Blanche

Question 1

Scene 1- Blanche doesn’t fit in

Answer 1

‘Her appearance is incongruous to the setting’

Question 2

Scene 1- conveys Blanche’s fragility

Answer 2

‘Her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth’

Question 3

This is Blanche’s purgatory

Answer 3

Eunice- ‘this here is Elysian Fields’

Question 4

Blanche’s death speech scene 1

Answer 4

‘I took blows in my face and my body’ makes their families deaths about herself, guilt-trips Stella

Question 5

Stanley going through Blanche’s trunk Scene 2

Answer 5

‘Pulls up a fistful of costume jewellery’ make believe, also Stanley’s brutish intrusion of Blanche’s personal belongings might reflect his future violation of her person in the rape scene 10.

Question 6

Bathing rituals Scene 2

Answer 6

‘Hello Stanley! Here I am, all freshly bathed and scented, and feeling like a brand-new human being!’

Question 7

Sexual insinuations to Stanley

Answer 7

‘You’re simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side’ Scene 2

Question 8

What is Blanche’s hamartia

Answer 8

Her fatal flaw is her reliance on men and her resistance to accepting her own sordid reality

Question 9

Blanche’s resentment of Stella coming from sexual jealousy

Answer 9

‘In bed with her polack’ scene 1

Question 10

Motif of baths

Answer 10

May be a symbolic aspect to this obsessive habit, a yearning to wash herself of her husbands death and make herself feel pure again, like she is christening herself

Question 11

Distasteful side to Blanche’s personality, shameless flirtation with an underage boy. We see into the predatory side she has

Answer 11

‘You make my mouth water… I’ve got to be good and keep my hands off children’ Scene 5, Williams maintains his characters as morally grey to make them more human. Her self-destructive tendencies demonstrated