淡江人文社會學刊【第三十四期】
One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be
judged. —Oscar Wilde(1)
What is past is prologue. —William Shakespeare(2)
Introduction: Brief Review of Literary Criticism
Blanche Dubois is often the main focus of academic studies of Tennessee Williams’
famous play, A Streetcar Named Desire. The well-known drama critic John Gassner argues
that Blanche is “a victim of neurosis” rather than a classical heroine because in her case,
“psychopathology substitutes Fate” (quoted by Tischler, 1961, p. 146). Although Nancy M.
Tischler sees that “Tennessee Williams makes no claims to objectivity or to classical tragedy in
his art,” she echoes John Gassner’s key point, saying:
She [Blanche] loses some chances of tragic stature from the very first when
she is seen as a neurotic and an alcoholic. As the play progresses, she loses
even more, especially in her seduction scene with the newsboy which discloses
her nymphomania. If these had all been the result of the decline of the family
fortunes, she might still have had a claim to tragic stature by virtue of her
symbolic significance. But then the revelation of her marriage, the discovery
of her husband’s homosexuality, the compounded death—a series traumas
supposedly impelling Blanche into abnormalities—all make her not a tragic
heroine, but a case history. (p. 145)
Ronald Hayman (1993) claims: “Like Amanda Wingfield, Blanche is a faded beauty who
affects a greater gentility than she has ever had, and like Laura she is crushed by the forces of
brutality” (p. 101). Hayman continues:
It can almost be said that Stella represents young America, torn between its
loyalty to antiquated idealism and the brutal realism of the present, while
Blanche incarnates the pretensions of the old South: its values and quaint
manners echo through her quaintly mannered speech, while Belle Reve, the
ancestral home that she was forced to sell, stands for the elegant life that was
once lived on the plantations. (p. 112)
Felicia Hardison Londré (1997) maintains: “Blanche’s desire for illusion in opposition to the
harsh realities that surrounded her is probably the play’s most obvious thematic value” (p. 55).
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Londré further argues:
Tennessee Williams intended a balance of power between Blanche and Stanley,
to show that both are complex figures whose wants and behaviors must be
understood in the context of what is at stake for them. The action proceeds
through clashes of these two opposites to the inevitable showdown by which
one wins and one loses. (p. 50)
While these important critics’ comments on Blanche are quite just from their approaches
to the play, I feel that Londré’s criticism is more convincing about the “balance power between
Blanche and Stanley” and their “complex figures.” Blanche is much more than just “a victim
of neurosis,” “a neurotic and an alcoholic” a debauched seducer full of “nymphomania”
(Tischler, 1961, pp. 145, 146), a “desperate fantasist” (Rooney, 2005, p. 74), and “a faded
beauty” who “incarnates the pretensions of the old South” (Hayman, 1993, pp. 101, 112), who
has “fumed presence into absence” (Kolin, 1997, p. 458), who just pathetically clings to the
decayed or dead values of “the old, decadent way of life” (Holland, 2003, p. 20), and who is
“neurasthenic” and “loses her mind” (Lahr, 2005, p. 27). Again all these critics’ comments on
Blanche are quite just in a realistic perspective, but I do not think that Williams has really
meant us to read the play only with a realistic perspective; rather, he would prefer that we read
it with a spiritual perspective. Williams (1962) makes the point clearly in The Night of the
Iguana while letting Shannon tell Hannah: “Yeah, well, you know we—live on two levels,
Miss Jelkes, the realistic level and the fantastic level” (p. 69). Shannon’s “fantastic level” is his
spiritual level on which he yearns to live and in which he faithfully believes because it is his
truth in life. The same can be said about Blanche, as she also attempts to live on the fantastic
level rather than on the realistic level. This is indeed true because Williams himself once
openly claimed that in Shannon he “was drawing a male equivalent almost of a Blanche
Dubois” (Devlin, 1986, p. 80). On the realistic level, Blanche is of course a much flawed and
faulted woman as those critics’ commonly argue. Nevertheless Williams’ (1955, 1978) own
comment on Blanche implies that spiritually Blanche is true to herself and true to others in her
heart: “She told many lies in the course of Streetcar [sic] and yet at heart she was truthful”
(Where I Live, p. 70). In the play, twice Blanche claims: “when a thing is important I tell the
truth . . . I haven’t cheated anyone . . . as long as I have lived” (p. 41); “Never inside, I didn’t
lie in my heart . . . ” (p. 119). As no critics have systematically focused on the spiritual side of
Blanche, in this essay, I will focus on the spiritual level on which Blanche clearly prefers to live,
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(3)
especially in cultural terms.
It is true that everything about Blanche has something to do with the past. “The past
is never dead. It's not even past” for her yet, to borrow William Faulkner’s words.(4) Her
behavior, her way of thinking, her manner of talking, and her style of doing things and
even her so-called “illusions,” all show signs of the culture of the old disintegrated South
to which Williams himself shows a sympathetic and nostalgic attitude. All what she
represents and what she attempts to protect and preserve are positively presented as
genteel values of the old Southern civilization even though it has physically become “a
bucket of ashes…a wind gone done, a sun dropped in the west,” to borrow Carl Sandburg’s
verses.(5) But Tennessee Williams has really meant something much more complex and
complicated about the character of Blanche. His reflection on creating Blanche while
writing the play should well clarify the true nature of her character: “She is not still for a
moment. She is sweeping all about me as I work, crying out, laughing, sobbing, but never
losing the arrogance of a lady descended from a queen of Scotland.”
