Arthur Miller

Question 1

Blanche DuBois

Answer 1

Blanche DuBois arrives, penniless, in New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella and her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski. A former schoolteacher from a wealthy family, she has been evicted from her family home, “Belle Reve”, after the deaths of several family members wiped out her and Stella’s inheritance. It is also later revealed that, years earlier, her husband, Allan Grey, committed suicide after she caught him having sex with another man. She had a series of meaningless affairs to numb her grief, and was soon thrown out of her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi, as a “woman of loose morals” after sleeping with one of her high school English students.

Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety, Blanche is deeply insecure, an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty.[1] Her manner is dainty and frail, and she sports a wardrobe of showy but cheap evening clothes, as indicated in the stage directions for Scene 10: “She had decked herself out in a somewhat soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown and a pair of scuffed silver slippers with brilliants set in their heels.”

Question 2

Blanche DuBois’s sister and brother-in-law

Answer 2

Stella; Stanley Kowalski (who hits Stella in a drunken rage)

Question 3

Blanche DuBois is a heavy

Answer 3

drinker. She tries to conceal this.

Question 4

Who is Shep Huntleigh?

Answer 4

Blanche DuBois’s imaginary suitor. Shepherd, hunter–he’s a pastoral and romantic figure. Her fantasies.