blanche Flashcards
‘white suit with a fluffy bodice and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as it she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party’
white - symbolises innocence and purity, ironic
out of place in elysian fields - part of the upper class , she is a stranger to this type of setting as opposed to her sister
there is a lack of colour, as blanche is simply wearing white. conveys the idea that the upper class is declining, as it lacks the vivacity of the working class, which williams believes will replace the upper class as the new driving force in america.
exploring the idea of the “white suit” can be linked up to the mid-nineteenth century play la dame aux camélias (1848), where a fallen woman (the play’s protagonist) wears a “white camelias” when she is available to her lovers - blanche appears to be drawn into prostitution
moral chastity
‘they told me to take a streetcar named desire, and then transfer to one called cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - elysian fields’
sexual promiscuity was considered evil and morally wrong.
symbolises death and sex - death of morals
intense desire leads to death and decay
500,000 cases of std’s every year
williams critical of the heteropatriarchy
‘suggests a moth’
attracted to light - kills them
avoids attention yet secretly wants it
her fate lies in self-destruction
death and darkness is closely related to moths
symbol of change
‘she pours half a tumbler of whisky and tosses it down. she carefully replaces the bottle and washes out the tumbler at the sink’
alcohol addiction
secretive - ruin her image
in private she leisurely drinks however in public, her tendency to drink a lot is scraped from her image
disregards stereotypes
‘i’ve got to keep hold of myself’
reminding herself of her status within society - upper class, must be polite and ‘ladylike’, in a way she sticks to the stereotypes that were present around rich women and reflects stanley in the way that she thinks and incorporates the stereotypes of society into her character.
that it is ‘out of character’ for her to act that way as she comes from a very prestige society as opposed to stella.
anxious
‘you must have some liquor on the place! where could it be, i wonder? oh, i spy, i spy!`
alcoholic
ironic
williams suffered from the negative externalities of alcohol abuse from his father as a child, and so this is a sensitive topic for him, beginning of play, we see how blanche pursues her urges and uses it as an escape which is one of her factors in leading to her downfall.
alcoholism undermines the purity she tries to put across. the fact that her first lie is about drinking is incredibly important, as it establishes the idea that blanche is ashamed of her mental distress.
this internal demonisation of her own coping mechanisms, reflect her adherence to a strict idea of what a woman should be, which has been ingrained in her by a bourgeoisie upbringing.
‘never, never, never in my worst dreams could I picture - only poe! only mr edgar allan poe! - could do it justice! out there I suppose is the ghoul-haunted woodland of weir!
reference to poe’s poem ulalume in which the protagonist visits their dead lovers grave - suggests that blanche is describing stella’s home as a tomb - humanity prone to sin and self destruction
blanche thinks her place is horrible, especially because she is used to living in a colonial home in belle reve.
gothic literature
subconscious allusion to her past, as the audience goes on to learn of her own lost love
‘you haven’t said a word about my appearance’
typical southern belle - beauty is part of identity
moth like tendencies
scared of losing her beauty - old south
‘god love you for a liar! daylight never exposed so total a ruin! but you–you’ve put on some weight, yes, you’re just as plump as a little partridge!’
being hypocritical - always hiding things
motif of light - blanche’s view of the power/ role of light to ‘expose’ ‘ruin’, justifying her avoidance of it throughout the play
foreshadowing
women expected to be pretty
‘you messy child, you, you’ve spilt something on that pretty white lace collar’
infantilising stella
projecting her insecurities onto her younger sister because she can’t bring herself to face them on her own self.
purity is stained
‘i stayed at belle reve and tried to hold hold it together’
clinging onto the past - old south
tennessee emphasizes on the importance of keeping up with the world, or else one will be alienated and lose oneself among the incoherence of the new world
trying to act like the hero
‘the long parade to the graveyard! father, mother! margaret, that dreadful way! so big with it, it couldn’t be put in a coffin!’
semantic field of death
end of the old south
responsibility of a southern belle without the benefits
‘blanche is bathing’
recurring motif throughout the play
washing away sins
escapes to her fantasy world
fist full of costume jewellery’
putting on an act
trying to make her fantasy seem a reality
not real jewellery
superficial and fake personality
‘life is too full of evasions and ambiguities, i think. i like an artist who paints in strong, bold colours, primary colours. i don’t like pinks and creams and wishy washy people’
describing how important it is to her that people be bold, she is actually attempting to flatter stanley, as she knows that this is the kind of person he is.
in reality, the colours here represent blanche’s manipulative nature and her control over men.
reference of an “artist” could allude to her husband, enveloping her grief
the semantic field of the verbs ‘strong’ and ‘bold’ are contradictory to the fact that she must avoid a ‘strong light,’ - the reader is able to break through her illusion and lies, further revealing the extent of her fragility. the repetition of “colours” makes her seem mentally unstable, almost as if her thoughts are cyclical as she is lost in her fantasy.
‘honey, do me a favour. run to the drug store and get me a lemon coke with plenty of chipped ice in it! - will you do that for me, sweetie?
infantilising stella
patronising
telling her to go away
controlling nature
lemon symbolises a bitterness, but also love and fertility - blanche is bitter towards love, sexuality and fertility - she wishes her life had turned out differently
‘she doesn’t understand you as well as i do’
blanche knows men like stanley - knows what they’re really about
stella doesn’t - in love with him so can’t see his flaws
‘these are love letters, yellowing with antiquity, all from one boy’
old - past
yellow is a symbol of mental illness
youthful colour- stuck in the past
progressively corrupting idea of what love is
shows the downfall of the upper class, as all that is left of blanche’s love is these letters, which are disappearing like a vapor and a mist.
‘the touch of your hands insult them!’
ruins purity - not clean enough, working class
doesn’t want her romantic depiction of the past to be tainted by corruption of the present
‘i hurt him the way you would like to hurt me, but you can’t! i’m not young and vulnerable anymore’
wants to act naïve - not naïve , juxtaposition between her and her husband
abusive
dangerous
recognition of stanley’s deepest desires to hurt her, however she underestimates his ability.
‘our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications’
having sex outside marriage - why they gave up their land
couldn’t resist their desire
had to pay the price -generations of old south money lost of trivial pursuits such as gambling
‘yes - i was flirting with your husband stella’
lacks boundaries - reflects her mental state
knows she shouldn’t do it
he only way she knows how to communicate with men is through flirting, as all her life men have viewed her by sexual means and have therefore initiated conversation through flirting.
in this way, blanche is seen as similar to stanley as he only ever views women through sexual classifications
‘maybe he’s what we need to mix with our blood now that we’ve lost belle reve’
embrace the new south
that her and stella do not belong to the southern elite anymore- trying to convince her sister to leave stanley and live a better and more free life
‘blanche crosses into the bedroom and partially closes the portieres’
wants attention - trying not to show it
hamartia
men and women separated
‘oh am i?’
‘you’re standing in the light blanche!’ - stella
fond of the male gaze
knows exactly what she’s doing
‘i hate beer’
conforming to stereotypes
masculine thing to do
trying to cover up addiction
repressing inner self
‘it’s a french name. it means woods and blanche means white, so the two together mean white woods. like an orchard in spring! you can remember it by that.
upper class took pride in their heritage - colonised
true american - sophisticated
romantic france
purity and innocence
wood seems hard to break but is actually flammable
‘she’s somewhat older than i’
scared of ageing
lying
needs to be attractive
mitch:
‘you might teach arithmetic’
not her - masculine
maths has a clear answer - always avoiding this
english
opinionated and well spoken
fictional worlds