(6)
Indeed, in cultural
terms, Blanche never loses “the arrogance of a lady,” and she behaves like “a queen of
Scotland.” That is exactly why Williams also claims: “Blanche was the most rational of all
the characters I’ve created and, in almost all ways, she was the strongest” (quoted by
Tischler, 1961, p. 144).
But surprisingly critics have neither said anything that Blanche is “the strongest”
character in the play, nor mentioned anything that “Blanche is the most rational of all the
characters [Williams has] created,” let alone explore her active role in defending, preserving
and recreating the past genteel values of the old southern civilization in her cultural war
against a ruthless and relentless modern society represented by Stanley. Thus in this essay, I
will argue that consciously or subconsciously Blanche not only attempts to live in the past in
her so-called “illusions” but also pertinaciously clings to those past genteel values of the good
old South, tenaciously fighting for their survival and actively recreating them whenever she
has an opportunity. Only by reading the play this way can we understand why Tennessee
Williams once claimed that Blanche “was the strongest” and “most rational character [he] had
ever created.” Obviously Williams has made Blanche the strong but tragic representative of the
old agrarian South that has been ruthlessly disintegrated and physically destroyed by the brutal
and modern world of industry and materialism, but the unyielding spirit of Blanche has never
been completely defeated even to the very end of the play.
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The Battle over the Past Heritage: Belle Reve
Clearly the past cultural heritage of the old South is nostalgically sought, actively
defended and tenaciously preserved by Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, even
though the naturalistic realism(7) of Williams’ play makes it clear at the beginning that
Blanche’s destiny will be tragic. The street-cars named “Desire” and “Cemeteries” carry the
“moth”-like Blanche to Elysian Fields,
(8)
which, according to Greek mythology, is the place
where good, virtuous people dwell after their death. All these names symbolically foreshadow
Blanche’s inevitable doom at the end of the play, at least in social and political (if not cultural
and spiritual) terms. But, like Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night, who tenaciously
clings to an ideal past, Blanche consciously or unconsciously attempts to go back to a
self-preserved ideal world so as to turn a blind eye to the harsh reality of her isolated and
lonely present. Blanche was raised in the genteel tradition and culture, inherited from “the age
of chivalry transplanted to a New World which was making its own legends and its own
myths” (Catton, 1956, p. 203).
(9)
Although the Southern American aristocracy as a political
entity disappeared after the South lost in the Civil War, its tradition and culture continue to
survive in the genteel society, and the culturally refined and delicate nature of Blanche is part
of this continuation. Nancy M. Tischler (1961) describes Blanche this way: “Blanche . . .
represents tradition and idealism [ . . . ] . She is in the tradition of heroines of medieval
romance as revived in the pale images of the English ‘Pre-Raphaelites” (p. 138).
Yet, challenged and threatened by the relentless, harsh and cold reality of modern society,
the soft genteel values seem to be played out and begin to disintegrate. The sad situation is
shown in the loss of Belle Reve, Blanche’s ancestral mansion and plantation, which
symbolically stands for the cultural heritage of the genteel civilization of the old South. In her
defending battle to preserve her ancestral mansion, Blanche’s social position and personal
situation are greatly weakened and become extremely difficult, but she still tenaciously refuses
to accept her tragic fate in her idealistic if not illusionary manner. The loss of Belle Reve
clearly marks the end of the era of the traditional old South, and the last cavalier Blanche is
seriously mauled in the battle of defending it. Yet, the unyielding personality of Blanche is not
completely crushed in spiritual terms, or at least she denies such a defeat in her deep soul. She
has lost the battle in preserving Belle Reve, but she has never deserted the values represented
by it.
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Although the loss of Belle Reve has left Blanche no other alternative, she will carry all
her cultural heritage in her old trunk with her to open another battlefield elsewhere. Thus, she
comes to her sister Stella in her last hope, but the chain of the past runs here with her. In her
deep mind, Blanche imagines that she would find her last retreat at Stella’s place because
Stella was raised in the same genteel world like her, and Stella should have a civilized place
where she could feel comfortable with her refined taste. But when she gets there, she is so
surprised by Stella’s shabby place and its noisy environment that she can’t help but directly tell
Stella: “Never, never, never in my worst dreams could I picture—Only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar
Allan Poe! —could do it justice! Out there I suppose is the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir”
(p. 20).(10) If Belle Reve stands for Blanche’s civilized cultural values, genteel life style and
refined taste, Stanley’s place clearly stands for the coarse, vulgar, shallow world of
materialism; no wonder, she is not only disappointed but also greatly surprised by the horrible
place.
