Blanche Dubois

Not quite a heroine, Blanche is the complicated protagonist of the play. She is a
faded Southern belle without a dime left to her name, after generations of
mismanagement led to the loss of the family fortune. Blanche spent the end of her
youth watching the older generation of her family die out before losing the DuBois
seat at Belle Reve. This experience, along with the suicide of her young
homosexual husband, deadened Blanche's emotions and her sense of reality.
Desire and death became intricately linked in her life as she led a loose and
increasingly careless life, and indeed, after losing her position as a schoolteacher
she is forced to depend on the kindness of her one living relation, her sister Stella.
Blanche tries to continue being the Southern belle of her youth, but she is too old
and has seen too much, and soon her grip on reality begins to slip. She has
difficulty understanding the passion in her sister's marriage and is coolly calculating
in her relationship with Mitch - yet barely manages to suppress a latent
nymphomania.
Blanche DuBois appears in the first scene dressed in white, the symbol of purity
and innocence. She is seen as a moth-like creature. She is delicate, refined, and
sensitive. She is cultured and intelligent. She can't stand a vulgar remark or a
vulgar action. She would never willingly hurt someone. She doesn't want realism;
she prefers magic. She doesn't always tell the truth, but she tells "what ought to be
truth." Yet she has lived a life that would make the most degenerate person seem
timid. She is, in general, one of Williams' characters who do not belong in this
world. And her type will always be at the mercy of the brutal, realistic world.
Early in her life, Blanche had married a young boy who had a softness and
tenderness "which wasn't like a man's," even though he "wasn't the least bit
effeminate looking." By unexpectedly entering a room, she found him in a
compromising situation with an older man. They went that night to a dance where a
polka was playing. In the middle of the dance, Blanche told her young husband that
he disgusted her. This deliberate act of cruelty on Blanche's part caused her young
husband to commit suicide. Earlier, her love had been like a "blinding light," and
since that night Blanche has never had any light stronger than a dim candle.
Blanche has always thought she failed her young lover when he most needed her.
She felt also that she was cruel to him in a way that Stanley would like to be cruel to
her. And Blanche's entire life has been affected by this early tragic event.
Immediately following this event, Blanche was subjected to a series of deaths in her
family and the ultimate loss of the ancestral home. The deaths were ugly, slow, and
tortuous. They illustrated the ugliness and brutality of life.
To escape from these brutalities and to escape from the lonely void created by her
young husband's death, Blanche turned to alcohol and sexual promiscuity. The
alcohol helped her to forget. When troubled, the dance tune that was playing when
Allan committed suicide haunts her until she drinks enough so as to hear the shot
which then signals the end of the music.
Blanche gives herself to men for other reasons. She feels that she had failed her
young husband in some way. Therefore, she tries to alleviate her guilt by giving
herself at random to other young men. And by sleeping with others, she is trying to
fill the void left by Allan's death — "intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able
to fill my empty heart with." And she was particularly drawn to very young men who
would remind her of her young husband. During these years of promiscuity, Blanche
has never been able to find anyone to fill the emptiness. Thus Blanche's imagined
failure to her young husband and her constant encounter with the ugliness of death
forced the delicate young girl to seek distraction by and forgetfulness through
intimacies with strangers and through alcohol which could make the tune in her
head stop.
But throughout all of these episodes, Blanche has still retained a degree of
innocence and purity. She still plays the role of the ideal type of person she would
like to be. She refuses to see herself as she is but instead creates the illusion of
what ought to be. She attempts to be what she thinks a lady should be rather than
being frank, open, and honest as Stanley would have liked it.
Blanche's actions with Stanley are dictated by her basic nature. The woman must
create an illusion. "After all, a woman's charm is fifty percent illusion." And if
Blanche cannot function as a woman, then her life is invalid. She therefore tries to
captivate Stanley by flirting with him and by using all of her womanly charms. She
knows no other way to enter into her present surroundings. Likewise, she must
change the apartment. She can't have the glaring, open light bulb. She must have
subdued light. She must live in the quiet, half-lit world of charm and illusion. She
does not want to see things clearly but wants all ugly truths covered over with the
beauty of imagination and illusion.
