Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Blanche - Coggle Diagram
Blanche
Blanche's appearance
Scene 1:
- Characters appearing are dismissed with only brief descriptions of their appearance
- Williams describes Blanche in more detail
- Her clothes & the impression she gives of moth-like delicacy & vulnerability
- Her appearance described in the stage directions - slim figure, a face of delicate, fading beauty
- More gathered about her from characters comments
- She demands flattering comments from Stella, Stanley & Eunice
Blanche's faults
- Blanche's complex, contradictory character emerges
- Early in the play we become aware of her snobbery - dismissal of the black neighbour's kindness & of Eunice's company
- Last scene, she rudely dismisses Eunice's gift of grapes with her obsessional concern about cleanliness
- Heavy drinker
- reasons of her craving for alcohol are implied, we learn her guilt about her husband's suicide & her promiscuity
- Alcohol offers temporary reassurance & dulls emotional pain
- Her passion for taking long baths = yearning to wash away her guilt
- Dramatic function = long absences allows the other characters to speak of matters not for her to hear
Contradictions
- Earlier on Blanche has a seductive manner, she flirts with Stanley & the young man - Scene 6 she primly insists on her respectability to Mitch
- Her actions reveal her character, leading audience to draw their own conclusions
- Audience - struck by inconsistencies in Blanche's behaviour: he cultural pretensions are designed to impress people with her superiority & contrast with her genuine love of poetry
- Wilfully ignorant of causes of the loss of Belle Reve but understands the root cause was her family's extravagant spending on possible immoral self-indulgences
- Make her character less predictable
Blanche's weaknesses
- Blanche hides her alcoholism behind euphemisms but she does recognise some of her weaknesses 'I've got to be good and keep my hands off of children'
- Weakness that she doesn't admit & may not be aware of is her recklessness, making her risk her chance of security
- She never speaks of this except when telling herself to be good
- Perhaps because she is uncertain of her motives for such behaviour
- Not clear if she regrets her affair with one of her students, beyond the fact she lost her teaching job because of it
- Can only speculate, & it is arguable that the uncertainty about some aspects of Blanche's character contributes to making her a believable person
The centre of attention
- After arriving on stage she is hardly ever off stage, even offstage, she is heard singing in the bath
- Scene 7 she happily sings sentimental popular songs in contrapuntal contrast to the damning information about her promiscuity that Stanley is giving to Stella in the kitchen
- Same technique used in last scene, where Blanche's fussy instructions about her outfit provide an ironic background to her sister's conversation with Eunice about the arrangements for Blanche's committal to a mental hospital
- Every scene except 4, ends with Blanche centre of stage
- commanding our attention with an arresting phrase or a dramatic gesture
- The very last words of the play, spoken by Steve, refer to the poker game, they serve to underline the pathos of Blanche's fate, through the unconcern they demonstrate
-
Thoughts & feelings
- Williams constantly gives his audience clues to characters inner thoughts & feelings
- In her conversation with Stella in scene 4, Blanche admits indirectly that she knows about sexual desire but it seems that she has never experienced true passion with love & sexual desire play equal parts
- Her incomprehension of real passion is total & plays a part in her alienating her sister
- Full strength of Stella's love for Stanley is shown in last scene when she will have her sister committed to a mental hospital rather than believe the truth about the rape
- Passion like this is beyond Blanche's understanding
Blanche's fantasy world
'Young man! Young, young, young - man! Has anyone ever told you that you look like a young prince out of the Arabian Nights?'
- Even waiting for Mitch she can't resist flirting wildly with a young man who is collecting for a newspaper
- Prolonged exclamation expresses her attraction to him & to young men generally, also her longing for her own youth
- Question is flattering, shows her education & attraction to exotic fantasy
- Come to New Orleans 'to visit' but it is actually because she has no money, no job & nowhere else to go
- Former high school English teacher who lost her job because of a relationship with one of her students
- She is the play's tragic heroine, whose weaknesses, coupled withe the failure of others to understand her, lead to her breakdown & committal to an institution