Mental Characters In Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire

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Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Missouri in 1911. Williams is considered to be one of the three most famous playwrights of the 20th century for American drama. In 1947, one of his best works, A Streetcar Named Desire was released to the public. The play was set to be the exact year in which it was written (“Tennessee Williams”). The play begins as character Blanche Dubois arrives to her destination after getting off a streetcar named Cemeteries. She went to visit her baby sister, Stella, to inform her of the loss of their home plantation. Also, she had no other place to go, so visiting with Stella meant she had a home. When Stella arrives home, Blanche starts talking and Stella never gets the chance to speak. In the beginning, Blanche…show more content…
As well as Blanche lies and her mental state slopes downhill, Blanche has another issue which is also a factor as to why she is the way she is. From the time Blanche was a young teenager, when she married her husband at the age of sixteen, to her current self, she has had many issues with men. The first issue is that she married young and found something out that pushed her to make her do things she later regretted. “...A widow of a homosexual husband…”(House22) Blanche found out that her first husband was a homosexual and it hurt her to the point that she drove him into a state of mind where he thought suicide would be the better option. Not only did Blanche have “...a disastrous marriage with a homosexual,...”(Dace), she also let her sexual urges get the best of her. She was a school teacher who got let go for messing with a young male student. For some reason, Blanche is attracted to younger men. “...Now run along, now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I 've got to be good--and keep my hands off children.”(89) Blanche noticed the paper boy who came because he was a young one. She immediately started flirting with him and the reader could tell he was somewhat uncomfortable with the way Blanche had approached or pushed herself off on him. In the beginning of the play when Blanche first meets Stanley, it 's noticeable that there is the uneasy feeling when the two are around each other. “...Blanche is terrified of Stanley…”(Dace), and this is shown by the way she acts when she is around Stanley. From the very start, Blanche was never really comfortable around stanley to begin with. “Oh! So you want some rough-house! All right, let 's have some rough-house! Tiger--tiger! Drop the bottle top! Drop it! We 've had this date with each other from the beginning!”(141). Stanley attacked Blanche and she did not want him to do that. She was so terrified that she grab a bottle and hit Stanley with it. The straw that really broke the camel 's back was when “Stanley raped
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