But Blanche also realizes that she must attract men with her physical body. Thus,
she does draw Mitch's attention by undressing in the light so that he can see the
outline of her body.
When Blanche meets Mitch, she realizes that here is a strong harbor where she
can rest. Here is the man who can give her a sense of belonging and who is also
captivated by her girlish charms. She deceives him into thinking her prim and
proper but in actuality, Blanche would like to be prim and proper. And as she later
told Mitch: "inside, I never lied." Her essential nature and being have never been
changed by her promiscuity. She gave of her body but not of her deeper self. To
Mitch, she is ready to give her whole being.
Then Mitch forces her to admit her past life. With this revelation, Blanche is
deprived of her chief attributes — that is, her illusions and her pretense. She is then
forced to admit all of her past. After hearing her confessions, we see that Mitch
aligns himself with the Stanley world. He cannot understand the reasons why
Blanche had to give herself to so many people, and, if she did, he thinks that she
should have no objections to sleeping with one more man. But Blanche's intimacies
have always been with strangers. She cannot wantonly give herself to someone for
whom she has an affection. Thus she forces Mitch to leave.
Later that same night when Stanley comes from the hospital, Blanche encounters
the same type of brutality. Stanley rapes Blanche, assuming that she has slept with
so many men in the past, one more would not matter. In actuality, Blanche's action
in the first part of the play indicates that on first acquaintance, when Stanley was a
stranger, she desired him or at least flirted with him. But Stanley was never able to
understand the sensitivity behind Blanche's pretense. Even when Stella refers to
Blanche as delicate, Stanley cries out in disbelief: "Some delicate piece she is." It
is, then, Stanley's forced brutality which causes Blanche to crack up. The rape is
Blanche's destruction as an individual.
Blanche's last remarks in the play seem to echo pathetically her plight and
predicament in life. She goes with the doctor because he seems to be a gentleman
and because he is a stranger. As she leaves, she says, "I have always depended
on the kindness of strangers." Thus, Blanche's life ends in the hands of the strange
doctor. She was too delicate, too sensitive, too refined, and too beautiful to live in
the realistic world. Her illusions had no place in the Kowalski world and when the
illusions were destroyed, Blanche was also destroyed.

Analytical Essay
Look closely at Blanche’s monologue in
Scene One on page 12 from A Streetcar
Named Desire, starting with ‘I, I took the
blows in my face and my body!’ until the
end of the scene.
Discuss in detail the way in which
Tennessee Williams presents Blanche in
this extract, considering how it reflects
her characterisation in the play as a
whole.
Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee
Williams characterisation of Blanche DuBois
presents the audience with a complex and
ambiguous character. The extract begins with her
long monologue at the end of scene one, and ends
with her fainting on an armchair after hearing the
polka music “faint in the distance”. This leaves the
audience curious both about her character and
what might happen after her encounter with Stanley
Kowalski.
The opening of Blanche’s monologue demonstrates
her inability to express her thoughts as she
repeatedly says: “I, I, I”. The repetition of the
pronoun “I” suggests how fragmented, stressed
and almost manic she is at this moment which also
displays her fragile state. Furthermore, this
repetition demonstrates how Blanche purposely
separates herself from Stella by victimising herself
for the loss of Belle Reve. The division between
Blanche and Stella presents how Blanche
supresses Stella with her authority in dialogue. The
dominance Blanche has over her foreshadows her
darker usage of this power further into the play.
The personification of death in the “Grim Reaper”
emphasises the presence of death at Belle Reve.