Nonetheless, Blanche will turn Stanley’s place into her new battlefield against the coarse,
brutal Stanley. Tennessee Williams makes it clear that Blanche and Stanley are dead enemies
not only in social and political, but also in cultural terms, and he (1962) clearly says: “Blanche
is a delicate tigress with her back to the wall. That part must be played opposite an actor of
towering presence, a Brando or a Tony Quinn, to create a plausible balance . . . (Where I Live,
p.153). In her illuminating essay, “A Streetcar Running Fifty Years,” Felicia Hardison Londré
(1997) makes the point clear that Williams has indeed intended a balance of power between
Blanche and Stanley and both are complex figures (p. 50). Londré is quite right. Blanche and
Stanley symbolize the two opposite forces of the refined genteel culture and the ruthless
modern society without culture although she does not mention anything about Blanche’s active
role in the cultural war against the primitive savage, Stanley.
The cultural war between Blanche and Stanley starts immediately after Blanche arrives.
The brutal animal-like Stanley’s first attack is his unscrupulous invasion of Blanche’s trunk
and unbridled plunder of Blanche’s old love letters. The fact that Blanche always carries those
old love letters “yellowing with antiquity” (p. 41) in her old trunk wherever she goes clearly
indicates how valuable and important they mean to her. They not only embody the past love
between her and her young husband but also stand for the past genteel cultural values: they are
“[p]oems a dead boy wrote” (p. 42). Stanley’s brazen raid of the love letters and Blanche’s
fight with him over them symbolically foreshadow Stanley’s violation of her at the end of the
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play. The fact that “ [h]e rips off the ribbon and starts to examine them” (p. 42) without paying
any attention to Blanche’s angry protest suggests the ruthless naturalistic reality in which her
angry words to the brutal and coarse Stanley are just as fragile as Laura’s glass menagerie in
The Glass Menagerie, as Ronald Hayman (1993) points out: “In the squalid setting of
Streetcar Blanche’s language seems no less fragile than Laura’s glass animals” (p. 101).
Stanley’s invasion of the trunk and raid of the love letters are a symbolic rehearsal,
foreshadowing his actual rape of Blanche towards the end. Such a foreshadowing is further
suggested by Blanche’s angry but sad ominous remark to Stanley: “The touch of your hands
insults them!” “Now that you have touched them I’ll burn them” (p. 42). Indeed, Stanley’s
touch of the love letters has not only blemished and polluted her past young love, but also
ruined its purity or sacredness in symbolic terms. As the antique old trunk is the symbolic
miniature of both Blanche’s own personal past and the whole past legacy of her ancestors’
history, Stanley’s brutal invasion of the trunk and his profaning examination of the love letters
and historical papers “stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve” (p. 43) are
part of his first round of the battle against Blanche. The naturalistic realism of the play again
shows Blanche’s inevitable loss of the battle when she submits all the legal papers to Stanley.
Commenting on Robert Bray’s reading of the play, Felicia Hardison Landré (1997) clarifies
the point well enough: “Robert Bray, in his Marxist reading of the play, sees this transfer of
papers/merging of bloodlines as a key concept in the evolution of the social system from the
old agrarian South, burdened by its past, as represented by Blanche, to the postwar
urban-industrial society in which Stanley’s class has gained leverage” (p. 54). In social and
political terms, Robert Bray may be right, but in cultural terms, Blanche still pertinaciouly
refuses her final defeat. Like Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night, who will forever
hunt the past, Blanche also has a strong will to persistently hang on and stubbornly refuses to
let go of those past values which she has been fighting to preserve. The past is at least secure
for her in her self-preserved world. Thus, she tenaciously continues her war in defending those
old cultural values and never gives up her spiritual heritage.
The Battle over Mitch and Stanley’s Place
The second round of Blanche’s battle against Stanley is her attempt to change Stanley’s
place with her refined cultural taste and her campaign to win Stanley’s best friend Mitch over
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from Stanley’s barbarous camp in Scene Three. Disappointed by Stanley’s place, Blanche
starts to decorate it right after she gets there. Consciously or unconsciously, she is not only
building herself a haven there to take a rest, but also tries to reenergize herself, preparing
herself to be ready for her next fight. Symbolically she starts to recreate the genteel cultural
world which has physically disintegrated. It is in such a self-imagined, self-preserved or rather
self-recreated genteel realm that Blanche can feel at ease. As a self-illusionary idealist, here
she believes that she can ignore and resist the harsh and cruel reality of the external world. In
other words, no matter how useless and futile, Blanche tenaciously clings to her unfashionable
cultural values of the past and insists on changing and decorating Stanley’s apartment in her
own cultural taste, especially putting colored Chinese paper lanterns on naked light bulbs
because as she says, “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or
vulgar action” (p. 55). Her remark symbolically implies that her delicate refined nature cannot
stand the raw, coarse, rough and animal characteristics of Stanley and his like, as Felicia
Hardison Londré (1997) indicates:
Her equation of the naked bulb with vulgarity implies its opposite: the soft
glow of filtered light as the refined sensibility by which she identifies herself.
[ . . . . ] Blanche’s desire for illusion in opposition to the harsh realities that
surrounded her is probably the play’s most obvious thematic value. (p. 55)
We should also notice that because of her cultural idealism, Blanche not only renovates
Stanley’s place with her refined cultural tastes, but also consciously and purposely leads Mitch
into an aesthetic world of literature, art, music and dance, which is of course alien to him.
