In Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the nature of theatricality, "magic" and "realism" all arise from the tragic character, White. DuBois. Blanche is both a theatricalized and self-theatricalized woman. She lies to herself and to others in order to recreate the world as it should be, in accordance with her high sensitivity. To this extent, much of his creations arise from a longing for the past, a nostalgia for his lost love, his dignity and his life's purpose. She is haunted by the ghosts of what she has lost and by the genteel society of her Belle Reve, her own beautiful dream. Blanche arrives at Stella's door with, essentially, a trunk full of costumes from her past. She is intensely self-aware and an artist in the broadest sense of the word. We meet Blanche at a point in her life where few, if any, of her actions seem contrived or executed to any degree. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In Act I Scene 3, she puts on a small performance for her suitor, Mitch, in her efforts to seduce him. She turns on the radio for the soundtrack and asks Mitch to turn on the light above now! and exclaims: “Oh, look! We have made the enchantment (39)! as she dances as a self-taught impromptu performance star. Stella applauds from the sidelines as her audience, and Mitch sings and sways to the music. This caricature of a production is repeated in Act II Scene 1, where Blanche also assigns roles to others. With her somewhat reluctant newspaper collector, she attempts to set the mood as a narrator of sorts. While he promptly responds to her request for the time, Blanche chooses to launch into a dreamlike digression: “So late? Don't you love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans where an hour is not just an hour – but a little bit of eternity fallen into your hands – and who knows what to do with it (59)? After draping herself in a gossamer scarf from her suit-like trunk, she leads the boy through the stage to her bedroom to receive a kiss before his exit. Mitch's entrance immediately afterwards with an "absurd little bouquet of flowers" further underlines the surreal and parodic nature of this exaggerated production. “Bow me first!” » she orders categorically: “And now, introduce them! Blanche’s deep bow and her melodramatic air: “Ahhh!” Thank you! give this scene a deeply self-conscious theatrical sense. Stanley himself indulges in theatrics at the end, when he dons his silk pajamas for the wedding night to celebrate alongside Blanche, dressed in her tiara and "fine feathers." Commenting on their shared costumes, Stanley agrees: "I guess we're both allowed to wear the dog!" You have an oil millionaire and I have a baby (90 years old)! » However, the reason for Stanley's celebration is rooted in reality (Stella is giving birth in a nearby hospital) and Blanche's is pure fantasy. The tram is full of such instances in which the audience and the performer become one. The play has been considered by many to be postmodernist in this deconstruction of the self. There is no true self, just performances projected out into the world in endless recursion. During her final confrontation with Mitch, Blanche accepts his deception. “I don’t want realism. I want – magic! … I try to give that to people. I distort things for them. I'm not telling the truth, I'm telling what should be the truth. And if it's asin, then may I be damned for it! Don't turn on the light (84)! » Much of Blanche's inventions result from an acute awareness of the sexual double standards she is trying to compensate for – disadvantages to which Williams himself was very sensitive as a homosexual writer. Blanche lies primarily to manipulate her situation to better suit her feminine agenda, explaining to Mitch that she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. Streetcar is, at heart, a work of social realism. Blanche's need to alter reality through fantasy is in part a critique of the failure of modernity for women, a critique of social institutions and America's postwar attitude that has so limited their lives. Blanche lies about her age because she sees it as another side of reality. . She also demonstrates decorum towards Mitch, in order to better fit the role of a desirable and acceptable woman. As she admits to Stella: “I want respect from [Mitch]. But… men quickly lose interest. Especially when the girl is over thirty… of course, he… he doesn't know – I mean, I didn't inform him – of my real age (57)! When Stella asks her why she is so sensitive about her age, Blanche responds: “Because of the hard blows my vanity has received. What I mean is he thinks I'm sort of prim and proper, you know! I want to fool him just enough to make him… want me…” Blanche’s magical creation was born out of the need to face reality and survive. Her total dependence on men blurs her distinction between survival and marriage, and she instead associates Mitch with a valuable reprieve. When Stella asks Blanche if she really wants Mitch (after Blanche's ramblings that Mitch would want her), Blanche's response is very telling: "I want to rest!" I want to breathe peacefully again! Yes, I want Mitch… Think! If it happens! I can leave here and not become anyone's problem...” Her desperate