Sarah Bevan |
Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” is well-known for its vivid and expressive characters, and part of what makes them so dynamic is their concern and conflict with freedom and truth. Blanche Dubois struggles with reality because she tells “what ought to be the truth;” she exists within a reality she has created, a world of delusion and deception. She is very aware of the lies she tells, though she doesn’t lie to be malicious; in fact, she explains to her fling, Mitch, that the reason why she lies is to hide a side of herself that she doesn’t appear to be very proud of. She is ashamed of so many things about herself, like her age, her being fired from her teaching job, the loss of her family’s plantation, and especially her sexual desire. She is only able to connect with men sexually after enduring the trauma of witnessing her husband Allan's violent death, so it makes sense that there is a clear sexual tension between Blanche and her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, a hyper-masculine, “brute” man who is only able to relate to women in a sexual context. I believe Blanche feels some jealousy toward her sister Stella, because Stella is granted a kind of sexual freedom as a married woman that Blanche hasn’t been able to experience since the passing of her husband. Stella can have sex with Stanley as frequently as she desires because she is married to him, but Blanche has to hide her “intimacies with strangers” because open promiscuity would have destroyed an unmarried woman’s reputation in the 1940s.
Stanley might be the only truly “free” character in “Streetcar,” because his race and gender both work to provide him with power that he uses to violently dominate the women in the play (see: “I’m the king around here, and don’t you forget it”). However, Blanche holds an irrefutable power over Stanley, which he is well aware of, because he acknowledges his frustrations with Blanche’s lies in a very particular way. He calls her out on her lying, but not to correct a moral fault; he exposes her lying to communicate that he is angry because she won’t allow him unfiltered access to herself, like Stella does. He tries to force this missing connection by raping her, but to no avail, because even after violating her, he still doesn’t know the person Blanche truly is. Blanche is not free, at least not in the overt way that Stanley is, because she is (literally) hiding her true self in the darkness; however, she is certainly a powerful character in that she is able to protect her vulnerability through her delusions.
2 Comments
9/29/2019 07:00:15 am
I like the insight into Blanche and how she could be jealous of Stella and the sexual freedom she has. I hadn't thought of it in that way, but I could see it being a thing. I agree that Stanley is the only true "free" character, the women are just trying to live the best they can in a "man's world." Great insight!
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Hayley Embry
9/29/2019 07:06:11 pm
This play had a lot of sexual tensions and I believe we can look at any character and nit pick at each of their issues. I like the route you took and talked about how masculine the world was back then and how women basically had to abide by their husbands. I am so glad women have power these days !!
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