanche is led out by the Doctor; in the movie Stanley gets punched by Mitch and an argument about whether or not Stanley had done anything to Blanche. Stella ends up watching her sister be driven away while holding her baby, and it’s insinuated that she finally leaves Stanley for good after she runs up the stairs to Eunice’s apartment. The movie ends with Stanley calling after her without actually going up to check on her. In the play, Blanche acts pretty similarly to how she does in the movie. She walks out in a daze, not ignoring anyone, but simply not seeing them. Whenever she walks off, she doesn’t look over to see her sister either as stated in the stage notes. “[Blanche walks on without turning, followed by the Doctor and the Matron. They go around the corner of the building.]” Stella is nearly inconsolable as she hold her baby; Stanley calls out to her, walks over, kneels beside her, and opens her blouse, with the play essentially ending right after that.

The endings to both are far from happy, but at least the movie version provides a bit of solace in that Stella leaves her unhealthy relationship with Stanley. It’s unclear whether she will go back to him given her history of forgiving him, but for the moment the audience knows that she’s relatively safe in the apartment above. There are numerous open-ended questions, and while “happy” is far from the word that I would personally use to describe the ending, it’s at least satisfying to some minor extent. The script’s ending is depressing; it ends with Blanche being sent off, no one knowing for sure that Stanley assaulted her, Stella being inconsolable, and Stanley (for some reason) thinking that while she’s weeping that would be the perfect time to “find the opening” in her shirt. It leaves the impression that nothing will ever change for Stella, that Stanley will likely get away with his crime, and this baby will be left with a dysfunctional and unhealthy family while likely never knowing who Blanche was or what happened to her. Both are tough endings to swallow and leave a lot to think about in terms of sexuality, truth versus perception, vanity, and the way people are simple creatures who do what they like regardless of any consequences.

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche’s view of the world is complex and hard to completely unwrap. This is due to how she presents herself differently than how she really wants to think and act. Like in The Awakening, Blanche understands that the society she lives in has certain rules for her behavior. Her reputation (which affects her jobs and the communities she can safely interact in) depends entirely on how she presents herself. Blanche’s introduction to the audience emphasizes her efforts to appear as a high-class woman who’s still both innocent and young. The back-to-back revelation that she’s lost the DuBois family house, Belle Reve, and the unpacking of her expensive clothes from her wardrobe is meant to put her sophisticated act at odds with her situation. When Stanley confronts her about this, it’s the first time Blanche breaks her act to tell him exactly how she sees herself. She knows she’s not everything she pretends to be, which she puts as, “I know I fib a good deal.” Next, she gives an excuse for this: “After all, a woman’s charm is fifty per cent illusion.” However, she believes that her looks have diminished with her age, so when she’s trying to court Mitch, she relies on lies and any other tactic that she think will work. This includes avoiding direct light and lying about her morals, like when she tells Mitch, “I guess it is just that I have- old-fashioned ideals!” In a sense, Blanche creates a character for herself to play in order to win over Mitch, one that’s carefully crafted by all that she knows about the rules of society. She tells Stella, “I want his respect. And men don’t want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand men lose interest quickly.”

This deceiving is also a means to an end. While Blanche does seem to have some attraction to Mitch, she also sees him as a way of escape from her predicaments. When Stella asks her if she actually wants him, she says, “I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again! Yes- I want Mitch… very badly! Just think! If it happens! I can leave here and not be anyone’s problem…” Blanche is someone who will try anything to get what she wants- whether that’s a sense of love or a passing desire. However, manipulating reality into her own fantasy costs her in the end, as she loses sense of what’s fake. This mental break is caused by a combination of trauma, stress, and Stanley. He rips the fantasy away from her and leaves her with everything she wanted to push away, including her dark past and the future she can no longer have when Mitch leaves. When her lies are exposed, everyone else no longer knows what to believe, either, which means no one helps her when she tells them that Stanley raped her when Stella was in the hospital. I think the end of the book creates the implication that Stella does believe her, but like Blanche, facing the reality of that would break her, too.