Blanche felt like she was being haunted and
tormented by death who was vengeful for her past
sins she committed in New Orleans, leaving her
alone. “Belle Reve” means beautiful dream, this
‘beautiful dream’ which has now been taken away
from her, her ultimate goal in life was to become the
stereotypical Southern Belle but she is unable to
achieve the dream of obtaining this life which
demonstrates the last grasp of the Southern Belle.
The music of “blue piano” escalates as Blanche
explains the loss of Belle Reve the more the
audience hears the “blue piano”, the more of
Blanche’s instability is revealed as it appears to be
that she is the only one that can hear it. Williams’s
use of plastic theatre presents the battle between
reality and Blanche’s delusions increase. For
example, when Blanche arrives at Elysian Fields
and the sound of “blue piano” increases when
informs tells Stella about the loss of Belle Reve.
[footnoteRef:1]Kazan says: ‘Blanche is dangerous,
she is destructive’ under his view, “Blanche was an
unstable woman who has entered and threatened
by the security of a different world, and who was
finally cast out allowing the world to survive” which
explains why the loss of the family home and
wealth forces Blanche to lower her standards. [1:
Kazan ]
Blanche’s social class affects her character and her
behaviour, as her social class is the source and the
reason as to why she behaves in a particular way:
“Yes, accuse me! Sit there and stare at me, thinking
I let the place go! I let the place go? Where were
you? In bed with your- Polack!” Rather than
Blanche facing the consequences of her actions,
she insults
Stella’s sexual appetite as she sees Stella chose
Polish Stanley over the DuBois family which she
believes resulted in loss of Belle Reve. Blanche
identifies that Stella has moved on and is focusing
on new values and opportunities, Blanche now
sees her as a ‘one of them’. She feels that she is
“superior” to the others which does reveals
Blanche’s judgemental attitude by making racist
and offensive comments based on their status. In
addition, this also presents how Blanche focuses
on decay of the past whereas Stella focuses on
present immigration. This moreover, displays the
difference between the Dubois and Kowalski
families.
Blanche only assumes that Stella is thinking all the
worst of her: “telling me with your eyes” which
highlights her low self-esteem and anxiety as she
manipulates her into making her feel guilty, which
foreshadows mental health issues that Blanche will
struggle with more into the play. Williams presents
Blanche as an unstable and dual personality
woman that impacts her all relationships as she
goes into conflict with Stanley further into the play.
This was influenced by the Tennessee Williams’
sister, Rose who was diagnosed with schizophrenia
which could explain William’s inspiration with
Blanche’s character in A Streetcar Named Desire
and in A Glass Menagerie.
Blanche involuntarily draws back from Stanley as
he stares indicates the tension between Stanley
and Blanche, reaching its climax in scene ten.
Stanley’s physical presence dominates the
apartment. This also reflects Blanche’s sexual past
which is revealed further into the play, in scene five,
as Blanche waits for Mitch, the Young Man appears.
As Blanche flirts with the boy and attempts to
seduce him. Blanche’s flirtatious exchange with the
young boy reflects the affair, she had with the
student in New Orleans this reveals her lack of
self-control that Blanche tries to keep hidden, as
she fails to in scene one.
When Stanley askes about Blanche’s previous
marriage there is a sudden play of polka music:
‘The music of the polka rises up, faint in the
distance.’ Only Blanche can hear the music this
represents her past. Williams use of polka music
plays at various points in the play, when Blanche is
feeling guilty for Allan’s death. The suicide of her
young husband was the event that activates her
mental instability, Blanche is distressed and
especially anxious. Williams gives Blanche a
persona of a broken woman who us haunted by her
past.
To conclude, A Streetcar Named Desire conveys the
conflict between old values and new values.
Blanche is a representation of the old typical
Southern belle with old traditional values while
Stella and Stanley being the representation of new
values in the New Orleans that was welcome to
immigrants of all races and religions to a new life of
freedom and opportunity the differences of values.
The differences of values reveal Blanche’s true
nature which creates tension within the Kowalski
household.
