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1. Introduction
A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most famous works of the American writer Tennessee Williams who was born in the south of America, Columbus, Mississppi in 1911, his father was a shoe salesman, while his mother was the daughter of a highly respected minister. The family lived in Mississppi for several years, when he was 8 years old, all the family moved to St. Louis, an industrial city in North America. But the move was disastrous for the family, because the children and their mother could not fit in the industrial city, which affected his writing, so the southern character and living appeared in his works frequently.
A Streetcar Named Desire tells about the conflict between Blanche and Stanley. Blanche, a south beauty woman, lived in the family plantation, named Belle Reve. When she was 16 years old, she married Allen, a homosexual. He took his own life because he couldn’t bear of Blanche blame, for which Blanche felt very ashamed. The worse was that her father and mother died away one by one and she lost the family plantation. After the profligate life, she had to visit her younger sister Stella was in New Orleans. Stella was married Stanley, a factory worker, who was crude and easy to lose temper. “Blanche’s arrival disrupts the easy contentment of the marriage. Blanche values the world symbolized by the southern culture associated with art, music and poetry, and is always ready to attack the crudeness and coarseness of Stanly. Stanly realizes with resentment that Blanche’s influence over Stella will take his wife away from him. Therefore, the play is about the war between Stanley and Blanch. Finally, Blanche is physically raped by Stanley and is mentally driven insane. The war is over when she is sent to the madhouse.
Blanche is one of the figures who are rather controversial. Some critics praised her as a gentle and ideal woman, while some despised her as a no sense of shame woman. This paper will analyze Blanche according to the origin of the society and herself: in order to fill the spiritual emptiness, and break away from loneliness and fear, Blanche constantly pursuit satisfaction on physical, which made her degenerate into a whore.
2. The origin of Blanche’s tragedy
The tragedy of Blanche is an unavoidable result of the development of the industrial society. Those “remaining nobles” of the Southern plantation economy immerses in the past situation to live there own way. While the Northern modern industrial civilization continually expanded, they didn’t do what as Blanche said “maybe he’s what we need to mix with our blood now that we’ve lost Belle Reve and have to go on without Belle Reve to protect us” [冯永红 译,2001:56], and they had no ability to break away from the untruthful and out-dated ethics. In the changeable society, it is certain that those nobles would suffer from the unmerciful washing out. There was nothing but tragical destiny waiting for them.
2.1 The origin of tragedy from the society
The difference between South and North was not only in the local, but also in the economy, belief, traditional culture. In South the social economical style is plantation economy, which caused that the female must depend on the male to live. In addition that, most of the southerners were puritans, they always inhibited their natures, and felt satisfied under the protection of male. At the same time, the capitalist industry continued to develop steadily and fast. Facing the strong power came from north, the southerners behaved so delicate, they had no ability to adapt the change of the society, the only thing they would do was indulging in the dream. Blanche and Stella were the spokespersons of the South. They had been living a plantation named Belle Reve in the past. Unfortunately, their father and mother died out one by one; they were not able to manage the plantation any more, so they had to sell it. In order to live on, and also for assuaging loneness, she began to abandon herself to make an appointment with different strangers. People swore her shameless, the school, she worked for, fired her, which made her have no confidence to have a normal life as others, so Blanche was forced to degenerate, there was no way for her to get out the trouble, it is out of her willing. The change of the society and family was the origin of Blanche’s tragedy.
2.2 The origin of tragedy from herself
Having no way to get out, Blanche went to New Orleans hoping to have a place to stay, also hoped to begin a new life. At Stalle’s home, Blanche showed out her debauchery, hypocrisy and vanity obviously. She couldn’t afford the expensive dress and jewellery, she bought some cheap but blatant dress and glass jewelry instead. She wanted to get a place to stay eagerly, but she showed sneer to her sister’s simple house, and she also looked down upon her brother-in-law Stanley, who she thought was uneducated and vulgar but wanted pander. In order to marry Mitch, she even pretended to be a pure and flawless, elegant noble woman. However, while she played a noble woman while she used French ,Mitch didn’t understand, molested Mitch and asked him that weather he would like to go to bed with her or not. According to the drama, we can also know that Blanch gave a fellow who came to take the paper charges a romantic kiss to pander him. From these perspectives, Blanche indeed had no sense of shame. She said: “I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. Soft people-softer people have got to court the favor of the hard ones.” , Besides these, Blanche yearns towards chaste white, because white stands for chasteness and virgin. “She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district.”
3.2 However, the disgusting side can’t be denied
3.2.1 Endless desire and conceit
Buddhism holds that view: “The reason why people must endure hardship is that people have endless desire”. In the drama, so Blanche does: when she was 16 years old, when she was beauteous, noblest, Blanche married a handsome young, she attempted to make use of marriage to bring her a satisfactory life. However, all things go contrary to her wishes; she cannot recover after a series of misfortune such as the suicide of her husband and the losing of fazenda. She floundered among many mails, and regarded orgies as a mean to call away her inner suffering and confusion. As an English teacher, she could have earned her own living and had a decent life, but in order to fill her empty heart, she had her fling, infringed moral, and seduced a nonage student. After being kicked out from school, facing her brother-in-law, who always was looked upon by her, Blanche did never lose the chance to pander. Blanche attempted to rely on her goodliness to attract man to satisfy her endless desire. As if only in that way, she could get her parting youth back.
3.2.2 Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is another character of Blanche. In the drama, Blanche couldn’t go out at daytime and putted paper lampshade over the light bulb. Only in darkness can Blanche feel relax and freely. Although she was utterly discredited, she always hided the truth to make her become a veriest noblewoman. When she explain the reason why she came to her sister’s, she didn’t say any words about kicking out from the school. In order to marry Mitch, she concealed her real age and told a lie that she was Stella’s younger sister. In front of people, she did her best to prettify herself while in private she indulged herself.
3.2.3 Superiority complex
Blanche was born in a gentlefolk, not only had a good looks, but also got good education, she was haughty and arrogance. Although the lopsided situation had been changed, the inrooted concept had not gotten mend.
At the beginning of the drama, Blanche came to her sister Stella’s home as a “gentlewoman”. When she arrived, she completely bewildered “this? Can —this be —her home?”. She had never imagined that her sister, who had a noblest ancestry as her, lived in a skid row. As a homeless man, Blanche showed her scorn to Stella’s “unseemly” house, “what are you doing in a place like that? Never , never in my worst dreams could I picture — only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar Allen Poe could do justice to it. What are you doing in that horrible place?”
4. Conclusion
The tragedy of Blanche can’t be avoided, it is the result of the history, and it also will disappear with the development of history. Under the impact of capitalistic modern civilization, south ancient traditions and civilizations would be whopped and assimilated as Stella or be raped and destroyed. Blanche has degenerated; this degeneration was one kind of complaints to the brutal world. But it is easy to know that Blanche have never degenerated in her soul, she insisted on her ideal and nature, hunting her new life, didn’t give up. Although Blanche was a dissolute woman, she also was the victim actually. Blanche stands for the southern women who once had their own traditional culture and never gave up when another one invaded. A Streetcar Named Desire reflects American depression and puzzle; and expresses the contradiction between fleshliness and soul, desire and reality; exposes all kinds of torment and struggle on spirit. Blanche failed in trying to pursue a happy life, this struggle encourage more modern females to strive against the unfeeling society.
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