We are now inside her head, and the heightened unreality of the play begins to take hold. This rather reminds me of a similar scene in The Glass Menagerie when Laura faints, although one is more inclined to pity Laura than Blanche. The whole scene — what one can see and hear — is an oxymoron: pleasant but sad. Stanley does not have the sensibility to realize that perhaps Blanche and Mitch could have had a successful marriage in spite of Blanche's past. I encourage students to pay attention to how Blanche desperately tries to hold on to her fantasy as Stanley's revelations destroy her relationship with Mitch.
Stella scolds him for having greasy fingers and orders him to help clean up. Her concealment of part of her past when talking to Mitch makes her seem manipulative as she gave the impression of confessing her past to Mitch when really she is withholding the one thing she should be confessing. Stanley's actions, it must be remembered, stem from several motivations. Despite Blanche's deception, and despite his insistence elsewhere that Blanche is not a hero, Williams pushes the audience's sympathies towards Blanche through this scene. Whereas they are loud, brash and confident, Blanche is totally different.
Stanley is with her in an instant, speaking softly as he leads her out the door. Blanche has stayed comfortable for as long as she can, eventually being forced out of her lifestyle by a situation, whereas Stella has already willingly given up her birthright and her privileges to be with the man she loves. But we hear it too, and this shared hallucination implicates us in the disintegration of Blanche's reality. However, with the support of social masculine stereotypes, his anger may be a façade that adds to his assertion of his manhood in front of Stella and Blanche. It is this desire which drives her pretences, her delusions and the majority of her deceptions and it is possible that without this constant desire for a better world, the real world would have seemed less coarse and Blanche would have been better able to accept its realities. The last point that should be made for this scene is the sexual tension that Williams has maintained between Stanley and Stella.
Stanley comes home from the hospital. I believe this is the point at which the audience fully realises that Blanche is not a nice person. Stella is upset at Stanley for being unnecessarily cruel — everyone has been cruel to Blanche since she was a girl, and that's what changed her. It is a technique well represented in Williams' plays, especially the ones with dead gay men Streetcar, , , etc. The first is that she tries to blame poor Stella for everything that has happened at Belle Reve, even though she was not there. In one of his italicized passages in Scene One, Williams' builds an elaborate description of Stanley Kowalski. Cynically the lyrics of the song could suggest that her future depends upon whether people will believe her act but more sympathetically they might suggest that, if two people together choose to believe in the illusion of a better world, then that can be enough to make that better world a reality.
She wants the feminine magic of the moon, but as her song indicates that moon is paper and, by extension, can easily rip. Blanche and Mitch discuss Stanley. Why does Blanche say that she has left her teaching job to visit Stella? Relation of part to the whole: This scene is set directly after Blanche and Mitch return from their date although some time must have passed in the interim. After Blanche confronts Allan, he shoots himself. In a play like Streetcar where much of the action has occurred off-stage in the past, it is an effective dramatic device to have the audience know more information than the protagonist. She retreated into herself after this trauma, cloaking her fragile mind with shadows and delusions, and only sneaking out to find comfort in the embrace of strangers, to allow her to feel something that was alive.
However, he was also a tyrant and abused his position of power which is similar to Stanley as he definitely controls others using intimidation and aggression. Blanche and Stanley join her. Blanche - In Scene Five, Blanche is writing a letter to Shep Huntleight. Near the end of Scene One, what do we learn about Blanche's husband? Blanche begins to reminisce about her dead husband, Allan. Her references to Edgar Allen Poe are suitably intelligent, and suggest both her privileged upbringing and her current career. · The scene ends with Stanley going into the bathroom and slamming the door whilst Stella lies to Blanche claiming that nothing is wrong. For it is very obviously a problem — later on, dramatic irony is utilised when Blanche searches for something to drink in the presence of her sister, pretending as if she does not know where the bottle is.
Students notice in this scene just how closely Stanley resembles Huey Long. The second is her actions at the end of the scene, when the audience is forced to feel pity towards her. Stanley offers her a birthday present — a bus ticket back to Laurel. Instead, he feels some manly obligation to inform Mitch of Blanche's past life. Blanche is also quite nasty at times.
Stanley pointedly eats a chop with his fingers. His marital life has not been the same since the arrival of Blanche, and Stanley feels this. This may be put down to the unusual situation she is in, or the revelations she has to tell, but her alcohol problem is no doubt a contributor to such behaviour. In this section, students will be introduced to the political leanings of Huey Long, the former governor of Louisiana and United States senator. Because Blanche has put on a façade in front of Mitch she is now under pressure to keep it up. She claims that Blanche and her grew up under different circumstances than Stanley and tries to protect her sister by using every excuse she could find. It is interesting that she says this immediately after Blanche brings Stan into the equation — as if Stella loves Stan so fiercely that she will not let anyone harm him, verbally or otherwise.
She is obviously very knowledgeable. What might these names represent? Stanley heatedly replies that he is neither Polack nor Pole but American. Stanley lets Stella know that he has learned some things about Blanche. After Blanche is admitted into the apartment, her manner stays the same. However, we know that at the end of the play, Stella decides to side with Stanley which is a complete antithesis with her earlier implications. After a minute, Stanley notices that something is wrong and cuts his diatribe short. One later realises that this is a misnomer.