obsession with satisfying Mitch's desires glosses over the fact that she probably doesn't desire Mitch for who he is, only for what he represents. Their differences are shocking, and his awkward and crude nature is far from his romantic ideals. It is a sad reminder of her impossible love for her hidden husband, Allan Gray, that is, the love of an image she created. The role she created for her first love ultimately proved unreal and irreconcilable with her true identity. In her current despair, Mitch represents a kind of emancipation for Blanche, unable to see around her her dependence on men for financial and social sustenance. This restrictive vision deprives her of any realistic conception of how to save herself, further deceives the logic of her world and ensures her downfall. Her obsession with her own sense of mortality comes from her inability to see life outside of marriage: a life of solitude for her is synonymous with destitution, social death and, essentially, the end of life as she knows it. We have the image of Blanche drowning, struggling to stay afloat, and her increasing exhaustion from pretending is disturbing, marking an impending deadline for the tragic heroine. “It’s not enough to be sweet – you have to be sweet and attractive – and I’m stepping aside now.” I don't know how much longer I can go around (56). » Throughout the piece, Blanche also avoids appearing in direct, bright light in order to maintain her carefully constructed image. She particularly avoids the light in front of Mitch so that he doesn't see the reality of her faded beauty, refusing to go out with him during the day or in nice places.illuminated. She also covers the light in the Kowalski apartment with a Chinese paper lantern upon her arrival. The light also symbolizes the reality of Blanche's past, and her inability to tolerate it foreshadows her increasing inability to tolerate reality as well. Blanche describes her love for Allan Gray as seeing the world suddenly revealed by a blinding, bright light. Since his suicide, the bright light has disappeared – “And then the searchlight that had been shone on the world went out again and never for a single moment has there been a brighter light than that kitchen candle ( 68)…” The bright light reflects Blanche's greater acceptance of reality at the time, as well as her young sexual innocence. In the aftermath of Allan's death, she only experienced a dim light through inconsequential sexual relationships with other men, representing her sexual maturity and disillusionment. These sexual experiences made Blanche an increasingly hysterical woman, and her frequent need to bathe is another form of fantasy employment, as they symbolically cleanse Blanche of her illicit past. Just as she can never completely erase or recreate the past, Blanche's bath is never finished. This use of water to right a wrongdoing also backfires on Stanley, whose violent temper is soothed by the shower after beating Stella, making him remorseful and longing for his wife. However, Stanley's use of water does not alter reality to the same extent. This disparity in consumption is also reflected in their alcohol consumption. Both Stanley and Blanche drink excessively in the play, although Stanley's drinking is social and Blanche's is antisocial. Blanche drinks on the sly to withdraw from reality, and her drunken stupors give free rein to her imagination, for example concocting escape fantasies with Shep Huntleigh. While Stanley can bounce back from his drunken escapades, Blanche becomes even more deluded and sinks into greater lapses of sanity. Williams dramatizes the inability of the fantastic to overcome reality through the antagonistic relationship between Stanley and Blanche, which is symbolic of the overall struggle between appearances and reality. This struggle drives the plot and creates tension that is ultimately resolved with Blanche's failure to recreate her own and Stella's existence. Stanley's disdain for Blanche's fabrications comes from the fact that he is a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world, and he does everything he can to unravel her lies. However, we quickly realize that Blanche and her fantasies are one: the more Stanley succeeds in unraveling her invented world, the more he unravels Blanche herself, to the point of madness. As Blanche gradually fails to rejuvenate her own life and save Stella from a life with Stanley, her nerves make her increasingly hysterical over the most minor upheavals, and the slightest setback seems insurmountable. Interestingly, her final struggle with Stanley is also physical in which he rapes her, forcing Blanche to retreat entirely into her own world. While she originally colors her perception of reality according to her wishes, at this point in the play Blanche is completely unaware of reality. The piece also explores the boundary between exterior and interior through the use of decor. The flexible set allows one to see the surrounding street at the same time as the interior of the Kowalski apartment, expressing the idea that the house is not a domestic sanctuary. Blanche cannot escape her past in Stella and Stanley's house because it is not a self-defined world, impervious to a greater reality. THE.”