Complexity thy name is Blanche Dubois: Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire

For the first time I am writing about a play, where I have seen the film version first & then read the play.

I was super intrigued by the film & the play’s story to such an extent that I spent days researching various facets of the same. I read blogs, analysis, write-ups etc. to draw my own inferences about the complex characters of “A Streetcar Named Desire”.

“A Streetcar…” poses many questions from its readers on many levels. In my opinion the whole play is a specimen of metaphorical writing at its best. The play, its setting, its story & most importantly its very complex characters & their constant friction with each other’s traits is something that makes this play a very compelling & complex drama…not to mention a classic.

But in this post, I will talk about the play’s central character Blanche Dubois. Blanche is an aging & fading former Southern Belle (a fading reminiscent of the Old South that got swept completely post American Civil War). Blanche is one of those Southern women, who were not only popular in her county, but was also raised with all the required poise & affectations of a proper, elegant Southern woman of pre American Civil War (remember Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind); Blanche is also a small time estate owner’s daughter, thus she was stuck in a bigger societal dilemma…not rich enough to afford the myriad affectations of phoney gentility, still in the social circle to keep up all pretensions to be accepted into the “society”. Thus many times you will find Blanche a tad over-the-top.

Taking you back to the play a bit, Blanche Dubois (possibly in 1946-47, judging by outfits & the fact that the play’s antagonist Stanley had served in WW II) leaves her home in Laurel, Mississippi to travel to New Orleans to meet her only sister, Stella Kowalski. She boards a streetcar named “Desire” (again very strong symbolism to the entire theme of the play), and reaches her sister’s home. Nervous & scared, she discovers her sister’s humble abode, and is quite dismayed to see the 2 room cramped apartment in a not so genteel neighbourhood. However, she is overjoyed to see her sister & declares that she will be living with her & her husband as she cannot tolerate hotels & loneliness; when reality is she actually cannot afford any hotels anymore.

Stella welcomes her sister with an open heart, and soon discovers that Blanche is now nothing more than a wrought bundle of nerves. Blanche tells her how she survived every family member’s death alone while Stella escaped the situation to make her own life in New Orleans. Her lament goes on to describe how Stella only attended funerals of their family members, and that funerals are poetry, they are beautiful; whereas Blanche faced their death, which is pure horror. Stella is guilty of her actions, yet she deemed them as necessary as nothing was left in Laurel & she had to move to make a life in the city & not be a burden on her already struggling family. Hearing this Blanche immediately switches mood from accusing to poetic. It is these transitions of character that define the complexity of Blanche’s character.

Blanche then meets her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski; an ex WWII service-man and a handsome yet brute of a man. Almost on sight, Blanche & Stanley are very wary of each other; wariness that soon transforms into mutual distrust & dislike.

Blanche with her misplaced superior pretences finds Stanley lowly for her sister. She however comes to know that Stanley is hosting a card party at home & immediately announces that she will be taking a long, languid bath to calm her nerves & asks Stella to unpack her party gown with pearls so that she can make herself appealing to the “party guests”. Stanley is bemused & irritated at this pretence. When Blanche is taking her bath, Stanley questions Stella on Belle Reeve (estate) papers & her share in it. Stella hesitatingly tells him that it all got lost & there is no sale deed, and that she does not wish to question & trouble Blanche about it; something that is unacceptable to Stanley who bursts forth & accuses Stella of being a simpleton & taking Blanche’s excuses for being real. In anger he violently opens Blanche’s trunk & explodes at her collection of clothes & jewellery thinking that she has used all that money to buy herself such finery & is lying to Stella; when in reality all the “finery” Blanche owns is fake & cheap pretences of wealth – just like Blanche herself. Her possessions are an extension to explain her own personality – unreal, a want to connect with superior society, a façade under which she wants to hide her real self; her reality of a broken, poor woman.

