Daniel Vladimirsky

A Streetcar Named Desire

Journal # 1: So I just finished reading scenes 1 through 4 of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and already there is great tension boiling up, especially between Stanley and Blanche. Initially Blanche seemed nothing more than a condescending member of upper society as she immediately takes the first moments her and Stella had shared together in a long time to criticize Stella’s living conditions, implying that Stella isn’t happy and has greatly lowered her standards. From the first moment that Stanley and Blanche interacted, it was clear that they were complete polar opposites with Stanley carrying himself with great virility and Blanche with a certain delicacy that is insulted by Stanley’s brutishness. Both characters come of as insensitive at first, although Stanley obtains more sympathy from the reader. Blanche attempts to come off as a frail victim having lost Belle Rive and watching all of her family die and blames Stella for running off to New Orleans and leaving them all behind. Stanley starts to become a darker character as the play progresses and the clash between Blanche and Stanley mirrors the differences between the upper class and the lower class. Stanley begins to come off as a primitive brute whose misogyny leads him to believe that Belle Rive belonged to him as well and that Blanche has not been honest with him and Stella. Scene 3 turns the tables completely as Stanley become the villain after he beats up Stella, reflecting his primal nature and animal-like tendencies. Meanwhile, Blanche continues to surround herself in a façade of femininity and delicacy as she takes an interest in Mitch who is blindly unaware of her deceptions. Blanche begins to reveal the way she deals with men and how she schemes money from them. This shows that men are material to her, similar to Stanley’s material view of women. In the end of scene 4, Blanche holds nothing back and tells Stella exactly how she feels about Stanley and described him as brutish and animalistic.

Journal # 2: In scene 5, Stanley confronts Blanche with evidence he has obtained from a man named Shaw that Blanche was a resident at the second-class Flamingo hotel. Blanche becomes offended and says that Shaw must have her confused with someone else. At the end of scene 5, Blanche kisses a young paper boy which reveals that she is lustful and not as morally upright as she claims to be. This contradicts Blanche’s analysis of Stella and Stanley’s relationship, regarding it as purely sexual and devoid of actual “human” emotion due to Stanley’s inability to be less bestial. Blanche’s actions show that she is in need of attention that she has not been getting from Stella or Stanley. After the young paper boy leaves, Mitch comes to the door to take Blanche out on their date. Blanche uses Mitch to fulfill her needs and her attention craving as he is the only one who succumbs to her. Blanche begins to weaken and her stories begin to present faults as Stanley presses her more and more. After their date, Blanche shares the story of her last husband to Mitch and how she discovered him in bed with another man and after she confronted him about it, he shot himself. You can feel a sense of regret and guilt in Blanche that she was partly responsible for the death of her husband whom she describes as “just a boy”. In scene 7 we learn all about Blanche’s past that she so diligently tried to conceal. We learn that she resided at the Flamingo hotel and was asked to leave and that she didn’t get a leave of absence from the school which she worked at, but was fired after it was discovered that Blanche had relations with a seventeen year-old boy. Stanley claims that Blanche’s lack of money and residence was the reason she came to New Orleans. Stanley tells Stella that he bought Blanche a one-way bus ticket back to Laurel. The way Stanley speaks of Blanche in this scene gives us the first insight into Blanche’s mental state and reason to assume that she is not mentally sound. Things become more serious in scene 8 as Blanche becomes more temperamental and Stella becomes more frustrated with Stanley. She demands he doesn’t go bowling, revealing her first sign of independence. Immediately after Stella temporarily becomes independent from Stanley, she goes into labor and calls upon Stanley for help, giving him dominance once more.

Journal # 3: In scene 9, during a conversation with Mitch, Blanche states that she “doesn’t like realism and wants magic.” This clearly portrays Blanche’s fear of what is real and her need to fabricate stories of happier things in her life. Blanche finally breaks down and admits to Mitch that she has been lying to him and to everyone and tells him everything about her past. Mitch leaves and in scene 10, while Stella is at the hospital, Blanche tells Stanley that Mitch returned with roses to apologize and that she received a telegram from a rich man she is involved with which Stanley quickly identifies as a lie and refutes. Stanley completely tears down Blanche’s fictional world that she concocted and she begins to panic and try and dial for help but fails. Stanley begins to approach her and Blanche tries to defend herself but fails at that as well and Stanley says “we’ve had this date from the beginning” and the scene ends with loud music that indicates that Stanley raped Blanche. This scene is the final blow that Stanley takes out on Blanche and her fictional world. From the beginning, Stanley worked to expose her for what she truly was, not realizing how weak Blanche truly was and being fooled by her false portrayal of who she really was and how strong she really was. This final moment in the struggle between a weak woman who regarded herself as higher than she actually was by acting in a domineering fashion and a simple, brutish, alpha-male who saw women as weaker and felt threatened by Blanche’s façade of confidence that he could not identify as such and thus sought to destroy her to secure his own manhood and dominion. Blanche’s rape came as a sudden wave of reality and tore her fantasy world apart. In the last scene, Blanche is a completely different person who is no longer confident in themselves and lives in fear up until the moment where she is taken away and feels a sense of freedom and security after having left that home forever. Stanley had completely destroyed who she was. At the end of the play Stanley is overwhelmed with a sense of triumph and complacency for he has won and secured his dominance. Stella, throughout the play, tried to play the middle man and the voice of reason, mainly to herself, but ended up betraying her sister and remaining under Stanley’s shadow.