Blanche DuBois
Blanche DuBois is the protagonist of the play, a fading beauty in her thirties. She is
a former English teacher, the widow of a homosexual husband, and a seducer of
young men. At the beginning of the play, she tells the other characters that she has
arrived in New Orleans after taking a leave of absence from her job because of
“nerves.” However, as the play progresses, she weaves a more and more intricate
web of lies. For example, she tells her suitor, Mitch, that she is Stella’s younger
sister—she is obsessively afraid of old age—, and then she tells him that she had
come to care for her ailing sister.
Blanche swears by the motto “I don’t want realism, I want magic, […] I don’t tell
truth, I tell what ought to be truth.” Symbols connected to her are the color white,
both in her name and in her fashion choices, as well as muted lights and imagery
related to virginity.
Seeing Stanley as an uncouth brute whose way of life is inferior to what she and
her sister grew up with, Blanche openly antagonizes him. In turn, Stanley is
determined to expose her as a fraud.
Her former job as an English teacher is also evident in the way she talks. Her
speeches are full of lyricism, literary allusions, and metaphors, which contrast
heavily with the clipped sentences spoken by the men orbiting around Elysian
Fields.

Character Analysis Stanley Kowalski

Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski lives with his wife Stella in a small apartment in New Orleans. He
is in his late 20s and works as a traveling salesman. Stanley is a crude,
domineering man who is physically imposing. He sees himself as the ruler of his
family. As a result he feels he has the right to order his wife around and expects to
be obeyed. When Stanley feels this power structure is threatened, he can become
violent, throwing things and beating Stella. Even so Stanley has a strong sexual
and emotional bond with his wife. After he strikes her, Stanley feels remorse and
wants Stella to forgive him by sleeping with him. When Blanche comes to stay with
him and Stella, Stanley immediately clashes with her. She is everything he is not
and vice versa. Blanche has refined manners, loves romantic ideals, lies about
herself, and manipulates through flirtation. Stanley has crude manners, loves
down-to-earth ideas, is bluntly honest, and manipulates through physical
intimidation. Stanley hates Blanche's superior attitude toward him and sees her as a
threat to his family order. As a result he uncovers the truth about Blanche's sexual
history in Laurel and uses it against her, then rapes her.
Stanley Kowalski
He's a man of habit and structure, and his desires
in life are quite simple: 1) he enjoys maintaining
stereotypical gender roles in his home, with himself
as the respected head of the household; 2) he likes
spending time with his male friends; and 3) his
sexual relationship with his wife is very important
to him. For Stanley, Blanche's arrival overturns all
three aspects of his structured life: she acts as a
disruptive force in every way.
Stanley and Gender Roles
Let's start with the gender roles in the Kowalski household. Stanley sees himself as
the provider and head of the household He sees Stella's role as a homemaker, who
stays at home, cooks his meals, and generally takes care of him. As such, he also
expects Stella to respect him.
We only get one window into the Kowalskis' relationship before Blanche shows up,
so we have to assume that their first interaction in Scene One is a good example of
their relationship. From Scene One, Stella and Stanley seem pretty happy with
each other, and also content in their gender roles. You can see this when Stanley
comes on stage, bellows, and hurls a pack of meat up to his wife (who is standing
on the landing of their apartment). He's providing the day's dinner, and she laughs
and his gruff antics, happy to make their meal and watch him go bowling with his
friends.
Problems arise when Blanche shows up with her elitist notions and criticism of
Stanley. Now instead of feeling like the "king" of the house, he worries that Stella's
attitude toward him has changed. Stella starts ordering him around in Scene Eight
and telling him to clean up the table after dinner and stop eating so messily.
According to the structure of their usual relationship, Stella is trespassing into his
territory—he's the dominant one; she shouldn't be ordering him around.
