He gives his wife, Stella, regular “whacks of his hand on her thigh” to assert his dominance over her. (50) The countless times that Stanley hits Stella and breaks furniture solidifies his role as a dominant male. Stanley also unveils his promiscuity to whomever he please because he says to Blanche “My clothes are stickin’ to me. Do you mind if I make myself comfortable? [He starts to remove his shirt].” (26) He walks around his house shirtless with his sister in-law being the only one in the house and as we learn it is for the sex appeal between him and Blanche.
(TH) In Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche DuBois loses her sense of reality. (A1)Due to Blanche's past she carries guilt and in order to fulfill her guilt she uses bathing as a way to feel pure and clean. (A2)Blanche's long hot baths symbolize that Blanche feels dirty. (A3)Stanely, Stella's husband has chastised Blanche since the day she arrived to their home he even begins to take noticed of her abnormal bathing habits when he tells Stella "Washing out something? .
Stella feels horrible and you can see their marriage is getting affected already. It ends on an up note between Stella and Blanche. Scene 3: Lurid, nocturnal brilliance, vivid, peak of manhood as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colors, this foreshadows their arrogance and stupidity later in the scene. He is extremely delicate. He doesn’t say much and he doesn’t get extremely involved in the poker game.
It would be nice to keep you, but I 've got to be good--and keep my hands off children.”(89) Blanche noticed the paper boy who came because he was a young one. She immediately started flirting with him and the reader could tell he was somewhat uncomfortable with the way Blanche had approached or pushed herself off on him. In the beginning of the play when Blanche first meets Stanley, it 's noticeable that there is the uneasy feeling when the two are around each other. “...Blanche is terrified of Stanley…”(Dace), and this is shown by the way she acts when she is around Stanley. From the very start, Blanche was never really comfortable around stanley to begin with.
A Streetcar Named Desire can be seen as a modern tragedy because Blanche, who could be considered protagonist, is working against a tide of unstoppable change. Whereas protagonists in other tragedies work mainly against their own mistakes and flaws, Blanche must also deal with the changing times in America: The industrialization of the South during and after WWI and WWII, the end of the old plantations, immigrants, like the Polish Stanley, moving into the South. In Blanche's mind these indicate the end of simplicity, and she fails to cope with the realities. American literature after WWII often relies on these same themes of change in tragedy. The protagonist not only has no control over their tragic flaw, but also cannot navigate the outside world which once was simple.
As opposed to helping Blanche deal with the world, her fantasizing is more destructive then helpful. Stanley’s violent rape of Blanche is a wake up call from her fantasy life, the final straw in her mental decline, leading to her
Stanley is a blunt, practical, and animalistic man who has no patience for subtleties and refinement. His animalistic character shows the moment he meets Blanche, when he, moving with “animalistic joy” (24), “sizes” Blanche up with “sexual classifications” and “crude image” in his mind (25). Under his stare, Blanche draws “involuntarily back” (25), a movement that foreshadows their later conflict and her subsequent demise. His practical and straightforward side shows when he interrogates Blanche about the sale of Belle Reve to make sure that his wife is not swindled. His straightforward, practical nature makes him “boom” out of impatience (46) and demands Blanche to cut straight to the point when she tries to talk in an indirect, subtle manner as befit a Southern gentlewoman.
A Streetcar Named Desire “A Streetcar Named Desire” is a symbolic and mythical play by Tennessee Williams. The author’s successful play focuses on social matter and the everyday life of the characters. The characters in this play include Blanche DuBois, who travels on a streetcar named desire to visit her sister, Stella, in New Orleans. Through the play, several unusual acts happen such as the violence towards women, male dominance and a tense relationship occurs between Blanche and her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Also Blanche realizes her sister’s attachment and affection towards her husband who has a rough and harsh character throughout the story.
After Blanche was raped and Stella did not believe what had happened, she falsely told her sister “…the rest of [her] time [she] is going to spend on the sea…”(pg. 148) when in reality she was just leaving because of the rape. Blanche often made up stories to escape the humiliation in her life. Within A Street Car Named Desire by Tennessee Williams characters demonstrate that how one views one’s self is not always realistic. People tend to lie to one’s self to make reality seem superior.
A person can not simply believe what reality is when all they have ever known is their own lies to be the truth. In the play “A Streetcar Named Desire” Tennessee Williams has multiple characters that are constantly battling between what is fact and what is fiction in the Kowalski Flat household. Blanche DuBois, a former english teacher from Laurel, Mississippi, Stella’s sister, is the main victim of this conflict. With Ms. DuBois’ character and the knowledge we have that she was an english teacher, it is easily implied that drama and romance were not only a part of her profession. Blanche’s constant fight between what is real and what is an illusion begins to spiral out of control and gets to the point that she must be institutionalized.