Escaping the Truth in "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Women during the 19th century are subject to portray a moral and chaste image; however, in the captivating play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” written by Tennessee Williams, the readers are drawn into a flawed character named Blanche Du Bois. Blanche is a woman who is stuck between her fantasy and reality from the real world. She pretends to be the ideal womanly image but is later revealed that her desires overtake her to lose her balance of mind. Her fragile personality is hidden in the light to avoid her truths, thus resulting in delusions she produces to protect her image from her past.

Blanche undergoes escapism through fantasies and alcohol to desperately survive. As an escapist, Blanche hides exposure from her true self in order to fulfill her desires to not be alone.

Tennessee Williams brings the protagonist, Blanche, to be first introduced as she is reinforced by detailed symbols that allow her appearance to mean more than what meets the eye.

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Once she first arrives at Kowalski’s apartment, described by stage directions, she is seen wearing a “white suit with a puffy dodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat” (Williams 77). The fact that she is wearing white clothes signifies purity and innocence. However, Tennessee Williams then add compares her appearance to a “moth” (78).

This animal being depicted gives the readers the knowledge of a gentle-like, short spand creature. With Blanche’s appearance readers can infer that she is trying to portray an image she is not as Tennessee Williams stage directs, “There is something about her uncertain manner,” (78).

Her constant fear of the past, her beauty, and light can all relate to her being unseen as her true self. When entering the apartment she is eager to see her sister Stella but mentions that Stella could not see her. “Now, then, let me look at you. But don’t you look at me” (Williams 79).

This then follows with her wanting Stella to turn the light off as it can reflect her hazy complection. Blanche states, “Turn that off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” (Williams 79). Blanche then covers the bulb in a paper lantern and avoids direct light. She only feels comfortable with dimmed light as she hides in the shadows. Later in scene five, her innocence apparel is stained as stella pours her a glass of coke. The play directs that “Blanche gives a piercing cry” (Williams 108). The staining of the skirt explains that Blanche is impure and dishonest unlike her portraying image. The obsession with her appearance allows Blanche to erase her fading beauty and crumbled past.

While Blanche is running from her past, she produces nerves and anxiety, and to avoid the stress she produces short term coping mechanisms. These mechanisms are “conscious mental strategies or behaviors an individual employs to lower anxiety” (O’Brien 9). In Blanche’s case, she drinks alcohol because with her personality, she cannot handle the situations that have gone through her life; thus, a result of escaping from reality. When Blanche first arrived to Stella’s apartment she immediately looks for some liquor to drink. “Open your pretty mouth and talk while I look around for some liquor! I know you must have some liquor on the place! Where could it be, I wonder? Oh, I spy, I spy” (Williams 79).

In order to calm her nerves down for the night she displays an eager rage to ease it by drinking. In scene six, once Blanche and Mitch have returned from their night out, Blanche is said to be searching for liquor again. “This crashing around in the dark is my search for some liquor” (Williams 112). She explains to Mitch how both of them have been “anxious and solumen” (Williams 112). and wishes to have their last moments together in a romantic atmosphere. When we enter scene nine, Tennessee Williams writes that Blanche has yet another bottle of liquor and clearly states that she is “drinking to escape” (124). Later in the scene Mitch begins to act differently and Blanche begins to get nervous and goes in search for liquor and find one called “Southern Comfort” (Williams 125). Implying that drinking liquor is her only way to have comfort in ways to avert the truth in their relationship.

On the other hand, Blanche has long term mechanisms as well. As an example, she produces fantasies in her mind to separate herself from reality. “Long-term coping mechanisms address the cause of the anxiety and are likely to benefit the individual more than short-term coping mechanisms” (O’ Brien 9). Blanche alters her fantasies and delusions so that her mind is able to believe false beliefs she chooses to live. When Blanche sees the young man in scene five she states, “When an hour isn't just an hour- but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands...” (Williams 109). she over exaggerates the timing as if that moment can last forever. On the other hand, Blanche tells the young boy, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like the young Prince out of the Arabian Nights” (Williams 110).

Williams uses the phrase “Arabian Nights” (110) to show Blanche’s fantasy as the phrase refers to folktales and magical. Even after the young man leaves stage directions state that she is still standing there “dreamily” (Williams 110). Allowing the readers to comprehend that it is a dream like situation that Blanche makes herself think. Blanche hides herself in a fantasy world and will do anything to avoid the truth that she is dodging. The author makes it clear that Blanche does this when she tells Mitch, “I don’t want realism. I want magic” (Williams 126).

Blanche lures people into her fantasies to live in the world she does this is made clear when Tennessee Williams writes “I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them” (126). With this Blanche fulfills her desire of not being alone in a world that does not exist while expecting others to believe her. Throughout the play, Blanche is spreading lies to gain a result of a life she wishes to have rather to the one she is living now.