In A Streetcar Named Desire, I began to develop a major hatred towards the character Blanche. I hate everything about her and yet I can’t help but feel sorry for her at the same time. Her are some things that I hate. She treats Stella like a maid and makes her do all sorts of things for her and Stella does it without even objecting. Another thing that she does to Stella is she makes her feel like she lives in a life of poverty and in a way makes fun of the life Stella lives. Blanche makes fun of where Stella and Stanley live, Stanley himself, and (in the beginning before Blanche finds out that Stella is pregnant) Stella appearance. I don’t understand how someone who is blood can treat a family member like that. I mean Blanche really lets Stella have it at times and Stella portrays herself as weak by letting Blanche do it. Blanche uses stereotypes to base all of her opinions on people. She calls Stanley common because of the way he looks and the way he acts. Miss Priss also uses his ethnicity to knock him down a few more pegs; she calls him a Pollock which is a terrible ethnic slur to use against someone who is Polish. I just feel like Blanche sees herself as being so above everyone else even though she is the same as them. Her past makes herself seem like a tramp it makes me wonder, what exactly did happen at the Flamingo? It is assumed that she was prostituting of some sort which I can definitely see. The way she acts towards men makes her seem like she thinks she can control men with the drop of a hat. I simply hate the way she thinks that she can have people do anything for her whenever she wants. The whole time I read A Streetcar Named Desire I grew to have such hatred towards Blanche.
On the other hand of this whole Blanche situation I kind of feel bad for her and I can’t believe that I just said that. But I really do feel compelled to feel sorry for her. If you think about everything that she has been through I mean she lost her job (for a disgusting reason), she lost all of her family (minus Stella), she has a drinking problem because of everything that happened, and she feeds off of attention that she doesn’t get. So after everything that has happened to her I feel bad, but only to a certain extent, I mean the girl does treat everyone like dirt on the bottom of her high heeled shoe.
5 comments:
Wow, tell us how you really feel...but I totally agree. Blanche is scum, and you summed up the reasons why very well. I think our sense of pity for Blanche comes from the end of the book, when she is being taken away to the looney bin talking about how Stanley raped her and no one will believe her. But, like the boy who cried wolf, she just told a few too many lies and now has no credibility-and the blame for that lies on her.
I agree with you. You really can not feel bad for Blanche because of all her lies and the way she acts through life. The only time we can feel bad is when she does actually tell her truth at the end of the play about Stanley raping her, and noone beleives her. But if you go through life lying to everyone, noone will beleive you when you need them to.
I don't think Stella is weak for obliging Blanche. In every family there is the caregiver and then there's everyone else, I think Stella is the caregiver of her family that is her role. Blanche is afraid that Stella might not love or even like her anymore if she knew the truth about her situation. So I feel bad for all of them they all seem to be products of their situations.
I loved the last comment about dirt on the bottom of a high heeled shoe, cute. I definately tried to feel bad for her, especially in her worst moments. Thinking of the way she treats people and the reason she was fired definately makes me sick. But then again there is that fact of looking at what she had been through, and if Stella had been the one to stay at Belle Reve do you think she would have acted the same? I agree with Nicole that the only time I can whole heartedly feel bad for her is when she tells the truth about Stanley raping her and no one believes her, but it is just another case of the boy who cried wolf.
I feel torn about Blanche- I feel as you do this hatred for her. She treats everyone like trash and yet still expects to be treated like a princess. yet, maybe she just does not know how to be kind. Perhaps she is just so broken by society that she does not know what to do. Maybe in her life at the Flamingo, no one showed her kindness or compassion and she picked up on it. I also agree that Stella is not weak for helping her sister, she is the villian though. She professes to be the caretakeer and then boom. She sends her sister to an institution for essentially telling the truth.
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