Blanche DuBois

Blanche DuBois is the principal character in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire. She was portrayed by Vivien Leigh in the 1951 film adaptation in an Academy Award-winning performance.

Related Topics:
Tennessee Williams - Play - A Streetcar Named Desire - Vivien Leigh - 1951 - Academy Award

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A snobbish, fading Southern belle, Williams in part used her character as a metaphor for the dying world of the Old South.

Related Topics:
Southern belle - Metaphor - Old South

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At the beginning of the play, Blanche comes from Laurel, Mississippi to visit her younger sister Stella in New Orleans. Blanche is appalled with the poor, even squalid environment and the coarseness of her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, and his friends Steve Hubbell and Pablo Gonzales, with whom he drinks and plays poker. She calls Stanley an "ape", and wants Stella to pull out of her marriage with him because he is so violent and animalistic. (Stella refuses to leave, as she is addicted to sex with Stanley, and is pregnant with his child.) Blanche is not shy about her distaste for Stanley and the life he has brought her sister into, which infuriates him.

Related Topics:
Laurel, Mississippi - New Orleans - Stanley Kowalski - Poker - Ape - Pregnant

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Consequently, she flirts with and embraces Harold Mitchell (Mitch), who is distinct from Stanley, Steve and Pablo in his courtesy and propriety. Mitch is very lonely because of his sick mother and embraces Blanche as a cure that loneliness. Blanche also invents stories about oil millionaire Shep Huntleigh, who she supposes will save her and Stella from living in a very poor district of New Orleans with vulgar "apes."

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However, Stanley's workplace has a merchant (Kiefaber) who is able to obtain information about Blanche that destroys her completely. Stanley is able to show that what Blanche had told him, Stella and Mitch was largely a fabrication, and that Blanche had a homosexual husband who committed suicide and that she was afterward extremely promiscuous, so much so that she was paid to leave and never come back. He also learns that the DuBois' ancestral home, Belle Rove, has been mortgaged.

Related Topics:
Homosexual - Suicide - Promiscuous - Mortgage

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When he tells Mitch and Stella this, Blanche's hope evaporates, but she continues to cling to her fantasy of marrying Huntleigh and returning to the good life.

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The night Stella gives birth, Stanley drunkenly happens upon Blanche and tries to seduce her. When she resists, he rapes her. This sends Blanche completely over the edge into a nervous breakdown, and Stanley has her sent off to a mental hospital. As she is being led off by orderlies and a kind-hearted doctor, Blanche smiles as she completely devolves into her fantasy life, never to return to the real world.

Related Topics:
Rape - Nervous breakdown

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