Day 9 Blog

Day 9 Blog
When Your Pursuit of Happiness Conflicts with Another’s
In Tennessee Williams’, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, we deal with a family broken up from different morals. We have two sisters, Blanche and Stella. Each come from a prominent family that owned an estate called Belle Reve. It becomes known that Belle Reve was lost by Blanche when she comes unexpectedly to visit Stella. Stella had left the estate years ago, and married a Polish man named Stanley. The two have a skewed relationship, but both are madly in love with each other. Stanley and Stella live in “a two-story corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields.” “This building contains two flats”, and Stella and her husband live in one of them. One day, while Stanley and Stella were at the bowling alley, Blanche arrives. Eunice welcomes her and shows her into Stella’s apartment. Blanche, annoyed with Eunice’s helpfulness, tells Eunice rudely, “I’d like to be left alone.” Eunice goes to find Stella. Stella returns back to her flat to greet Blanche. The two catch up and Blanche is demeaning to Stella telling her “You’ve put on some weight, yes you’re just as plump as a little partridge!” Blanche is also racist when Stella tells her husband is Polish. She asks if he is a “Polack.” As the conversation carries on, Blanche continues to talk about herself and put down her sister telling her that she did not expect her to live in such a dump. Blanche tells Stella to ask her questions all about herself. She seems very conceited. Finally, Blanche tells her about Belle Reve and how she lost it. She is defensive when she talks about it saying, “You left! I stayed and struggled!...all the burden descended on my shoulders.” Upset by everything, Stella runs crying into the bathroom. In the meantime, Stanley returns home from Bowling and has his first encounter with Blanche. It is evident that the two are polar opposites. Blanche is flashy and wants lots of attention, and Stanley will not give it to her. Later on, the two sisters must leave the house because Stella wants “to keep Blanche out till the party breaks up because I don’t know how she would take it.” Stanley is having his guy friends over for a poker party. The girls are going out for the night. Before leaving, Blanche takes a nice long bath, and Stanley is obviously annoyed with her. Stella breaks the news to Stanley about Belle Reve. Stanley is infuriated because under “the Napoleonic code according to which what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband and vice versa.” Stanley goes through Blanche’s trunk and becomes convinced that Blanche sold the place and kept the money to herself. Blanche has very nice clothing with “feathers and furs” and lots of jewelry. The rif raf dies down, and the two women leave for the night. When the women return back at 2:30 in the morning, the men are still at the table playing poker with “whiskey bottles and glasses” still on the table. Mitch, one of Stanley’s friends, becomes attracted to Blanche. The two dance in the room to the radio. Angered and drunk, Stanley comes in and throws the radio out the window. Stella and Stanley also get into a fight, and Stanley beats Stella. Stella tells Stanley that, “’I want to go away, I want to go away!’” Both Stella and Blanche go stay at Eunice’s place. Stanley, realizing what he did, called Eunice; however she hung up on him. So Stanley goes to the street to call for Stella. Stella comes out and the two go back to their flat. The next day, Blanche asks Stella why she stays with a man that beats her. Stella reassures Blanche that “it wasn’t anything as serious as you seem to take it…It isn’t all right for anybody to make such a terrible row, but-people do sometimes.” Blanche does not understand the love that Stella has for Stanley, and she tells Stella that “you’re married to a madman!” Blanche admits to Stella that she has no money, and that she must write a letter to Shep Huntleigh. Blanche also becomes romantically involved with Mitch. The two plan to get married because they are both lonely and need each other. The play goes on and Stanley is convinced that he has the scoop on Blanche and why she left town. He heard that she was very well known at a hotel, Hotel Flamingo, where she is from near Belle Reve. She got asked to leave her teaching job because she had a fling with a 17 year old boy. He is convinced of this and has numerous sources. This was the night of Blanche’s birthday. Mitch was supposed to come over but does not because Stanley told Mitch of this news. A fight breaks out with everyone, and Stella ends up going into labor. Later on, Blanche and Stanley are home without Stella. Blanche is drunk, and Stanley has just returned home from the hospital. From what I make of it, Stanley raped Blanche. The play ends with Blanche going crazy. A doctor and a nurse come to pick her up and take her to a psychiatric hospital.