[posted on behalf of a student]

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois deals with mental illness. The reader is not told exactly what mental illness(es) she has, but the reader can guess at a few that she may have. The only one the reader is told about is anxiety. As Blanche tells Stanley, “I take hot baths for my nerves. Hydro-therapy, they call it. You healthy Polack, without a nerve in your body, of course you don’t know what anxiety feels like!” (Williams 118) At the end of the play, it becomes clear that she is mentally ill with not just anxiety when Stella decides to send her sister to a mental institution. Blanche had become psychotic with delusions and no sense of reality. She had slowly been going towards this psychotic break throughout the entire play.

When Blanche first arrives at Stella’s apartment, the reader knows that she isn’t well. She tells Stella, “I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can’t be alone! Because—as you must have noticed—I’m—not very well….” (Williams 14) Even Blanche recognizes that she is not well at the beginning of the play but most likely has no idea how unwell she really is. The reader learns from Stella that Blanche has always been a “fragile” person as she encourages everyone to give her compliments as that is her “ little weakness” and tries to avoid having Blanche wind up in any type of conflict. As the play goes on, the world that Blanche has constructed for herself to keep her “safe” falls apart and she loses control, leading to her psychotic break.

Throughout the play, the reader knows that her drinking habits are not helping her mental state, but the first action that happens that leads to her psychotic break is Stanley confronting her about the papers of Belle Reve. Stanley starts digging through her trunk and finds the letters from her young husband who is dead. After he grabs them, Blanche yells, “Now that you’ve touched them I’ll burn them!” (Williams 38) She completely falls apart and ends up throwing all the papers she owns at him, yelling that he can do whatever he wants with them.

It is in scene six that the reader learns what really happened to her husband with him committing suicide and where much of the trauma Blanche has comes from. From this, the reader can conclude that Blanche has always been “fragile,” as Stella sees her, but it is the trauma that she has faced that has caused her to go from just being “fragile” to being unwell, leading to her mental illnesses and psychotic break.

In scene ten Blanche has begun to go into her psychotic state after Mitch has left her when he told her he didn’t want to marry her in the scene before. She believes that one of her old lovers has invited her on a cruise to the Caribbean in his yacht. She is all dressed up as if she is going to a ball and seems to believe that she really is at a ball as she is looking in the mirror and whispering as if there are other people there. The end of the scene is what pushes Blanche completely over the edge, with Stanley raping her while Stella is at the hospital having her baby. It is after this point that Stella makes the decision to send Blanche to a mental hospital and feels extremely guilty about it. Stella feels as if she is making the wrong choice but doesn’t know what else to do with her. The play ends with Blanche being taking away by the doctor and Stella sobbing because Blanche is gone.

The play A Streetcar Named Desire thrusts the audience into a dynamic of individuals between one who wears a mask versus one who doesn’t. Stanley feels the need to constantly try to call out Blanche for being a con artist; however, the underlying story is just a balance of dominance. The audience is made aware of the tension between them as they constantly try to keep their control over Stella. Stanley does so with physical force and manipulation, yet when he calls her back during the poker scene she comes ready to forgive, whereas Blanche is just as manipulative, as seen in their first meeting. Blanche states, “I want you to look at my figure! [She turns around] You know I haven’t put on one ounce in ten years, Stella? I weigh what I weighed the summer you left Belle Reve. The summer Dad died and you left us . . .” This allows her to assert herself over her sister; even though she has lost everything, she creates the facade that she was not only superior then but still is. Blanche also starts implanting the seed of thought that Stella is too good for Stanley not only because he’s Polish, but because he acts like an animal. However, the viewer can choose to see the characters as both having Stella’s best interest at heart, Stanley because he loves her and only wants her to see how Blanche is using her, or Blanche, who is trying to help her sister leave an abusive relationship especially with a child on the way. In the end, I truly believe it’s because neither of them wants to be alone. 

