Blanche Dubois Character Analysis Essay

Character Analysis of Blanche DuBois One of the main characters in a play by Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire is Blanche DuBois. Blanche is a victim of her upbringing and the changing times she lives in. She was born to aristocratic family and raised to be taken care of. This romantic, art, music and poetry loving soul is unprepared for the world she lives in and she is deeply affected by all the tragedies in her life. She is a tragic character, who is unable to exist in the world which surrounds her so she makes up a better world in her imagination. The world she wishes to live in. People can sympathize with Blanche because of all the tragedy in her life. Susan Henthorne writes in her essay A Streetcar Named Desire,
Death and desire bring Blanche to this low point in her life. She never recovers from the devastating death of her young husband, indirectly caused by the nature of his sexual desire. The death of her relatives are instrumental in reducing her to poverty, as do the desires, the costly “epic fornications” of her forebears. Her own promiscuous sexual desire destroys her reputation and her professional career. (Henthorne )
The death of her relatives leaves deep scars on Blanche’s soul, but even deeper scares are

As Tish Dace writes in A Street Car Named Desire, “Streetcar’s original producer, Irene Selznick, as a woman, may have been touched by the power of double standard to dictate that Blanche’s father and grandfather could indulge in ‘epic fornications’ and Stanley could be admired for his sexual prowess, but a woman of Blanche’s class, once she has slipped off her pedestal, is fair target for rape” (Dace). Blanche’s promiscuity is the reason Mitch will not marry her and it is the reason she is banned from her hometown, while Stanley, guilty of the same crime, is not punished at all but admired for