Blanche

“appearance is incongruous to the setting”

• Outsider - unable to undergo the same ‘social dwarnism’ as Stella. Relic of a dying social order, incompatible with the emerging modern world

• Reflective of the clash between the Old South & New America

• Inability to adapt foreshadows her psychological decline

“daintily dressed in a white suit…necklace and earrings of pearl”

• “daintily” - delicacy, careful control & self-conscious presentation. Appearance is constructed, highlighting her theatrical identity that lacks authenticity

• Colour imagery of white - innocence, purity & viginity. Deeply ironic due to her flawed, promiscuous past. White becomes a symbol of illusion rather than truth

• Pearls - aristocratic wealth & elegance, linking Blanche to the Old Southern elitist world of inherited status & gentility

• Juxtaposes Stanley’s harsh “blue denim work clothes”, immediately establishes character foils

“moth”

• Animalistic metaphor

• Fragile & insubstantial creatures - reflects Blanche’s emotional vulnerability & lack of resilience needed to survive & adapt to the harsh environment of Elysian Fields

• Attracted to the light even when its dangerous - Blanche’s obsession with illusion & fantasy “I don’t want realism I want magic”

• Self-destructive, leading to harm/death - mirror Blanche’s self-inflicted downfall caused by her sexual desire & inability to face realism through fantasy. Sense of fatalism.

“take a Streetcar named Desire…transfer to Cemeteries…and get off at Elysian Fields”

• Tragic tracejtory through the journey extended metaphor - no deviation from, tragic inevitability & fatalism

• Sexual desire inevitability leads to death - reflects a literary trope where female sexuality is always punished & ends up in tragedy. AO4 link to Duchess

• Elysian Fields - spiritual paradise for the afterlife, illusion of refuge. Ironic as this false ‘heaven’ is brutal becomes a place of exposure & collapse, leading to Blanche’s breakdown

“What are you doing in a place like this?” “sits very stiffly”

• Disdain & superiority - reveals her ingrained class predjucie where she views the working-class environment as immediately beneath her

• Ironic as she has only arrived, hasn't even experienced Elysian Fields yet

“Turn that off! I won’t be looked at in that merciless glare!”

• Personification - portrays light as an active, cruel threat purposely intending to inflict pain by exposing the reality she is desperate to conceal

• Truth as something violent & destructive rather than liberating - constant desire for fantasy & illusion

• Reflects her fear of facing her aging & preoccupation of appearance which becomes a constructed performance

• Metatheatrical - treats life like a performance (eg changing lightening & costume) to curate her identity & others perception of her

“Only Mr Edgar Allen Poe could do it justice!”

“You haven’t said a word about my appearance”

• Preoccupation with vanity

• Self-centred

“Stella, you have a maid don’t you?”

• Automatic assumption of aristocratic norms - exposes her deeply ingrained belief in class hierarchy & privilege & refusal to acknowledge social decline - ignorant & pretentious

• Contrasting power dynamics - Blanche used to being waited on, Stanley’s hard manual labour & Stella’s social adaptation

“They’re something like Irish aren’t they? Only not so - highbrow”

• Casual prejudice & ethnic stereotyping - Polish people inferior & of little significance to her she reduces them to a vague comparison

• Ignorant & reveals a deeply prejudiced system of social & ethic hierarchy where she is at the top - contrasts the multicultural society full of social mobility

• Highbrow - measures people’s worth on intellectualism & education, dismissing those she sees as culturally inferior

• Blanche’s “high-brow’ position is ironic as she is financially ruined & morally compromised, superiority illusionary. Her prejudice could mask her own insecurity & loss of status, like a coping mechanism almost.

“Polacks. Heterogenous types?”

• Casual prejudice - dismissive & derogatory

• Scientific language to present Stanley almost as a different species - mixed & not uniform. Uncomfortable in a multicultural society that challenges her rigid class & racial hierarchies

• Prejudice as a defense mechanism against a world where she no longer has power

“I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can’t be alone”

• Desperation & emotional dependecny - companionship not a choice but a psychological necessity

• Romantic connections as a coping mechanism (seen with Mitch, the post boy, the doctor etc)

• Deep fear of solitude & inability to face the reality of her thoughts & past eg loss of Belle Reve & Allan - humanists Blanche & reveals her vulnerability for the audience

“You are the one that abandoned Belle Reve, not I! I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it!”

• Accusatory tone through exclamative, showing immediate defensiveness & a need to shift the blame onto Stella. Constructs a narrative where she is morally superior, deflecting responsibility

• Semantic field of war & suffering creates a battlefield metaphor - loss of Belle Reve presented as a prolonged, traumatic struggle rather than a simple financial decline

• Hyperbolic & intense language - blurs the line between truth and performance, tendency to dramatize reality. Raises questions about her reliability. Unreliable narrator

“I, I, I took the blows in my face and body!”

• Repetition - Blanche’s self-centeredness as she focuses only on her own suffering or desperation to be heard & believed. Loss of control in speech

• “blows” - violent imagery, attack, repeated suffering. Intensifies her trauma, providing insight into her mental fragility

• “face & body - all-encompassing damage, suffering both externally and internally

“the Grim Reaper had put his tent up on our doorsteps. Belle Reve was his headquarters!”

• Grim Reaper as a personification of death - death as an occupying space & inescapable force that dominates Belle Reve

• Invasion/war imagery - death as an invading relentless army that has taken control, prolonged battle with death

• Using supernatural elements of Southern Gothic genre

“red satin robe”

“freshly bathed…feeling like a brand new human being!”

“Would you think it possible that I was once considered - attractive?”

“I cannot imagine any witch of a woman casting a spell over you”

“I like an artist who paints in strong, bold, primary colours. I don’t like pinks and creams…My sister has married a man!”

• Artistic metaphor

• Expressionistic use of colour

“Oh, papers, papers! Ha-ha! The first anniversary gift, all kinds of papers!”

“What’s in the back of that little boy’s mind of yours?”

“our improvident grandfathers…uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications”

“I hereby endow you with them…I think it’s wonderfully fitting that Belle Reve should finally be this bunch of old papers in your big, capable hands”

“Maybe he’s what we need to mix with our blood now that we’ve lost Belle Reve and have to go on without it to protect us…How pretty the sky is!”

• One of her own realistic lines, facing reality & opening to the possibility of social Darwinism

• Immediately goes back to fantasy