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    Blanche DuBois - A Streetcar Named Desir

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    Subhankar Acharjya
    Blanche DuBois is the main character of Tennessee Williams' play "A Streetcar Named Desire". She is 30 years old but wishes she was younger. She used to teach English in Mississippi but was fired. Blanche is insecure and cares too much about her appearance and what men think of her. She depends on male attention for her self-esteem. Blanche is a complex character who is trying to adapt to her circumstances but struggles with hiding things from her past.

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    Blanche DuBois - A Streetcar Named Desir

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    Subhankar Acharjya
    108 views2 pages
    Blanche DuBois is the main character of Tennessee Williams' play "A Streetcar Named Desire". She is 30 years old but wishes she was younger. She used to teach English in Mississippi but was fired. Blanche is insecure and cares too much about her appearance and what men think of her. She depends on male attention for her self-esteem. Blanche is a complex character who is trying to adapt to her circumstances but struggles with hiding things from her past.

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    Blanche DuBois is the main character of Tennessee Williams' play "A Streetcar Named Desire". She is 30 years old but wishes she was younger. She used to teach English in Mississippi but was fired. Blanche is insecure and cares too much about her appearance and what men think of her. She depends on male attention for her self-esteem. Blanche is a complex character who is trying to adapt to her circumstances but struggles with hiding things from her past.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    108 views2 pages

    Blanche DuBois - A Streetcar Named Desir

    Uploaded by

    Subhankar Acharjya
    Blanche DuBois is the main character of Tennessee Williams' play "A Streetcar Named Desire". She is 30 years old but wishes she was younger. She used to teach English in Mississippi but was fired. Blanche is insecure and cares too much about her appearance and what men think of her. She depends on male attention for her self-esteem. Blanche is a complex character who is trying to adapt to her circumstances but struggles with hiding things from her past.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Camila Lavaqui Gonçalves

    Blanche DuBois - A Streetcar Named Desire

    Blanche DuBois is a character from the play “A Streetcar Named Desire”.


    Blanche is thirty years old, but wished she was younger. She works in a school,
    as an English teacher in Mississippi, but she was told to leave. As she tells her
    sister in Scene One: she’s simply taking a “leave of absence”, but we know Mr.
    Graves (her boss) fired her. Blanche is from Belle Reve, a farm where Stella
    and she lived before.

    When Blanche arrives in Stella’s house, she wants to make a good


    impression, by wearing good clothes and trying (poorly) to ride her habit of
    drinking. She transmits, behind everything she does to ensure her good
    appearance, an insecure, dislocated Blanche. We can tell that Blanche depends
    on male sexual admiration for her sense of self-esteem, she looks for
    compliments all the time and she thinks that marriage is a way to escape
    poverty and the bad reputation that she carries with her. Blanche is someone
    who cares too much about what people (specially mans) thinks about her
    appearance and attitudes, but keeps doing things that latter she’ll be regretted
    of, and will try to hide from the others.

    We can see those characteristics in the following parts of the play:

    “She [Blanche] is daintily dressed in a white suit whit a fluffy bodice,


    necklace and earring of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were
    arriving at a summer tear or cocktail party in the garden district. She is about
    five years older than Stella. Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There
    is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that
    suggests a moth” (page 5)
    “Blanche:

    You haven’t said a word about my appearance”

    Stella:

    You look just fine.

    Blanche:

    God love you for a liar! Daylight never exposed so total a ruin! (…)

    (…)

    Blanche:

    I am going to take just a tiny nip more, sort of to put the stopper on, so to
    speak… Then put the bottle away so I won’t be tempted. [She rises] I want you
    to look at my figure! [She turns around] You know I haven’t put on one ounce in
    ten years Stella? I weigh what I weighed the summer you left Belle Reve. The
    summer Dad died and you left us…” (Page 14 and 15)

    Blanche is cleary the protagonist. Furthermore we can say she is a


    round, realistic and symbolic character. She is a round character, since she
    “adapts” herself in the ambient she is, that is, she is dynamic, growing. Besides,
    she symbolizes the old American South, agricultural and rural, a disappearing
    world, which means she’s a symbolic character. Since she is a real woman,
    who have thoughts, desires personalities of her own, we can tell she is a
    realistic character.

    Bibliography:

    http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/canalysis.html#Blanche-DuBois –
    Access in 11/09/12

    “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Tennessee Williams

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