Not to mention, he feels that his wife is looking down on him. He states it quite
clearly:
"Pig—Polak—disgusting—vulgar—greasy!—them kind of words have been on your
[Stella's] tongue and your sister's too much around here! What do you two think you
are? A pair of queens?" (8.14)
And when Stanley feels like he's being mistreated, he becomes aggressive,
throwing things and breaking dishes.
This is obviously not a flexible guy who can handle having his routine changed, but
you can still sort of get where he's coming from. Blanche doesn't respect him as the
head of the house, and she's trying to turn his wife against him. She acts like a
tyrant queen instead of a thankful guest with nowhere else to stay. She's a bit of a
house guest from hell. She considers his home a dump, she criticizes him
personally and calls him an ape, insinuates that he is completely uncultured, is
racist and classist against him, acts like he doesn't love his wife, drinks a ton of his
alcohol and lies about it, hogs the bathroom, and tries to get his wife to leave him
repeatedly.
Stanley and His Friends
Another structured, routine aspect of Stanley's life is the time he spends with his
male friends. He's used to having poker nights and going bowling with his buddies.
But when Blanche shows up, she interferes with this aspect of his life as well. She
tries to get his friends' attention while they're playing poker, and flirts with Mitch.
She turns on her music when Stanley just wants to focus on his hand of cards. All
of this drives him nuts until he tosses the radio out the window and hits his wife.
Stanley and His Romantic Relationship With Stella
Stanley sees his sexual relationship with his wife to be one of the most important
aspects of their marriage. Although Stella and Stanley fight, their physical
relationship is the way that they make up and forgive each other. Stella herself
realizes that their sex life helps them smooth out their marriage; she says to
Blanche:
"[...] there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark—that
sort of make everything else seem—unimportant." (4.103)
So essentially, Stanley's way of showing his wife that he loves her tends to happen
through knockin' boots.
Not surprisingly, since they have a two-room apartment (we're talking a kitchen and
a bedroom), when Blanche shows up, Stanley and Stella's sex life suffers, and their
mechanism for maintaining the peace in their relationship is disrupted. After fighting
with Stella about Blanche, Stanley talks about how he wants their relationship to
simply go back to normal:
STANLEY:​
Stell, it's gonna be all right after she [Blanche] goes and after you've had the baby.
It's gonna be all right again between you and me the way it was. You remember that
way that it was? Them nights we had together? God, honey, it's gonna be sweet
when we can make noise in the night the way that we used to and get the colored
lights going with nobody's sister behind the curtains to hear us! (8.55)
Basically, Stanley sees his marriage as suffering because with the sister-in-law in
town, he can't relate to his wife the way he normally does.
Stanley and Sex
We know that sex is important to Stanley in his marriage, but even outside of his
marriage, he basically relates to seemingly all women on a sexual level. Williams
gives us some good descriptions of Stanley in his stage directions. For example:
Since earliest manhood the center of [Stanley's] life has been pleasure with women
[...] He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images
flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them. (1.205)
Stanley's strong sexuality is a parallel to Blanche's. Both have a hard time relating
to the opposite sex in anything but a sexual way, even when it's inappropriate to do
so. From the moment Blanche steps into his house, Stanley and Blanche have
some serious sexual tension going on—he's taking off his shirt, she's flirting with
him. It's all just bad news.
It's especially bad news when we realize that Stanley uses his sexuality and
aggression to assert his dominance in his household, and Blanche seeks comfort
when she's feeling bad through sexual interactions (think of her “depend[ing] on the
kindness of [male] strangers” (11.123). As a result, we get an explosive situation in
which Stanley ends up raping Blanche.
Stanley's Soft Side
Yes, indeed. Stanley has a softer side. The complete turn-around he pulls in Scene
Three from a raging, abusive drunk to a tender, loving husband certainly leaves our
heads spinning. “My baby doll’s left me!” he cries, and “breaks into sobs” (3.189).