When Blanche comes out after her bath she is dressed in a fine white frock – a frock that now is in tatters at the hem, but something that she can hide & pass on as finery still – something reminiscent of Blanche’s own character – frayed & tattered at hems but something that she tries to hide in her affectations.

The Card Party Scene: This scene is very important to understand all 3 central characters of the play – Blanche, Stella & Stanley.

Stanley’s “party guests” arrive. Common lackeys, brute labourers, out there to escape their wives & home situations after work, all centred at a table of cards & booze. Blanche makes an appearance & is taken aback at the “party guests” for whom she wore her finery; still Blanche makes an appearance much to the irritation of Stanley:

Blanche DuBois (addressing the party): Please don't get up.
Stanley Kowalski: Nobody's going to get up, so don't get worried.

Taken aback at Stanley’s rudeness Blanche retreats to another room with Stella, where she is pursued by Stanley’s gentler friend Mitch, the only one who looks sociable to some extent. He is enamoured by Blanche & her personality. Blanche exclaims that she cannot stand the naked bulb lit in the room, so Mitch takes a paper shade & covers the harsh light, her immediate reaction is quite over-the-top & symbolic of her character’s inner working:

Blanche DuBois: Oh look, we have created enchantment.

Blanche DuBois: I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
Mitch: I guess we must strike you as being a pretty rough bunch.
Blanche DuBois: I'm very adaptable to circumstances.

Immediately Blanche starts seducing Mitch & plays an old tune on radio & dances on it with an enamoured Mitch & a bemused but happy Stella looking on. This enrages Stanley and he thunders to shut out the music, to which Mitch yells at him to shut up & talk nicely to women. Egged by this support, Blanche increases the volume of the song & then breaks the wrath of Stanley. He barges in & breaks the radio & a few more things, terrorising Blanche. When an appalled Stella interjects, he beats her up, despite the knowledge that Stella is with a child. Humiliated, Stella escapes to her first floor neighbour with Blanche; the neighbour who is well aware of Stanley’s violent disposition. Stanley, then beats up his friends as well & sends them running home. After a while Stanley’s anger subsides & not finding his beloved Stella, he screams looking for her in the whole house; not finding her in the house he runs outside & completely distraught & weeping screams in the very iconic scene “STELLLLLLAAAAAAAA” – It is this scene that is indicative of Stanley’s personality of a male only better than his primal ancestors, as observed by Blanche – he is brutish, sexual, primal & straight in all his actions. He is the un-complexity in the face of the cultured Blanche’s complexity; he is actually symbolic of the New America – primal, rough, straight-forward trying to stand against Old America (Blanche) – affectations, facades, mannerisms. His cry of “STELLLLLAAAAA” is just his primal reaction that he puts into words.

Apparently, this is what attracts Stella to Stanley. Hearing him scream in agony for her, something lights up in Stella, & forgetting her humiliation & hurt of moments ago, Stella is enchanted & sexually aroused by his need for her. She runs down to meet Stanley, despite Blanche’s & her neighbour’s objections & is clearly besotted & gleeful at Stanley’s DESIRE for her, that is in turn evoking a DESIRE out of her. The two lovers unite in an iconic, passionate embrace.

This scene tells us a lot about Stella too. Stella is one of those women who are completely dominated by the primal & raw sexuality of their relationship. Possibly growing up in a much genteel Old South, and surrounded by gentlemen, Stella finds Stanley a complete change from what she left behind back in Mississippi. He is raw, passionate, brutal, very attractive & clearly these features guide him in bed too, which dominates Stella’s feelings to such extent that she is willing to overlook the fact that he hardly treats her or her family with any kind of respect. Come to think of it, such characters are living examples around us all the time, and I can safely say I know a few of them personally too. They might appal & baffle us with their actions, but they continue to exist.

