Fantasy and delusion

Question 1

BLANCHE: I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. When people are soft–soft people have to shimmer and glow–they’ve got to put on soft colours, the colours of butterfly wings, and put a–paper lantern over the light….It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I–I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick. [The afternoon has faded to dusk]

Answer 1

• This abstract, poetic speech continuously refers to the ideas of hardness and softness, alluding thematically to the way Williams has been portraying gender and sensitivity.

Question 2

“A girl alone in the world, has got to keep a firm hold on her emotions or she’ll be lost”

Answer 2

• Hypocritical as it contradicts scene 5 and scene 7

Question 3

[BLANCHE is singing in the bathroom a saccharine popular ballad which is used contrapuntally with STANLEY speech]

Answer 3

• Blanche’s singing is present as the truth is revealed. It is ironic on many levels. Dramatic irony is used to show that she is unaware of her past being made common knowledge. Furthermore, situational irony is used because she sings of love under illusions, while her illusion has now been shattered. Mitch is no longer under spell

Question 4

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

Answer 4

• Emphasizes how all forms of hope for Blanche is lost/ has gone up in flames
• Reveals her mental state

Question 5

Analyze Blanche’s drunken state

Answer 5

• Drinking to escape reality
• Dresses herself in costume jewelry and gowns
  -When she looks more closely at herself, even she can see through the illusion and so she smashes the mirror indicating the failure of her illusory worlds and the extent of her nervous breakdown

Question 6

Quotations that reveal that Blanche retains a glimmer of her old self, a proud southern Belle

Answer 6

• Placing the rhinestone tiara on her head
• Murmuring excitedly as if to a crowd of spectral admirers

Question 7

Explore how Williams presents Blanche as a character who has suffered a breakdown and is almost entirely given over to delusion

Answer 7

• Makes Shep Huntleigh up. his re-emergence as a reality
• Passive and dominated
• Disconnection from reality, singing in the bathroom whereas she is being taken away
• Packing and dressing for a holiday but instead a mental hospital
• No mention of the rape from Blanche in scene 11
• Compliments to get removed “I’m green with envy”