Characters Flashcards
Who is Blanche?
Blanche is a loquacious and fragile woman around the age of thirty.
What does Blanche do after loosing Belle Reve
After losing Belle Reve, Blanche arrives in New Orleans at the Kowalski apartment and eventually reveals that she is completely destitute.
Describe Blanche’s life in terms of love
she has strong sexual urges and has had many lovers, she puts on the airs of a woman who has never known indignity
Describe Blanche’s outlook on life in terms of reality?
-She avoids reality, preferring to live in her own imagination.
-As the play progresses, Blanche’s instability grows along with her misfortune.
What is Blanche and Stanley’s relationship like?
-Stanley sees through Blanche and finds out the details of her past, destroying her relationship with his friend Mitch.
-Stanley also destroys what’s left of Blanche by raping her and then having her committed to an insane asylum.
How was Stella and Blanche’s upbringing different?
-Stella possesses the same timeworn aristocratic heritage as Blanche, but she jumped the sinking ship in her late teens and left Mississippi for New Orleans.
Describe Stella and Stanley’s relationship
-Stella married lower-class Stanley, with whom she shares a robust sexual relationship.
-Stella’s union with Stanley is both animal and spiritual, violent but renewing.
Describe how Stella views Blanche.
-After Blanche’s arrival, Stella is torn between her sister and her husband.
-Eventually, she stands by Stanley, perhaps in part because she gives birth to his child
-While she loves and pities Blanche, she cannot bring herself to believe Blanche’s accusations that Stanley dislikes Blanche, and she eventually dismisses Blanche’s claim that Stanley raped her.
Describe Stanley and what he represents
-Stanley is the epitome of vital force.
- He is loyal to his friends, passionate to his wife, and heartlessly cruel to Blanche.
-With his Polish ancestry, he represents the new, heterogeneous America.
How did Stanley view himself?
He sees himself as a social leveller, and wishes to destroy Blanche’s social pretensions.
What’s Stanley’s character like at the end of the play?
-By the play’s end, he is a disturbing degenerate: he beats his wife and rapes his sister-in-law.
-Horrifyingly, he shows no remorse. Yet, Blanche is an outcast from society, while Stanley is the proud family man.
Describe Mitch
he is clumsy, sweaty, and has unrefined interests like muscle building, Mitch is more sensitive and more gentlemanly than Stanley and his other friends, perhaps because he lives with his mother, who is slowly dying.
Explain Mitch and Blanche’s relationship
-Blanche and Mitch are an unlikely match: Mitch doesn’t fit the bill of the chivalric hero, the man Blanche dreams will come to rescue her.
-Nevertheless, they bond over their lost loves, and when the doctor takes Blanche away against her will, Mitch is the only person present besides Stella who despairs over the tragedy.
What does Eunice and her husband represent
Eunice and her husband, Steve, represent the low-class, carnal life that Stella has chosen for herself.
How are Stella and Eunice similar?
-Like Stella, Eunice accepts her husband’s affections despite his physical abuse of her.
-At the end of the play, when Stella hesitates to stay with Stanley at Blanche’s expense, Eunice forbids Stella to question her decision and tells her she has no choice but to disbelieve Blanche.
