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BLANCHE - Coggle Diagram
BLANCHE
THE TRUNK
- contains objects from her past - 'everything I own is in that trunk" - act 2
- the letters, the guilt, she can't move off rom it
- everything in that trunk gives her a sense of identity, she has nothing left
- a symbol of Blanche's facade and artifice
- Stanley's treatment of her trunk, he treats it with the same violence that he later treats her with
- 'pulls', 'snatches', 'kicks'
- this foreshadows the blunt and brutal revelation of her past
- rips the paper off him - Allans past love letters
- a feminist reading of the trunk would see it as a representation of how trapped and 'boxed in' Blanche was by her past
VARSOUVIANA POLKA
- the music she danced to before Allan grey committed suicide
- the song symbolises the traumatic events which still haunts Blanch
- it represents the end of her innocence and the beginning of a descent into madness
- as the play progresses more of the polka music plays = shows her growing insanity
- she only feels peace when the gun shot is heard, it briefly stops the cycle
BELLE REVE
- loss of Belle Reeve was one of Blanche's misfortunes that led to her tragic demise
- Belle reeve is a French name - "Beautiful fantasy" - although it was a slavery plantation in the deep south
- Blanche saw realism through the loss of Belle Reeve
- William's uses Belle Reeve to highlight the class differences between them and stanley
PAPER LANTERN + LIGHT
- Blanche avoids bright lights - due to her insecurtity
- the light symbolises the reality of Blanche's past
- Mitch 'rips down' the paper lantern - he has broken away from her deceit
- the paper lantern is plastic theatre (using stage elements to express character's truth) - to cover/do=istort the truth
ELYSIAN FIELDS
- "they told me to take a streetcar named desire then transfer to one called cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields"
- desire is in her first phrase, initially with Allan the sexually promiscuous
- next stage is cemeteries - her cultural death
- exiled from Belle Reeve
- mythical allusion - greek mythology reference to understand and a pace for the righteous dead
- ironic as there is a lack of righteousness in the street 'Elysian Fields'
BATHING
- bathing is seen as a coping mechanism - humans try to cope with the guilt through cleansing ourselves
- "I take hot baths for my nerves. Hydro-therapy they call it." - symbolic need to wash sins away
- uses it as an escape from reality/privacy - "feel like a brand new human being"
- Stanley is put under the shower after hitting Stella - reinforces the idea of washing away your sins (Macbeth)
AUTHORIAL CONTEXT
- his sister was institutionalised from a young age after a misfortunate brain surgery
- this can be reflected through Blanche's tragic demise
- "I draw every character out of my split personality" - williams
- homosexual man during a patriarchal, heteronormative society
- focuses on the rise of the WC and capitalism, and the fall of the deep south