A Streetcar Named Desire

1948

Notes!!!

Blanche DuBois -- Blanche DuBois has "the misfortune of being an English teacher", but she's one of a kind. You'd never forget her if you took her course. At first, she seems just high-strung, but refined. But as the play unfolds little by little her past is reavealed. By the end she is completely undone, fit only for the asylum. Nevertheless, she is never humbled by defeat. In this way she is a Hemingway hero. She maintains her lady like dignity even after her destruction at the hands of Stanley in much the same way that Santiago maintains his dignity after the sharks attack his fish in The Old Man and the Sea.

To compensate for her loneliness and despair, Blanche creates illusions. She clings to the past with the old rules of behavior and conduct. Blanche values her past with the Southern manners and maintains the speech of the dying South.

One question to ask is: "Is Blanche a tragic victim or an immoral woman who deserves her fate? Don't be too quick to answer this. On one side some would say that Blanche is to much of a degenerate to be taken seriously. She lies continuously and is a sexual deviate that becomes the town degenerate. She is an alcoholic and because of all this Blanche deserves what happens to her and it isn't so much a tragedy, but Williams saying this is what happens to people who don't face the truth and live in dream worlds.

[Synopsis] [Setting & Characters] [Poetic References]

[Essay Topics] [Test] [Study Questions] [Blanche] [Stanley] [Stella] [Mitch]

[Structure and Themes] [Notes] [Letters to Jessica Tandy]

From Streetcar:"No, I have the misfortune of being an English teacher."

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