When Mitch shows her his silver cigarette case with an inscription on it, Blanche immediately
tells him that the inscription is from Elizabeth Browning’s famous love Sonnet 43. Then, she
quickly starts her scheme to educate him with her own unique self-preserved fashion of
gentility, talking about love and literature including Shakespeare, “Hawthorne, Whitman and
Poe” (p. 56). At Blanche’s request, Mitch is glad to put an “adorable little colored paper
lantern” (p. 55) on the naked light bulb, and the colored paper Chinese lantern is obviously a
culturally exotic artifact which suggests Blanche’s cultural refinement and artistic taste.
Anyone with some knowledge of traditional Chinese culture can tell that paper lanterns,
especially during the traditional Lantern Festival, fifteen days after the Chinese New Year,
display rich culture and ancient civilization, for the print or painting on every paper lantern
tells a famous legendary or historical story or a fairy tale, or a folktale, or a philosophical and
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cultural riddle.(11) Williams’ own comment on the character of Blanche can further confirm
the point: “Blanche mentions her Chinese philosophy—the way she sits with her little hands
folded like cherub in choir, etc.” (quoted by Tischerler, 1961, p. 139). So Mitch’s help with
the paper Chinese lantern starts his initiation into Blanche’s refined cultural world even
without his own conscious awareness. When Blanche turns on the radio and starts dancing
with the music, Mitch is obviously influenced and starts to imitate her dancing though very
awkwardly. Consciously and actively, Blanche influences Mitch with her refined qualities of
literature, art, music, dancing and gentle manner, as Felicia Hardison Londré (1997) also
notes:
It is significant that Mitch is the one who both installs the paper lantern and in
Scene 9, removes it, for these actions define the period during which he sees
Blanche as she wants him to see her, under the spell of an illusion she creates.
[ . . . . ] With Mitch as her enthralled audience, she adds musical underscoring:
she turns on the radio and “waltzes to the music with romantic gestures.” (p. 55)
Yet, we need to point out that Blanche’s cultural education of Mitch is much more than
“under the spell of an illusion she creates”; rather, it is her active psychological battle to win
Mitch over from Stanley’s uncultured barbarian camp. Unfortunately the play’s naturalistic
realism makes Blanche again lose her battle over Mitch, and her loss of Mitch is symbolically
suggested by Mitch’s removal of the colored paper Chinese lantern from the naked bulb in
Scene Nine. The naked bulb obviously symbolizes the bare, eye-hurting and uncovered
vulgarity of Stanley and his like.
Philip C. Kolin (1997) has an extended interpretation of the Chinese paper lantern:
Like her Kleenex note, the paper Chinese lantern that Blanche hangs over the
“naked” light bulb foregrounds her desire, her fate. This paper shade, which
reveals more than it conceals, is another desideratum in Blanche’s
epistemology of fantasies. [ . . . . ] Unlike her sister, who is subjugated to
Stanley’s male desire, Blanche with her flimsy paper lantern desires
indeterminacy (and female ambiguity) to reign. [ . . . . ] The paper
lantern—like the revealing slip Blanche wears in the famous Thomas Hart
Benton painting of the play, or like the Kleenex note—lets in illusion, shadow,
imagination, teasing opaqueness. Holding the lantern to the light allows
Blanche to capture magic in paper. [ . . . . ] Blanche is, perhaps, dangerously
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“too transparent.” (p. 462)
Kolin’s comment on the Chinese paper lantern is quite just and illuminating in the context
of his critical study of the play. It is true that “like the Kleenex note, the paper lantern enables
Blanche to script herself. She tries to redefine existence—for herself, Stella, Stanley,
Mitch—with the paper lantern” (p. 462). It is also true that “she wants to dilute and to neuter
Stanley’s harshness, the power of his glaring male gaze, by shadowing and thereby
diminishing the intensity of the light bulb. Blanche seeks to modulate the physics of Stanley’s
desire through this paper script” (p. 462). But it is much more than that. In symbolic terms, the
paper Chinese lantern is much more than just “another desideratum in Blanche’s epistemology
of fantasies.” It seems that Kolin has overlooked the cultural and artistic values of the paper
Chinese lantern, which Blanche treasures so much that she regards them as the spiritual
nourishment for her life in her refined cultural tradition. Her shocked, hysterical attitude
towards both Mitch’s and Stanley’s tearing of the paper lanterns in Scene Nine and Scene
Eleven can prove the point.
Mitch’s removal of the paper Chinese lantern symbolizes three things. First, he fails to
accept Blanche’s personal past by falling back to his own old vulgar world. This can be
explicitly proven by his attempt to rape Blanche right after he removes the paper lantern from
the light bulb. And as a foreshadowing gesture, his pathetically attempted but aborted rape will
be finally turned into reality by Stanley’s brutal rape of Blanche towards the end of the play.