The clashing of the alpha male versus the fragile spinster would allude to the victory that would automatically go to the alpha. At the same time, Blanche gave Stanley a run for his money. He has probably never dealt with a woman who has challenged him, so rather than lose, he decided to physically assert his dominance. Why did the audience react so differently when Blanche was raped as to when she was the rapist? ( That’s not me in any personal way saying that she deserved it!) It probably was because they saw it as her filling the hole of her late husband or just the actions of a spiraling woman. Stanley and Blanche are mirroring each other in some way throughout the film as they have a sense of commonality. One accepts it while the other runs from it. The only driving force in their actions is the desires they have: to not be alone, to be the center of attention, or to live the life they feel they deserve. The end proves what most fear, that desire is a never-ending void that can drive you to either go mad or do the unthinkable. 

Disclaimer: This post goes into the following subjects: Abuse, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), rape, substance abuse, and suicide. If these topics make you uncomfortable, please do not read this, as your mental health is far more important than you reacting to this blog post. Also, let me stress that I am no expert on mental health. Any and all information that I recite comes from various sources that I will cite at the end.

Jesus Christ, where do I begin with this? At the start of A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois seemed like your average white Southern Belle during the 20th century. We first see her arriving in New Orleans to visit her sister, Stella Kowalski. After catching up with each other over drinks and cigarettes, Blanche meets her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, after returning home from bowling with the guys. As I said, it was a pretty normal evening, until a small throwaway moment caught my eye. When a cat screeched outside of the house, Blanche jumped. While a noisy cat would be a normal occurrence around the area, noted by Stanley acting nonchalant about it while answering Blanche’s question, Blanche was spooked. Anyone would jump at sudden loud noises when we least expect it. Minutes later, she fainted after Stanley inquired about her late husband. Later on, Blanche retells the story of what happened to her late husband. According to Blanche, her husband took his own life by shooting himself with a gun. Her hesitancy to speak about her late husband to being easily startled by sudden noises points to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Other symptoms that she displays are severe emotional responses to events that remind her of the traumatic event (Scene six when she flinches upon hearing a train and scene nine when “Varsouvania” replays in her mind), self-destructive behavior (In scene nine, she was drinking heavily when the polka song replays in her mind before Mitch arrived), and intrusive flashbacks (Scene nine when she “hears” both the song as well as the gunshot). This particular event stayed with her, and it affects her greatly even though it’s likely to have been about a decade or so ago. Due to her not seeking actual help and therapy, her PTSD has worsened over time.

Blanche isn’t just suffering from PTSD. It appears that she also developed Borderline Personality Disorder, a mental health disorder that affects her ability to control her emotions. This also comes with the caveat that any and all relationships that she had were rocky. In scene eight, Stella said that Blanche was taken advantage of and abused when she was very young. We don’t really have a rough timeline of when that occurred, but it likely happened when she was most likely a teen. BPD is likely to occur in children and teens who suffered from traumatic events with very little to no support. In scene nine, she clung onto Mitch like a vice, and when she was suffering from a flashback, she seemed to calm down for a while when Mitch kissed her. This leads me to believe that her means of “escape” from the past was in the arms of a man. This would explain why she slept around during her temporary stay at The Flamingo, as well as her scandal that caused her to be fired from her teaching position and chased out of town (Stanley gives her a bus ticket back to Laurel, which is ironic considering her said that she all but banished from town).

For Blanche, her having PTSD and BPD is no doubt a constant struggle for her. She appears to have taken to hydrotherapy in order to help with her nerves. Sadly, it would only work for a brief period until she has another episode. What really drove her over the edge was in scene ten was when Stanley raped her while taking advantage of her fragile mental state. Let’s not mince words here, Stanley is a piece of shit for doing this to Blanche. He made things worse for her after that. Stella sending her sister off to a mental hospital may have helped her in the end (Though let’s be honest, Stella and her son aren’t safe as long as they’re living with Stanley). In the finale, Blanche didn’t want to leave the bedroom when the Doctor and the Matron arrived because she knew Stanley was there.