When he and Stella reunite at the bottom of the stairs, it’s a touching and incredibly
tender moment. As Stella tells Blanche the next day:
“He was as good as a lamb when I came back, and he’s really very, very ashamed
of himself.” (4.16)
This duality makes Stanley a tough nut to crack. We can't stand him for hitting his
wife, then we feel bad for him when Blanche treats him like an ape, and then we
hate him when he rapes Blanche.
What’s so interesting is the opposite way these characteristics are interpreted by
the two sisters. Blanche makes her opinion pretty clear in a long passage in Scene
Four which we distill here for you:
BLANCHE​
He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! […] There’s even something —
sub-human — something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something —
ape-like about him […] Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! […]
Maybe he’ll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you! (4.118)
Wow, Blanche isn't shy about telling us what she thinks. Stella, on the other hand,
finds him to be, well, kind of hot. Or, as she says of his violent foreplay, "I was—sort
of—thrilled by it” (4.22).
Stanley the American
Adding to this already messy situation is the social
commentary Williams makes through his
antagonist. Many critics have pointed out that
Stanley is part of a new America, one comprised of
immigrants of all races with equal opportunity for
all. Blanche, however, is clinging to a dying social
system of “aristocrats” and “working class” that is
no longer applicable in the 1940s.
Modern readers especially tend to side with the
more liberal idea that merit—and not
ancestry—makes us who we are. Blanche loses
points for being prejudiced, and Stanley garners
some favor for being the classic “pulled up by his
bootstraps” hard-working American.
Stanley Kowalski
A blue-collar worker, a brute, and a sexual predator, Stanley Kowalski emanates
sexual magnetism and this is the foundation of his marriage.
Stanley’s speech is generally clipped and specific, reinforcing his interest in reality
versus Blanche’s obsession with illusion and allusions. He openly antagonizes her
because he sees her as a threat to the life he and his wife have built together.
Williams describes Stanley as a “richly feathered bird.” He is the sort of hard
working everyman with whom the audience initially sides—as opposed to Blanche’s
fickleness. However, we soon discover that he is the cliché male who works hard,
plays hard, and easily becomes enraged when he has too much to drink. When he
enters the room, he speaks loudly, sure of his authority, particularly in his own
home.
When Stanley rapes Blanche, he implies that both of them wanted it. At the end,
when Blanche is finally taken away to a mental institution, the way he consoles his
distraught wife is by both comforting her and openly fondling her.
Stanley Kowalski, Stella's husband, is a man of solid, blue-collar stock - direct,
passionate, and often violent. He has no patience for Blanche and the illusions she
cherishes. Moreover, he is a controlling and domineering man, demanding
subservience from his wife in the belief that his authority is threatened by Blanche's
arrival. Blanche, however, sees him as a primitive ape driven only by instinct. In the
end, though, Stanley proves he can be as cold and calculating as she is.
Stanley Kowalski lives in a basic, fundamental world which allows for no subtleties
and no refinements. He is the man who likes to lay his cards on the table. He can
understand no relationship between man and woman except a sexual one, where
he sees the man's role as giving and taking pleasure from this relationship. He
possesses no quality that would not be considered manly in the most basic sense.
By more sensitive people, he is seen as common, crude, and vulgar. Certainly, his
frankness will allow for no deviation from the straightforward truth. His dress is loud
and gaudy. He relishes in loud noises, and his voice rings out like a loud bellow.
To Blanche, Stanley represents a holdover from the Stone Age. He is bestial and
brutal and determined to destroy that which is not his. He is like the Stone Age
savage bringing home the meat from the kill. He is animal-like and his actions are
such. He eats like an animal and grunts his approval or disapproval. When aroused
to anger, he strikes back by throwing things, like the radio. Or he breaks dishes or
strikes his wife. He is the man of physical action
Even the symbols connected with Stanley support his brutal, animal-like approach
to life. In the first scene, he is seen bringing home the raw meat. His clothes are
loud and gaudy. His language is rough and crude. His outside pleasures are
bowling and poker. When he is losing at poker, he is unpleasant and demanding.