Second, as a weak, shallow never-grown-up Mamma’s boy, Mitch fails to understand the true
cultural values that the paper Chinese lantern represents, as he calls the lantern just a “paper
thing” (p. 117). Consequently, Mitch fails to see that the ancient classical culture symbolized
by the paper Chinese lantern stands for Blanche’s refined true nature, her aesthetic values and
her second life. That is exactly why when “[h]e tears the paper lantern off the light bulb, [s]he
utters frightened gasp” (p. 117). This point is made clear at the end of the play just before
Blanche is taken to the madhouse. When Stanley “crosses to [the] dressing table and seizes the
paper lantern, tearing it off the light bulb and extends it toward her. She cries out as if the
lantern was herself” (p. 140). Indeed, the paper lantern is her second self, a self of cultural
values and refined artistic taste. This second life of Blanche is brutally trampled by the
primitive animalistic Stanley and the final removal of the Chinese paper lantern in Scene
Eleven suggests that Stanley’s lust to violently violate the genteel values tenaciously defended
and preserved by Blanche is finally satisfied. Obviously this symbolic gesture indicates that in
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the cultural war Blanche’s delicate and fragile world of gentility is forever dangerously
threatened and will be ultimately annihilated by the vulgar, coarse and violent Stanley, as he
never stops but aggressively keeps attacking those delicate and vulnerable genteel values that
Blanche inheritably possesses and highly values.
Yet, the cultural war at Stanley’s place is not quite easily over yet. Although Blanche is
beaten, she refuses to accept her tragic fate, and she never admits that she will be spiritually
defeated. Blanche’s constant hot-bath bathing not only indicates her subconscious desire to
cleanse and purge her past unclean personal blemishes and moral stains but also symbolizes
her strong wish for a spiritual or cultural rebirth and revival, and meanwhile it also indicates
her attempt to revitalize and regenerate her soul energy. Blanche’s own words right after her
first hot bath at Stanley’s place strongly suggests the point: “Here I am, all freshly bathed and
scented, and feeling like a fresh new human being!” (p. 37). It is interesting to note that
Blanche’s battle against Stanley begins right after her first hot bath, but it is not finished until
she takes her last hot bath in Scene Eleven. If her first hot bath symbolizes her rejuvenation,
her last one seems to imply not only her strong desire to purge herself after being raped by
Stanley, but also a spiritual purification for rebirth. That is why Felicia Hardison Londré (1997)
claims: “The bathroom will be Blanche’s habitual retreat throughout the play, and her constant
bathing evokes a purification ritual” (p. 53).
But of course Stanley will do everything to interfere it and makes sure of its ruin.
Whenever Blanche shuts herself in the washroom for a hot bath, Stanley violently howls at her
to get out, and he openly interferes and threatens her privacy throughout the play. When
Blanche turns on the radio music to dance with Mitch, he bursts into a volcanic fury like a mad
bull and violently smashes the radio onto the street through the window. When Blanche allures
Mitch to marry her, Stanley nips her hope in the bud by revealing her inglorious past to Mitch.
Angrily and cruelly, Stanley shouts at Blanche towards the end of the play:
You come in here and sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume and
cover the light-bulb with a paper lantern, and lo and behold the place had
turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile! Sitting on your throne
and swilling down my liquor! I say—Ha! —Ha! Do you hear me? Ha—ha—ha!
(pp. 127-128)
Stanley’s own words also proves that the cultural war between Blanche and him starts as
soon as she comes to the place, and never stops until the last moment when she is forcedly
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taken to the asylum. The whole process is also a struggle between the haunting past and the
social reality of the ruthless present. Crushed by the brutality and cruelty of Stanley, Blanche is
forced to withdraw herself further into a lost genteel world still existing in her own deep
psyche. Twice at her wit’s end, she recalls her old admirer during her college days, Shep
Huntleigh. With such a desperate gesture, she fancies he would come to her rescue. One may
easily say that Blanche’s rather comic calls simply become Stanley’s cruel laughing stocks. In
realistic terms, Blunche’s behavior is somewhat comic, and her comic behavior is also as
honestly serious as Don Quixote’s serious attitude towards his comic fight against the
windmill. But, in fantastic/spiritual terms, this is another symbolic gesture indicating
Blanche’s Cinderella belief that her prince on a white horse will come to rescue her. Surely
Blanch believes that Shep Huntleigh would help her because her imagined prince stands for
the old cultural values that she can share in her unconscious or subconscious world of genteel
civilization. Mary A. Corrigan (1997) considers Blanche’s behavior as “illusions,” and she
believes that “the conflict between Blanche and Stanley is an externalization of the conflict
that goes on within Blanche between illusion and reality” (p. 392). I believe that it is Blanche’s
strong spiritual faith in the cultural genteel values of the old South that enables her to have
such fantastic imagination rather than mere “illusions.” In other words, her “illusions” are part
of her spiritual truth rather than merely delusive whimsical fancies. Blanche lives in her own
spiritual world rather than in the normally realistic world. Like Shannon in The Night of the
Iguana, Blanche lives on the “fantastic level” much more than the “realistic level.” We know
that in that play, Shannon’s fantastic world is obviously his spiritual world.
But Blanche’s genteel qualities of refined life are unable to survive in the hard, coarse,
callous and cold modern world that is embodied in both the rude, vulgar and violent Stanley
and the powerful fast-running trains whose piercing whistling and loud noises challenge and
threaten her existence. This is unmistakably implied in the fact that she simply cannot stand
the shrilling whistles and loud noises of the fast-running trains. Every time when a train comes
with shrilling whistles and loud noises, it will ruthlessly rack her nerves and mercilessly drives
her wild. Symbolically it seems that all Blanche’s genteel values can be easily shattered by the
ruthless industrial world of modern society. In other words, Blanche’s vulnerable delicate inner
life that is nourished by those genteel cultural values is easily paralyzed, violated and finally
ruined by the brutal, vulgar modern society represented by the violent Stanley and the
fast-running trains. True, Blanche is physically crushed by Stanley and the fast-running trains,
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yet spiritually she has never given up in her war against “barbarism” by Stanley at least in her
own mind, as Joseph Wood Krutch describes:
But the age has placed her in a tragic dilemma. She looks about for a tradition
according to which she may live and a civilization to which she can be loyal.