And finally, let’s address the polka music. “Varsouvania” would be playing whenever Blanche’s mental fortitude is shattered. For example, the song starts playing in scene six as she was telling Mitch about her late husband’s suicide. Blanche said that song was playing on the night her husband died. Since then, that song is linked to her emotional turmoil, regardless of whether the song was played in a major key or minor key (In the world of music, major keys denote bright, happier feelings, whereas minor keys are more somber, darker moods). If she were in a much more frantic state, like in scene nine, the polka song would be louder and more hectic. At the beginning of a mental breakdown, the song would be playing faintly in the distance.

Work Cited

“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – Symptoms and Causes.” Mayo Clinic, 6 July 2018, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967.

https://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.org/what-is-bpd/bpd-overview/

The main plot to Tennesee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire follows a young couple living in New Orleans as the wife, Stella’s, glamorous and erratic sister stays with them. Blanche, the visiting sister, is initially perceived as flighty and snobby. However, once she reveals more of herself ,we see that her vanity is a show to hide her insecurities surrounding her past. Having lost her young husband to suicide, she then lost every other living member of her family save her sister. Finally, prompting her to move to New Orleans, she loses the family estate, Belle Reve. In the midst of her loss, Blanche was involved in sexual endeavors that were beneath her social standing.

In the background, propelling the story, is the trauma response that Blanche is enduring. She witnesses her young husband’s suicide after catching him engaged in sexual activities with another man. The way that Blanche talks about him gives the impression that she blames herself. She calls him just a boy and speaks of how she hurt him. Whenever she does talk about him, it is accompanied by the sound of an approaching train, which brings her inner turmoil to the physical world.

Blanche appears to be in survival mode still many years after her initial loss. She endured many years of constant deaths in her family, which she speaks of tragically. She comes to New Orleans in desperation, nursing an alcohol problem in her grief. Her desperation and inability to find peace are, in part, due to her stature in society, but they are fueled by unprocessed trauma.

A Streetcar Named Desire started off benignly.

Blanche, whom we later find out is Stella’s sister, tries to get off the streetcar to find her sister, Stella’s, place. What she ends up finding shocks her and changes her life forever. I will mostly talk about the role Stanley’s abusive behavior defines this story. Stanley’s true character first comes out during Blanche’s first bath. His proclivity for violence and abusive behavior is seen in this scene. He is demanding, doesn’t take no for an answer, and interrupts his wife constantly. Overall, his attitude towards Stella and Blanche is one of utter contempt and entitlement. 

Stanley: I don’t care if she hears me. Let’s see the papers!

Stella: There weren’t any papers, she didn’t show any papers, I don’t care about papers.

Stanley: Have you heard of the Napoleonic Code?

Stella: No Stanley, I haven’t heard of the Napoleonic Code and if I have, I don’t see what it-

Stanley: Let me enlighten you on a point or two, baby.

After this scene, Stanley confronts Blanche and starts grabbing her belongings. This is just one of the many, many red flags we see in Stanley’s behavior. Flash forward to the first poker game with Stanley and his friends. Here we see Stanley in his element, he is his full true self. He hits and abuses Stella, despite the knowledge that she is pregnant. Here we see who Stanley truly is. In the following scenes, Stella is forced to flee the apartment to the one above. The next day, Stella essentially says that it’s not a big deal, it happens a lot, we still love each other, and in the end she stays with him. (72-73) I have found this to be very common with people who have experienced domestic abuse. The diminishment of the abuse and Blanche’s attempt to get her to leave Stanley, are fairly common. Often, this diminishment is a tell tale sign that a woman is a victim of domestic violence.