In my opinion, a lot of Blanche’s demise she brought upon herself. I believe with all characters, excluding Stanley, she deserved what she had coming for her. Stanley, however, was an instigator towards Blanche. With the other characters Blanche was conceited. She thought only about herself and her desires. It is evident in the first scene when Blanche first sees Stella. She tells Stella to ask her all these questions. She is so proud of everything about herself, and she just puts down Stella. Also, she makes up a person, Shep Huntleigh, with whom she wants to be with for money. She tells Stanley, in Scene 9, that he called, and they will go off together. With all the men she was with back at home and the seventeen year old boy, Blanche deserved to have a bad reputation and get kicked out of the town. She had desires just to be accepted and comforted. She could not control those desires, and it got her into trouble. There are some things though that I am uncertain of. I do not know how much of her demise she brought upon herself in regards to her first husband being a homosexual and losing Belle Reve. Blanche did not know when she married the man that she could not fulfill his desires. That must be very rough and could have attributed to her behavior following. Also, it was not Blanche’s fault that Belle Reve was lost.
I am ranking the characters, in terms of likeability, as Stella, Blanche, then Stanley (Stella being the most likeable and Stanley being the least likeable). I rank them like this because Stella was portrayed as vulnerable. She was a woman during this time period who really was under her husband’s rule. She was beaten by him on numerous occasions including after Poker night with the boys, even when she was pregnant. The fact that she was pregnant made her even more vulnerable. After being beaten by her husband, Blanche goes back to him with open arms when Stanley stands outside screaming her name. This just made me angry at her. I also feel sorry for Stella because in the beginning of the play (scene one), Blanche completely puts down Stella. She puts down her home, her image, and her husband. She tells her that she didn’t expect her to live in such a dump, and that she looks plump, and her man is “common.” I rank Blanche second because I feel sorry for her because of her past. She has been through so much with finding out that her husband was a homosexual and catching him in the act, and then later that night, she saw him kill himself. I also feel sorry for her because she was raped by her sister’s husband, Stanley. Rape is a horrific act, and nobody deserves to be put in that situation. The fact that her sister wouldn’t even believe her that it happened made me feel even more sorry for her. She is likeable to me though because she is not afraid to stand up to Stanley. In this time period, a woman was under the rule of her husband, as it was evident from her sister, Stella. Blanche was not afraid to tell Stanley like it is and challenge him. However, I didn’t like her because she drinks too much, lies about it, and hides the bottles (on numerous occasions). Also, she had a lapse in judgment after the death of her husband where she got around, especially with people under the age. This shows her stupidity and weakness. Stanley is the least likeable. I do not like this man. He is a man that drinks too much. He is also a wife beater and controlling. To me he seems bipolar. He beats his wife one minute, and then the next minute he wants her back in his arms. This is not respectable to me. He tried to get rid of Blanche and destroy her in every way possible, even though he knew that Blanche had now where to go. He told Stella and Mitch about her past on Blanche’s birthday. Mitch was all Blanche had at that time, and he took Mitch away from her. The event that made me hate Stanley was when he raped Blanche. This was inexcusable, and for the rest of the play I did not like him.
At the end of the play, I was upset. I was upset with how it ended. I felt like Blanche had turned into something that could have been avoided, and I blame Stanley. Stanley treated her pretty terribly, and brought a lot of anxiety on Blanche that was not needed. I do not feel like justice was served at the end of the play. Yes, they did get rid of Blanche, but look at what it did to poor Stella. She was completely torn apart by it. Now, Stella has all the images of Stanley being a “common man” in her head from Blanche when before their marriage was perfectly fine, and the two were madly in love. I believe that their marriage will never be the same.
Throughout the play, there is a “blue piano” playing. There is also the music of the tune playing the night when Blanche’s husband killed himself. I believe that music was symbolic during this play. It played at times when there was a lot of tension and a fight was going to break out. Do you have any thoughts on what this music symbolized?