[ . . . . ] Behind Blanche lies a past which seems to have been civilized. [ . . . . ]
It is, however, the only culture only about which she knows anything. The
world of Stella and her husband is a barbarism—perhaps, as its admirers
would say, a vigorous barbarism—but a barbarism nonetheless. In this
dilemma, Blanche chooses the dead past and becomes a victim of that
impossible choice. But she does choose it rather than the ‘adjustment’ of her
sister. At least she has not succumbed to barbarism (quoted by Tischler, 1961,
pp. 144-145).
If the statement “Blanche chooses the dead past and becomes a victim of that impossible
choice” is true, it must be the play’s naturalistic realism dictating that Blanche be physically,
socially and politically beaten. Nevertheless it is quite obvious that Tennessee Williams
sympathetically suggests that spiritually, Blanche seems not to have completely lost her
cultural war against Stanley, as Mitch is no longer the same barbarian in Stanley’s camp even
though the weak mamma’s-boy personally falls back to the old barbarian camp. His behavior
at the end of the play can convincingly prove it. The fact that in the last scene Mitch angrily
calls Stanley: “You…you…you…. Brag…brag…bull…bull” (p.131) is a telling evidence to
show the impact of Blanche’s cultural education of him. Moreover, the fact that “Mitch lunges
and strikes at Stanley . . . collapses at the table, sobbing” (p. 141) just before Blanche is taken
to the asylum further proves his violently mental struggle between his conflicting attitude
towards Stanley and Blanche. This is of course the consequence of Blanche’s cultural teaching
and genteel education of him. This effect is also noted by Londré (1997): “Scene 11 hints that
the nominal winner, Stanley, has also lost, in that the relationships he values most—those with
his wife Stella and his best friend Mitch—will never again be quite the same” (p. 50).
The Battle over Stella
Indeed, Stanley’s relationship with his wife Stella “will never again be quite the same”
simply because of the influence of Blanche’s cultural campaign to win Stella back from
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Stanley’s barbarian camp. The third round of Blanche’s cultural war against Stanley starts with
her attempt to win Stella over. Like Blanche, Stella was raised in the genteel world of the old
Southern civilization, and this is exactly why Blanche comes to Stella after Belle Reve is lost.
Blanche expects to find Stella not only as her little playmate sister in the past but also as a
comrade-in-arms to share, enjoy, defend and protect their genteel values of the old South. But
to her great surprise, under Stanley’s strong control, especially in sexual life, Stella has been
changed and is no longer the little sister as Blanche has imagined, for now Stella closely clings
to Stanley.
Blanche finds her opportunity to win Stella over from Stanley right after he has violently
pushed Stella in his drunkenness in Scene Three. Naturally, Blanche is greatly shocked by
Stanley’s insane salvage violence and primitive vulgarity not only against her, but also, much
more seriously, against the pregnant Stella. Thus, Williams devotes the entire Scene Four for
Blanche to lecture on Stella about all the values of their past civilized heritage as well as about
the primitive cruelty of the brutal ape Stanley and his like:
You can’t have forgotten that much of our bringing up, Stellar, that you just
suppose that any part of a gentleman’s in his nature! Not one particle, no! Oh,
if he was just—ordinary! Just plain—but good and wholesome, but—no.
There’s something downright—bestial—about him! [ . . . . ] He acts like an
animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one!
There’s even something—sub-human—something not quite to the stage of
humanity yet! Yes, something ape-like about him, like one of those pictures
I’ve seen in—anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have
passed him right by, and there he is—Stanley Kowalski--survivor of the stone
age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! [ . . . . ] Night falls
and the other apes gather! There is the front cave, all grunting like him, and
swilling and gnawing and hulking! [ . . . ] this party of apes! Somebody
growls—some creature snatches at something—the fight is on! God! Maybe we
are long way from being made in God’s image, but Stellar—my sister—there
has been some progress since then! Such things as art—as poetry and
music—such kinds of new light have come into the world since then! In some
kinds of people some tenderer feelings have had some little beginning! (pp.
71-72) [All italics in this passage are original.]
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Finally Blanche honestly pleads Stella: “Don’t—don’t hang back with the brutes!” (p. 72).