Stanley’s behavior is quite honestly appalling and is and was a reality for many women. I find many things about this play problematic, namely among them that Stanley’s violence is left unchecked and uncommented upon. That the rape of Blanche is dismissed, even by her own sister, and that she is chucked into an insane asylum at the end. That Blanche’s mental problems and hallucinations are left undealt with and instead of Blanche being able to access help, she is again dismissed and carted away. Yes, Blanche was mentally unstable and had mental illness, but it was undoubtedly exacerbated by Stanley. In the end, we know how this story ends, even if some parts are left unanswered. Stanley’s abuse likely continued and probably got worse after the baby was born. Stanley’s proclamation that things will go back to normal after Blanche leaves is false in every sense. Quite honestly, there is no resolution at the end for anyone other than Stanley.

The play A Streetcar Named Desire takes place in New Orleans, following Stanley, his wife Stella, and his sister-in-law, Blanche.  While several conflict points appear throughout the story, they all seemed to revolve around the character Blanche.

This character on the basic level is very selfish.  Her drive is to get what she wants, which, often times, is attention from her male counterparts.  Her excuse for this, as she states in the play, is her way of handling the grief of losing her first partner.  This is something Stanley brings up to Stella and Mitch, Blanche’s latest goal, in order to show who Blanche is as a person.

In addition to this attention seeking, she also seems to seek positive popularity and social status.  She wears fancy clothes and perfume, and holds herself to a higher degree.  Even the way she talks implies that she feels superior to others.  As a part of this, she tends to spread several webs of lies that differ between the people she’s around.  This, of course, is part of the reason why Stanley, and later Mitch, are able to call her out on why she’s come to visit New Orleans.

Blanche is the conflict point throughout the entire story, through these various means.  In the end, it was what ruined her and her credibility.

At first, Blanche seems crude and mean as she is treating her sister, Stella, horridly. As the story progresses she becomes more bearable, but the readers start to understand Blanche is traumatized. Though this does not justify her behavior, it is good to note in understanding her. Stella talks about how badly Blanche was treated growing up; how Blanche always had to change herself for others. Blanche also hears the polka tune “Varaouviana” in her mind, that played when Allan, her husband, killed himself and the song stops once the gunshot goes off. It is quite heartbreaking when she first hears the song. She blames herself for him taking his own life, maybe she did have some influence though. She runs away to New Orleans to get away from the “scandals” of her past, not being honest with Stella about why she truly came.

She kisses The Evening Star paper boy (without his consent) then tells him to run along quickly because she “has to be good and keep her hands off children.” Which relates back to her having a “relationship” with a 17-year-old boy from her high school. She does not seem to really see the issue with either of these things; the child from her past is simply part of her past, but all she did was cause pain and trauma. She justifies everything she did in Laurel as coping with her husbands suicide. She has all of this bottled up hurt and she ran from person to person trying to overcome it, to move on. Having sex with consenting adults is one thing, but taking advantage of a child is another. This is a point where her actions become less and less justifiable.

Blanche has a lot going on, mentally. While I may not be a licensed professional, when reading over this play Blanche reminded me of histrionic personality disorder. She definitely is mentally ill, one way or the other, and it is undermined and sugar-coated a lot.  Stella passes off everything Blanche does and says as it just being how she is – it is more of a cry for help. She is very over-the-top in nature and craves the attention and approval of others. Her existence seems to only matter if it is validated by others. She wants to be loved, to be wanted, to be thought of as beautiful and perfect – she wants to be desired. Which plays on the theme of desire in the entire play. Blanche does not know how to be alone, how to be lonely. Blanche lives in a dream world intertwining with her own reality, as a way to cope with her pain.

In the end, Blanche leaves her sister’s place with more trauma and pain. Stella’s husband rapes her and Stella chooses not to believe Blanche because it is “easier” for her not to. Blanche gets sent away to a cynical institution.

