A Streetcar Named Desire Group assignment

Sam Fred
Biniyam Justin

1. Reality vs. Illusion:
Blanche Dubois has fabricated a life for herself in order to cope with her own miserable reality. She acts as if she is a woman of high stature, sophisticated, made of money, and pure as can be. However, she is actually completely broke, insane and has had a very loose sexual history. She even states that “A woman’s charm is fifty-percent illusion”, which would lead the audience to believe that Blanche feels that she is completely justified in making her own version of her life. Some more examples of her twist on reality is when she tells Stanley that Mitch came back to beg for her forgiveness and she turned him away, as well as a Mr. Shep Huntleigh coming to take her away on a cruise.
Blanche also bathes very frequently and hides in the dark. She bathes in order to try to “cleanse” her past, as in her sexual history. But because, the past cannot be erased or easily forgotten, she continues to bathe frequently. As for hiding from the light, she does so in order to try to avoid the truth of her life. This is more evidence to argue that Blanche probably knows her true reality, but tries to cope with it by controlling it in her mind. She even says herself, “I don’t want realism.”

2. Gender Roles and Class Issues:
In A Streetcar Named Desire, there seems to be a struggle between the male and female genders, as well as social status. On one hand, Blanche feels she is superior to Stanley because he is a descendant of an immigrant family and is not in the upper-class, which Blanche was part of but thinks she still is. She even says to Stella “Well--if you forgive me--he’s common!” On the other hand, Stanley feels he is superior because he is the man of the house. This is where the conflict between gender and class had collided in the Kowalski household, which resulted in a power struggle between the two.
As the struggle between Blanche and Stanley continued, Stanley became more and more aggressive. First, he hit his wife. Then he started throwing dishes on the floor. And last but not least, he rapes Blanche, most likely to exhibit his dominance over her.

3. Past vs. Present:
Blanche has never let go of the past. We can see this whenever she hears the polka music playing in her head. It also ties into her constant bathing because she is constantly trying to cleanse her past. Blanche’s past most likely involved a luxurious life on her plantation Belle Reve. Meaning a “beautiful dream”, that is what Blanche and Stella must have been living in the past. In the present, Blanche is nothing more than a nomadic soul searching for love, but in the process ruins her own sanctity and life. She loses Belle Reve, gets kicked out of a hotel, and is forced to live in an apartment with her sister and brother-in-law. To cope with all these devastating events, she creates an alternate reality in which she is as Stanley put it, “the queen of the Nile”.


4. Setting:
Setting plays an important role as it helps demonstrate the characters backgrounds and sets some of the events in motion. Laurel, for example, is a town in the South where Blanche and Stella used to live a luxurious life, which is where Blanche became accustomed to being pampered. After loosing Belle Reve and forced to live in the low-class hotel the Flamingo, the audience is shown how low Blanche has reached. After being kicked out of the Flamingo, Blanche is forced to move in the cluttered, two-bedroom apartment of her sister’s in New Orleans.
As for the apartment building itself, The Kowalski apartment forced Stanley, Blanche and Stella to deal with each other because it was a close-quarters area. All the secrets involving Blanche were revealed to us inside this apartment. The relationship between Mitch and Blanche blossomed and decayed as well here.
Lastly, the street they live on is called Elysian Fields. What is supposed to be a sort of heaven for Blanche ends up becoming her own hell.