He doesn’t have smarts and it’s not handed to him like Blanche gets it. Stanley works for everything he has. They give each other looks of anger. It is significant because it’s like two children fighting to be the best. They can’t seem to get along and they can’t seem to find a common ground.
“Playwright Tennessee Williams was born on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi” (“Tennessee Williams”). Tennessee Williams was one of the most prominent playwrights in history. The way he conducted plays were dramatic, eye opening and ahead of his time. Tennessee Williams was a white Southern male who grew up in one the harshest time periods in America. It was a more strict time period with old idealistic ways.
Later on in the story we find that Blanche had lied once again. Mitch states, “Lies, lies, inside and out, all lies.” Blanche responds with “ Never inside, I didn't lie in my heart…” (119). When Blanche responds with this statement of never lie inside, it represents how she believed her own lies nearly as much as Mitch did. When Mitch forces Blanche into the light, he reveals he knows that she has lied to him, this represents Blanche coming to reality but still believing her delusions. In order for Blanche to tell Mitch the truth inside and out it is necessary for her to come clean about her past life.
Also, Blanche plays emotional games with men to get the attention she needs to feel good. For example, when Blanche sees the paper boy, she takes out a scarf to try and seduce him, quickly kisses him without waiting for consent, and rushes him on his way without a word from him, just to play with his emotions (pg. 88). Even when something bad happens to Blanche, she copes by making a lie to cover up her emotions. 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.
Blanche’s constant bathing, which is a passive, happy activity like a ‘child frolicking in a tub’, serves as an escape from reality. This childish mannerism displayed by Blanche indicates her innocence, yet the innocence Blanche beholds is not sexual but naïve in the sense that she cannot see the real world for what it is. Her need to act young also displays her paranoia of ageing. At the same time as wanting to gain back youth, she subconsciously tries to clean away her past, like rape victims are known to do. However, this inner calm is only short term, and it is ironic that while she takes her refuge in a bath, Stanley takes the opportunity to maliciously reveal her past to Stella.
This behavior of her desires also shows how she is living in an illusion trying to recreate her relationship with her husband. However, this is not possible since the illusion she is trying to create is in the past and cannot be remade. Where she tries to repeat the illusion, which eventually leads her to a destructive path. Consequently, Blanche’s overwhelming desire causes the loss of her relationship with Mitch and the only escape she had out of this illusionary world. Where she is unable to escape her illusions and now truly believes in it.Mitch rejects Blanche because of how Stanley told him about her past.
[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. He also displays the characteristics of an ‘animal’ by talking without respect and discretion. He tells a story to Blanche about a woman who said, “I am the glamorous type! (Woman)” and “I said (Stanley) “So what?”(38) This shows his complete lack of consideration for women and it also accents him being the archetype male. When you glance at Stanley’s life he
One point of view voiced in the play is that this sort of physical masculinity is sub-human and primitive; another is that it is sexually attractive and appealing. To Blanche, Stanley originally comes off as appealing however once he rapes her, he becomes monstrous in her eyes. On the contrary, Blanche is not exactly humane as well. Blanche is the extreme version of how a female was represented in the mid-1900s, but takes crazy too far. As opposed to helping Blanche deal with the world, her fantasizing is more destructive then helpful.
Blanche’s desire for marriage stems from the happiness she felt from her first marriage when she was young. She was completely in love with her husband, and was utterly shocked to find out that he preferred men to the point where she had called him “disgusting”. In the end, he took his own life and Blanche had become widowed. Scarred by the death of her husband, she finds content in the arms of any stranger who admires her façade. Blanche’s dependence on a man is a clear representation of her desperation for a married life.
Things escalate between the two because of Stanley’s drunken rage taken out on Stella, but also because Stanley begins to become suspicious and aware of Blanche’s many lies and cover-ups. Conflicts form and grow out of control and