The first scene does a lot to establish the way that appearances, money, and status are important elements to the characters throughout the play. The most obvious example is Blanche, but Stella had her moments as well. From the first introduction of Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, it says that “[Stella comes out on the first floor landing, a gentle young woman, about twenty-five, and of a background obviously quite different from her husband’s.]” This immediately primes the reader to understand that there will be some sort of socioeconomic conflict. Whether the issue would come from other’s perception of their relationship based on Stella marrying “below her status,” from within their relationship from some sort of insecurity either of them had with each other, or the arrival of Blanche would inflate problems between the two was yet to be seen, but it can be inferred from that one line alone how there underlying issues within the family or the married couple.

Even given the description of Blanche’s appearance, she is clearly out of her element with where she’s at. It leads the readers to wonder why she’s there to begin with, especially with how it doesn’t appear that she’s only there for a brief visit. She’s standoffish, only giving brief replies, appears appalled at the appearance of her sister’s home, and clearly doesn’t want to talk about her family’s planation. With what we later learn about what became of Blanche’s marriage, Belle Reve, her loss of job, and her numerous other problems it only adds to the irony of how much she judges her sister with how her own life is in shambles. She even goes so far as to tell her sister to turn off her lights because she detests her appearance so much, while this may only be because of Blanche’s flair for dramatics, she immediately follows it up by insulting the “disgusting place.” Within a few short lines, this play did an excellent job of establishing the characters, alluding to the problems brought to light later in the play, and the overall hypocrisy that Blanche embodies.

The roles of fantasy and reality play important roles in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Both Blanche and her younger sister Stella have constructed fantasies to escape the harsh reality of their lives.

Blanche is living with the guilt of her husband’s suicide and all the other things she’s done wrong. She is attempting to rebuild her life, and is hoping a relationship with Mitch later on in the play will allow her this. So through her lies, she constructs a fantasy where all her mistakes don’t exist. She left teaching for her nerves, not because of her underaged affair. Her actions after discovering her husband’s affair DIDN’T cause his death. This all comes crumbling down around her when Mitch learns the truth in scene nine. After being confronted, Blanche admits the truth and gives her an explanation.

“True? Yes, I suppose—unfit somehow—anyway. . . . So I came here. There was nowhere else I could go. I was played out. Do you know what played out is? My youth was suddenly gone up the water-spout, and—I met you. You said you needed somebody. Well, I needed somebody, too. I thanked God for you because you seemed to be gentle—a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in! But I guess I was asking, hoping—too much! Kiefaber, Stanley, and Shaw have tied an old tin can to the tail of the kite” (Scene 9). Blanche wanted to become the person Mitch needed through her lies and fantasies. But after discovering her lies Mitch wants nothing more to do with her.

After being raped by Stanley and her own sister choosing to not believe her; Blanche descends into her own mind as a form of self-protection. She continues this when the doctors come for her to protect her already broken mind. Fantasy is the only way she can protect herself in the end.

Stella’s fantasy is more subtle but all too grim; she living in a fantasy that her husband isn’t an abusive monster.

In Scene Four, we see Stella defending Stanley against Blanche the night after he hit her. “I know how it must have seemed to you and I’m awful sorry it had to happen, but it wasn’t anything as serious as you seem to take it. In the first place, when men are drinking and playing poker anything can happen. It’s always a powder-keg. He didn’t know what he was doing. . . . He was as good as a lamb when I came back and he’s really very, very ashamed of himself.” (Scene 4). Stella then proves her point at the end of the scene by kissing Stanley in front of her sister. Instead, this just brings on pity for Stella. She’d rather live in her fantasy than admit she returned to her abuser.

At the end of the play Stella has added to her fantasy that her husband isn’t a rapist; even encouraged to stay in this fantasy by her neighbor and husband. As Blanche is being taken away; some reality slips through to Stella as she realizes the fate she’s left her sister to. One could argue this shows on some level Stella knows what her sister said was the truth. But people around her are encouraging her to stay in her fantasy rather than face the reality.