More importantly, the lady cavalier Blanche even courageously calls on Stella to hold the war
“flag” to fight for their old culture and civilization: “That we have got to make grow! And
cling to, and hold as our flag!” (p. 72) Blanche’s brave statement again convincingly proves
that she has been actively and honestly fighting her cultural war to defend her past heritage
until she is taken to the asylum at the end of the play. The impact of Blanche’s cultural
teaching of Stella becomes obvious in the later development of the play, and it is exactly
because of Blanche’s cultural education and influence that Stella emotionally becomes frayed,
anxious and miserable, as Charles Isherwood (2004) points out:
Emotionally frayed almost to the breaking point by her desire to protect her
beloved sister, whose desperate plight she understands all too dearly. Stella is
a continually anxious, suffering presence in the play. [ . . . . ] Stella’s last cries
of remorse are as painful to hear as any of Blanche’s anguished arias. (p. 47)
Williams’ naturalistic realism best embodied in the powerful fast running trains in the
play cuts Blanche short, and deterministically interferes and abolishes her plans. Thus,
Blanche is socially and politically conquered again, and she will lose the physical Stella;
however, “Stella and Mitch have been irrevocably changed by Blanche’s passages; perhaps
they will find it in themselves to stand up against the hegemony of apes” some day in the
future (Londré, 1997, p. 62). Indeed, like the guilty Mitch, Stella is also deeply guilty for her
own treatment of Blanche; therefore, when Blanche is taken to the asylum, with a broken heart,
she can’t help but hysterically “cr[y] out her sister’s name from where she is crouched a few
steps up on the stairs” three times: “Blanche! Blanche! Blanche!” (p. 142). The final stage
instruction further proves that Stella is indeed guilty for her treatment of her sister, and this
guilt is partially due to Blanche’s cultural lecture on the genteel values of the cultural tradition
of the old South: “She sobs with inhuman abandon. There is something luxurious in her
complete surrender to crying now that her sister is gone” (p. 142). Stella’s mixed feelings of
guilt and helplessness toward Blanche reveal her spiritual and moral conflict and dilemma, the
roots of which are in her cultural heritage. Yet, it is Blanche that refreshes Stella of the values
of such a cultural heritage, and it is Blanche’s cultural lecture that greatly influences Stella who will
never quite be the same person again. To this extent, Blanche’s cultural war is certainly not futile;
rather, it has indeed stamped its brand in the world even after she is taken to the asylum.
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Conclusion
If the beginning of the play has already foreshadowed Blanche’s social and political
doom, Scene Nine obviously shows that Blanche’s social death is approaching when the old
Mexican woman comes to sell her flowers for the dead. We call it social death, for socially
Blanche cannot marry Mitch anymore even though she carefully plans to do it by educating
him with the genteel values of literature, arts, music and romantic dance. Unlike her sister
Stella who has readjusted herself to marry the coarse and common Stanley, Blanche cannot tie
the knot to Mitch not only because of her personal past in a conventional and realistic sense,
but also because of the incompatibility between them in cultural and spiritual terms. This
social death is, of course, seeded in the naturalistic realism of the play. Nevertheless, it is
interesting to note that the episode of the old Mexican woman trying to sell Blanche flowers
for the dead takes place exactly on Blanche’s birthday. In other words, the death image is
clearly connected with the birth image; therefore, the play also implies Blanche’s purgation,
purification and spiritual rebirth. Henry I. Schvey (1988) is quite right when he argues:
Williams clearly suggests an identification between the tragic fall of one and
the birth of the other. [ . . . . ] Blanche’s symbolic death has resulted in new life.
[ . . . . ] Thus Blanche’s fall is actually part of a process that goes beyond death
and hints at something like heroic transcendence, [at] spiritual purification
through suffering. (p. 109)
While Schvey suggests that Blanche symbolically transcends death through physical and
psychological suffering leading to spiritual purgation, Robert James Cardullo (1997) maintains
that Scene Eleven of the play deals with the theme of death and resurrection:
Blanche’s anticipated transcendence or resurrection is further augmented by
the cathedral bells that chime for the only time in Streetcar during scene 11 (p.
136) . . . ; by her fantasy that eating an unwashed or impure grape, let us say
one that has not been transubstantiated into the wine/blood of Christ, has
nonetheless transported her soul to heaven and her body into a deep blue
ocean. (p. 36)
If one insists that the chimes of the cathedral bell symbolize a funeral rather than a birth
ceremony because Blanch talks about dying on the blue ocean at the end of the play, one may
conclude that Blanche will become a dignified martyr in defending her genteel culture and
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civilization of the good old South. Moreover her talking about dying on the blue sea clearly
reveals her desire to be cleanly washed, cleansed and purified:
And I’ll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped
overboard—at noon—in the blaze of summer—and into the ocean as blue as
[Chimes again] my first lover’s eyes! (p. 136)
The process of spiritual purification is clearly suggested in the claimed sea burial “in a
clean white sack” and such a desired sea burial becomes the prelude for Blanche’s spiritual
rebirth. Williams foreshadows this spiritual rebirth early in Scene Five. If we note the Virgin
image Blanche mentions in Scene Five, while she is telling Stanley the zodiac sign under
which she was born: “Virgo is the Virgin” (p. 77), we will finally see the point that her
explanation not only gives a cultural education to Stanley who is too crude and coarse to know
any zodiac knowledge, but also implies her self-claimed spiritual innocence and purity.
More importantly it foreshadows the image of Madonna in the last scene in which the
symbolic meaning of the color blue further connects to spiritual birth or rebirth in the play.