Aftermath:

The next day after Stanley has gone for work, leaving Stella blissfully happy in bed; Blanche arrives a little nervously in the home. She is alarmed to see Stella so happy & questions her on how can she like a man like Stanley. In her words:

Blanche DuBois: You're married to a madman.
Stella: I wish you'd stop taking it for granted that I'm in something I want to get out of.
Blanche DuBois: What you are talking about is DESIRE - just brutal Desire. The name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.
Stella: Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?
Blanche DuBois: It brought me here. Where I'm not wanted and where I'm ashamed to be.
Stella: Don't you think your superior attitude is a little out of place?
Blanche DuBois: May I speak plainly?  If you'll forgive me, he's common... He's like an animal. He has an animal's habits. There's even something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is. Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you - you here waiting for him. Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you, that's if kisses have been discovered yet. His poker night you call it. This party of apes.

This party scene & subsequent aftermath paves the path for rest of play, where Blanche’s presence causes upheaval in Stanley & Stella’s “paradise”. Stanley is irritated at Blanche’s control on Stella & her superior façade of an attitude which makes him think that he is not good enough for Stella. Stella becomes a pawn between the two – Stanley & Blanche, both of them trying to drag her to their side.

Thus, Stanley starts finding out about Blanche’s past & with luck, discovers a closet full of skeletons on Blanche.

Blanche is a fake, a façade, a bogus. All her pretences are just that – pretences. Reality is very harsh & she paints a mirage in her head to escape the harsh reality of her life she cannot deal with.

Blanche was married young to a boy named Alan – a worthy Southern boy of a good family. That was possibly the only time Blanche was truly happy & sane. She was madly in love with her husband, until one day she discovers him to be a closet homosexual. Her pretences come out, she tries hiding this under a garb of a happy marriage & completely overlooks her husband’s feelings on this discovery. He shoots himself one day, leaving her distraught & guilty. She still carries on with pretences, after all that is what society wanted.

Her family members die, leaving her a destitute. She takes up job as a teacher, in her words, to teach the “bobby soxers & drugstore Romeos a thing or two about Whitman & Poe”, when in reality she was having an affair with a 17 year old student & upon discovery was fired from her job in great disrepute.

She moved from Laurel & started living in a hotel, a hotel she prefers calling “Tarantula Arms”. Under all her façade, she used to invite different men every night to her room who used to pay her. In reality she was just being a common prostitute, in her dream world she is still a Southern Belle of Old South, batting her eyelashes like a lady & attracting numerous beaux. She has a fake mask of gentility on her face – a mask Stanley gleefully discovers & wrenches off very brutally.

The climax scene where a drunk Stanley meets an equally disillusioned & drunk Blanche is the melting point of the emotions in this play. Stanley has broken Mitch off Blanche, he has made Stella hate & doubt Blanche; but still that is not enough for him & he rapes Blanche. The rape is not a desire, it is not lust, it is not attraction – it is the final attempt to completely break the woman he hated so much & rob her of the fake dignity that she was hanging by.

After the rape, Blanche has a complete nervous breakdown, and Stanley commits her to a mental asylum. At first Blanche shows resistance, but immediately her façade comes out in such situations & in her last iconic lines she take the hand of the doctor like a lady & says “Whoever you are, I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers”, thus exiting the scene & the lives of Kowalskis & Mitch.

Mitch accuses Stanley of raping Blanche, who screams that he did not lay a finger on her. In the play Stella stands by Stanley, but in the movie version (1951) she leaves him for good, after which Stanley is heard screaming “STELLLLLAAAAA” again in agony.

The play is dark & extremely multi-layered & is amongst the most adapted plays to this date. It is an interplay of human complexities to its maximum. The coveted role of Blanche Dubois has been played by 20 mainstream actresses in original adaptations, many of whom are Oscar nominated/winning – I personally would love to see the Cate Blanchett version; method actress that she is, she would have pulled off this multi-layered character with an unparalleled beauty.

Until you cannot catch the original Broadway, you can catch the 1951 Hollywood classic of the same name starring Marlon Brando & Vivien Leigh, and the pdf for the play is available on download.