When he is winning, he is happy as a little boy.
He is, then, "the gaudy seed-bearer," who takes pleasure in his masculinity. "Animal
joy in his being is implicit," and he enjoys mainly those things that are his — his
wife, his apartment, his liquor, "his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears
his emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer."
With the appearance of Blanche, Stanley feels an uncomfortable threat to those
things that are his. Blanche becomes a threat to his way of life; she is a foreign
element, a hostile force, a superior being whom he can't understand. She is a
challenge and a threat. He feels most strongly that she is a threat to his marriage.
Thus when the basic man, such as Stanley, feels threatened, he must strike back. It
is a survival of the fittest.
Stanley first feels the threat when he finds out that Belle Reve has been lost. He
does not care for Belle Reve as a bit of ancestral property, but, instead, he feels
that a part of it is his. If his wife has been swindled, he has been swindled. He has
lost property, something that belonged to him. He probes into the problem without
tact or diplomacy. He goes straight to the truth without any shortcuts. His only
concern is to discover whether he has been cheated. He does not concern himself
with the feelings of Blanche. He wants only to force the issue to its completion.
Stanley feels the first threat to his marriage after the big fight he has with Stella
after the poker game. He knows that this would not have occurred if Blanche had
not been present. It is her presence which is causing the dissension between him
and his wife. Then the following morning when he overhears himself being referred
to as bestial, common, brutal, and a survivor of the Stone Age, he is enraged
against Blanche. He resents her superior attitude and bides his time.
Throughout Blanche's stay at his house, he feels that she has drunk his liquor,
eaten his food, used his house, but still has belittled him and has opposed him. She
has never conceded to him his right to be the "king" in his own house. Thus, he
must sit idly by and see his marriage and home destroyed, and himself belittled, or
else he must strike back. His attack is slow and calculated. He begins to compile
information about Blanche's past life. He must present her past life to his wife so
that she can determine who is the superior person. When he has his information
accumulated, he is convinced that however common he is, his life and his past are
far superior to Blanche's. Now that he feels his superiority again, he begins to act.
He feels that having proved how degenerate Blanche actually is, he is now justified
in punishing her directly for all the indirect insults he has had to suffer from her.
Thus he buys her the bus ticket back to Laurel and reveals her past to Mitch.
Stanley perceives Blanche as having made him endure too much. In his mind, she
has never been sympathetic toward him, she has ridiculed him, and earlier she had
even flirted with him but has never been his. When he finds out that she has slept
so indiscriminately with so many men, he cannot understand why she should object
to one more. Thus, he rapes her partly out of revenge, and also so that she will be
his in the only way he fully understands.
Stanley, then, is the hard, brutal man who does not understand the refinements of
life. He is controlled by natural instincts untouched by the advances of civilization.
Thus, when something threatens him, he must strike back in order to preserve his
own threatened existence. If someone gets destroyed, that is the price that must be
paid.

Character Analysis Stella Kowalski

Sweet Sister? Or Not So Sweet...
