Blanche Dubois In A Streetcar Named Desire

Blanche is delicate, refined and sensitive. She is cultured and intelligent and cannot stand a vulgar remark or ‘vulgar action’. She doesn't want realism, she prefers magic. She doesn't always tell the truth but tells “what ought to be the truth”. Yet she has lived a life that would make the most corrupt person seem so spineless. She is, in general someone who doesn't belong in the world of realism. She seems to belong in a world of ‘fairies’. Her character will always be at the mercy of the cruel realistic world.

The Lady of Shalott hasn't had to face the brutalities of life. So she is unsure of what going into the real world actually means. Just like Blanche, her inability to deal with reality is what eventually ruins her. She has lived all her life on her island. She has only known calm and stability and the beauty of her magical safe haven. It is desire that compels her to leave. What adds to the thrill is the whisper she hears, the whisper that tells her if she left her island. She would be cursed. Under such circumstances, ones first instinct would be to take all possible care but instead the Lady of shallot leaves. She does this because of her desire; her irrational desire for Sir Lancelot.

Blanche’s desires are what have determined the course of her life, from falling in love with Allan to losing him and losing her job because of her relationship with the school boy and with her flirtation with Stanley and her ‘profound’ outpourings in the presence of Mitch. The Lady of Shallot’s passion and desire for Sir Lancelot Persuaded her to leave her island but in both cases there is something which mostly seems to be inseparable from desire;