Blanche’s new dress after her last purifying hot bath is “Della Robbia blue. The blue of the
robe in the old Madonna pictures” (p. 135). Blanche’s talking of “the old Madonna”—Virgin
Mary indicates the birth of Jesus Christ; thus, the symbolic spiritual birth is implied. Also,
Stella’s new-born baby “is wrapped with a pale blue blanket” (p. 142). The symbolic
connection between Blanche’s “Della Robbia blue” dress after her final purifying hot bath, and
“the ocean as blue as [her] first lover’s eyes,” and the new-born baby’s “blue blanket” is
finally established for the symbolic cycle of death, rebirth and resurrected spiritual life. Thus,
it can be argued that the spiritual birth or rebirth is suggested at the very end of the play;
therefore, it can be also argued that although Blanche’s cultural war results in physical and
social tragedy, it finally and symbolically yields spiritual new birth or rebirth. This point is
further strengthened by Blanche’s own remark at the end of the play: “That unwashed grape
has transported her soul to heaven” (p. 136).
Reexamining Williams’ statement that “Blanche was the most rational of all the
characters I’ve created and, in almost all ways, she was the strongest” (quoted by Tischler
1961, p. 144), we can discover that in the play, Blanche is indeed the tragic representative of a
lost civilization, but the real strongest character, tenaciously clinging to a disintegrating culture,
passionately living in the past, courageously defending, faithfully preserving, unyieldingly
protecting, and nostalgically recreating the genteel values of the good old South. When she
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says, “Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart . . . ” (p. 119), she also clearly tells the world that
she has a unique internal integrity of her own. In such a spiritual realm, she is honest to herself,
honest to others and honest to her genteel values of her cultural heritage and to the legacy of
the disintegrated civilization of the old South. Because of this, she becomes a cavalier who has
never spiritually surrendered to the brutality and savagery of the relentless modern society.
Thus, even to the very end of the play, Blanche has never spiritually yielded to any coarse
violent actions and rude behavior. When Mitch intends to rape her, she cries wildly: “Fire! Fire!
Fire!” (p. 121). When she is really raped by the brutal savage, Stanley, she fights against him
to her physical limit with a broken liquor bottle. When the big Matron tries to subdue her
physically on the floor, she never stops resisting until the Doctor gently offers her his arm like
a real gentleman. Blanche’s dignified leaving further indicates her spiritual integrity, as Robert
James Cardullo (1997) claims that “by the Doctor’s raising Blanche up from the floor of the
Kowalski apartment, to which she dropped after the Matron had pinioned her arms
crucifixion-style (p. 141), together with Blanche’s spiritedly leading the way [stress added]
out of the hell of her sister’s home (without looking back), followed by the Doctor and Matron
instead of being escorted by them” (p. 36). If the ending is tragic for Blanche, it certainly
creates a moving tragic catharsis for the audience because Blanche’s so-called “defeat has
considerable aesthetic dignity,” as the famous Yale critic Harold Bloom (2003, p. 3) puts it.
Thus it becomes quite clear at the very end of the play that Blanche is indeed the strongest
character in the play in cultural and spiritual terms, and Blanche’s cultural war of defending,
preserving and recreating the past genteel values of the old southern civilization against the
ruthless and relentless modern society is certainly not futile; rather it has indeed left a deep
impression on the audience that the impact of such cultural heritage and legacy will continue
even though the political and social institution of the old Southern aristocracy has indeed
disintegrated and destroyed.
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Footnotes
(1)
Wilde, O. (1899/1970: 161). An Ideal Husband.
(2)
Shakespeare, W. (1611/1988: 1177). The Tempest.
(3)
By “cultural terms” here, I mean the genteel values of the old South, such as literature,
art, music, painting, dancing, quaint manners and elegant styles, etc.
(4)
Faulkner, W. (1960: 81). Requiem for a Nun.
(5)
The borrowed verses are from the second last stanza of Carl Sandburg’s “Prairie.”
(6)
Williams, T. (1963/1978: 152) T. “Williams’s View of T. Bankhead.” In C. E. Day & B.
Woods (Eds.), Where I Live: Selected Essays.
(7)
By naturalistic realism, I mean that the fate of the individual (Blanche) is determined not
by herself but rather by the social environment, or chance, by her heredity, her passion
and instinct. Part of Donald Pizer’s definition of the naturalist (1984: 11) may help to
illustrate my point: “The naturalist often describes his characters as though they are
conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, instinct, or chance. But he also
suggests a compensating humanistic value in his characters or their fates which affirms
the significance of the individual and of his life.”
(8)
It is an interesting coincidental irony that Williams, T., the playwright himself, died in
his favorite hotel called Elysée in New York on February 25, 1983.
(9)
For further discussion of the aristocratic values of the old South, to which Blanche
tenaciously clings, see the famous American historian, Bruce Catton’s essay (1956:
202-205). Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrast.
(10) All the page number references refer to Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.
(1947 New Directions edition)
(11) Frye, N., Baker, S., Perkins, G., & Perkins, M. B. (1997: 6). If Williams did not really
know much about the cultural tradition of the Chinese Lantern Festival, at least his use of
the Chinese colorful paper lantern reminds us of the history of the movement of Art for
Art’s sake in which French artists embraced Japanese ceramics, decorations, especially
the popular Japanese prints used to wrap them as artifacts without knowing the ancient
tales those prints depicted.
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