But the fight is far from over. Stella comes to her
sister’s defense against her husband time and time
again, starting with his accusation of a “swindle” in
Scene Two and continuing as he uncovers more
and more information about Blanche's past in
Laurel. Stella remains firmly on her sister’s side,
refusing to believe these stories even in the face of
overwhelming evidence. “You didn’t know Blanche
as a girl,” she argues. “Nobody, nobody, was tender
and trusting as she was” (8.50).​
​
This is what we most have to remember about
Stella—that she knew Blanche when they were both
girls. It goes a long way in helping us understand
her loyalty and kindness to her sister. However, it
makes it considerably more difficult for us to
understand her decision at the end of the play to
disbelieve her sister, send her off to a mental
institution, and side with Stanley. So what does
Stella possibly use to justify her decision?​
​
"I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with
Stanley." (11.24)​
​
Interesting! Stella says she can’t believe the story if
she wants to go on living with Stanley. She doesn’t
say that she thinks Blanche is lying; rather she’s
consciously choosing to think Blanche is lying so
her life can continue without interruption. Does this
sound like self-delusion? A retreat into a world of
fantasy in order to avoid dealing with reality? Does
this sound like (gasp!) the very same thing Blanche
is doing?​
​
On the one hand, this is pretty awful on Stella’s
part. She has good reason to suspect that her
husband raped Blanche and drove her over the
edge to insanity, but she’s pretending it never
happened. On the other hand, Stella really doesn’t
have another option. (Even more interesting is the
fact that Blanche used this same argument to
defend her own self-delusion.) Or, as Stella's
neighbor Eunice says, “Don’t ever believe it. Life
has got to go on. No matter what happens, you’ve
got to keep on going” (11.25).​
​
This line in particular is fascinating because it so
much sounds like survival instinct. These words,
“survival” and “instinct,” should ring a bell with
you. They should send you back to Blanche’s tirade
against Stanley in Scene Four, when she tells her
sister that Stanley represents ape-like primitivity,
the law of the jungle, and that Stella should move
forward and progress with the world out of
sub-human darkness. She begs her sister, “Don’t
hang back with the brutes!” (4.118).
In fact, by obeying a primitive survival instinct
instead of considering morality or loyalty or even
logic, Stella has done just that. She hangs back
with the brutes not just by staying with Stanley, but
by catering to the animal impulse of survival over
all else.
Stella

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Stella Kowalski

takes on the central role. She is the connection that
brings all the characters together. Being the sister
of Blanche and the wife of Stanley Kowalski puts
her in between two worlds. She tries to maintain a
balance between the two, however, as the play
unravels she must decide which reality she wants
to live in. Even though Stella is rarely ‘acting’
throughout the play, as she spends most of the
time mediating, her actions changes the course of
the play and to ensure her own survival.

In the beginning of the play, Stella, is a

realistic and complacent character; as she makes
the best of the life she shares with Stanley. After
the fight between Stanley and Stella she expresses
that, ”it wasn’t anything as serious as you seem to
take it” (Williams 72), to Blanche. She accepts him
for who he is a brute, with animalistic tendencies.
She is happy and excited by the good his violent
side brings to their relationship, and does not let
the defective parts of the violence bother her.
Trying to convince Blanche, Stella recalls,
“Stanley’s always smashed things. Why, on our
wedding night…he smashed all the light bulbs with
the heel of my slipper [she laughs]”(Williams 72).
Her laughter throughout this whole scene
emphasizes the differences between the old society
she lived in and the ideals that Blanche still holds
on to, dearly. It also illustrates that Stella
downgraded herself and has grown accustom to
this behavior from her sophisticated upbringing.
However, with the introduction of Blanche’s ideals,
Blanche begins to destroy her life with Stanley.

The climax of the fight between Blanche and

Stanley forces Stella to choose between the two in
order to sustain her own existence. With the story
of Stanley raping Blanche, Stella states,“ I couldn’t
believe her story and go on living with Stanley”
(Williams 165). She makes a conscious decision to
not even consider the possibility of her sister’s
story in order to be able to maintain the loving life
she lives in with Stanley. Furthermore, Stella is also
expressing that she is not considering a life without
Stanley. This is a logical decision as she has a child
and life with Stanley. Stella relies on him for
economical and emotional support; therefore
leaving him would destroy her whole world and
thus condemning her to a fate similar to her sister.
As Blanche leaves, “there is something luxurious in
[Stella’s] complete surrender to crying now that her
sister is gone” (Williams 179). Her tears hints at
Stella subconsciously knowing the truth, but is
remorseful, as she must deny it to “go on living”.
Self-perseverance is above all else; this is the
horror of reality and Stella must now bear the
burden of the truth.