A Streetcar Named Desire

Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" is a young woman who seeks love and acceptance. She has experienced loss, including her husband's suicide, her family fortune, and her teaching job. Blanche goes to stay with her sister and her husband, Stanley, but dislikes Stanley and believes he is a bad person. Stanley beats Stella and rapes Blanche, but when she tries to tell Stella, she is sent to an insane asylum. Despite her flaws, Blanche maintains her dignity throughout the story. She is ultimately removed from her only remaining family and loses control of her life. Hi, this is Victoria Roberts and I am here today to talk about the character of Blanche DuBois in the story, A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tevesi Williams. Blanche DuBois is a young woman in the story whose basic motivation and desire is to find love and acceptance. Blanche lost her young husband years before to suicide and is a fallen woman. She has also lost her family fortune and her estate. Blanche grew up a wealthy child in Mississippi and has gained the money and plantation from her parents. However, she did lose all of this when she got caught up drinking and getting into bad situations. Blanche, after her husband died, fell off the rails. She lost her family's home and had to move into a motel, where later she was kicked out for sexual involvement. She was also a teacher. The principal of the school fired her after learning she was having sexual relations with a student. In this story, Blanche goes to visit and stay with her sister because she is broke and has lost everything and everyone. When she arrives, she judges her sister's home because of what they both grew up with. She also has to tell her sister all of the reasons she just showed up after 10 years. Blanche is finding ways to make it seem not near as bad as it truly was. This is how she was as a person, making it seem like it wasn't as bad or fully her fault. For example, in scene 1, Blanche says, I know, I know, but you are the one that abandoned the Belle Rueve, not I. I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, and almost died for it. As she says this, she is dramatic and does not want this to be all on her. Later in the story, after Blanche is with her sister, Stella, and Stella's husband, Stanley, for a little while, she discovers a deep dislike for Stella's husband. She thinks he is not good enough for her sister and he is a bad person. Stanley also beats Stella and raped Blanche, showing he is actually a horrible man. Blanche wants to show Stella what a horrible man he really is and tried to explain that while Stella was giving birth to her new baby, Stanley came home and raped Blanche. However, because of the accusations, Stella thought that Blanche had lost her mind and needed to be sent away. After all, she was an alcoholic, she had money issues, she had many delusions about men, she needed human affection, and she believed that everything that she was doing was okay and normal. In my opinion, Blanche is not a bad person, she was just lost and then ended up in some bad situations. At the end of the story, when she was sent to an insane asylum, she fought it. Stella had told her that she was going on vacation to see her millionaire friend. After this, when the doctor showed up, Blanche knew. Even Stella did not know if she was doing the right thing, not telling Blanche where she was going. In scene 11, she said while talking to Eunice, yes, Blanche is, she is going on vacation. She had even told her upstairs neighbor that she wasn't going to an asylum. I do not think she was far enough gone to deserve this. However, because of what had happened and her sister not believing the rape allegations, she was then sent away. This story has a lot of ups and downs as well as many judgments according to class. I really enjoyed reading this story because of the drama in all of it and the constant issues. It creates a more entertaining story as well as an in-depth perception of each character. I truly got a good perception of Blanche when she moved to stay with her sister and her sister's husband Stanley in New Orleans. Blanche was a fragile woman who came to stay with a working class family which she was not used to. She dealt with a clash of both her old world, seeing her sister, and her new world, seeing her sister's husband and her new home. Throughout it all, Blanche stuck with her dignity as it was all she had left. I envy Blanche for this because without her dignity, she would have nothing. When she was sent to the asylum, I truly felt bad for Blanche. She had lost everything and everyone and now was being removed from the only family she had left. Although she had lost control with both her personality and her alcoholism, she still should have been able to have free will and to do as she pleased. That was my analysis of A Streetcar Named Desire, specifically the character Blanche DuBois.