Blanche’s Escapes

Scott Hawkins

Mr. Roso

English III Slot 7

February 13, 2017

Blanche’s Escapes

Time drama critic T.E. Kalem describes Tennessee Williams as the most influential and revolutionary playwright of the twentieth century (80). Thomas “Tennessee” Lanier Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, but was raised in Nashville, Tennessee. According to Kalem, Williams lived happily and innocently until his only sister Rose slowly descended into schizophrenia and received a prefrontal lobotomy (80). The tragedy of Rose led Williams to place some type of mental illness or some type of taboo of the silver screen into his plays. Some of the recurring themes that appeared in many of his plays were sex, alcoholism, rape, or castration. Though these things were considered inappropriate and vulgar to the audience in Williams’s day, as T.E. Kalem wrote, “The taboo is often the touchstone of drama: in the profoundest Greek play, a man murders his father and marries his mother” (80). A Streetcar Named Desire, one of Williams’s masterpieces, includes the themes of rape, sex, death, and alcoholism. All of these themes in the story were brought forth in the character of Blanche DuBois. Blanche is woman with a troubled past and an empty void of loneliness that cannot be filled. Blanche tries filling these holes with affairs with men at the Flamingo Hotel and even a seventeen-year-old boy that she taught at a school. Blanche strains for a loving relationship because she blames herself for the death of her young spouse. As a result of the intense guilt that she feels for her young husband’s death, Blanche escapes to a world of darkness, alcohol, and sex to soften the pain of reality.

        One way that Blanche tries to hide in a fantasy world is by covering herself in a shroud of darkness to hide her true nature from herself and the rest of the world. The darkness Blanche hides herself in has both a physical and a metaphorical implication. Blanche does not want to be seen in the light physically because it would show the wrinkles and age in her face. “I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action,” Blanche states defiantly (Williams 60). Blanche never goes with Mitch anywhere before six o’clock because of her fear that he might notice that she is older than she appears. Metaphorically speaking, Blanche does not want to be seen in the light because all of her lies and dark deeds will be displayed to the world. Blanche uses the figurative darkness to cover up her past which is filled with pain and death. The allegorical darkness can be seen as the mask to hide the truth of Blanche’s lies that are fashioned because the real world is too painful for her. As English teacher at Coe College Signi Falk puts it, “She speaks pathetically of her great sorrow, of her need to cover up the ugly truth—with a Williams’ symbolic touch, she asks him to cover a naked light bulb with a paper Chinese lantern” (83-84). Blanche admits to her lover Mitch that she wants to live in this charmed world. “I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it,” Blanche cries out desperately (145). Blanche also uses makeup to shroud herself from the prying eyes of the world. “I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty percent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth,” Blanche reassuringly claims (41). So the darkness is both a physical and a figurative escape from reality for Blanche.