Blanche DuBois
Encyclopedia
Blanche DuBois is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams
' 1947 Pulitzer Prize
-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire
. The role is challenging and controversial in that the former Southern belle has a lurid past (a marriage to a young homosexual who committed suicide when she discovered his secret; notorious sexual promiscuity; ongoing alcoholism, etc.) as well as genuine spiritual idealism and refinement.
Jessica Tandy
received a Tony Award
for her performance as Blanche in the original Broadway
production. By report (no filmed record exists), her performance stressed Blanche's high-class affectations, and the audience often sided with the adversarial brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski
, viewing her, as he does, as an alien threatening his home and marriage.
Uta Hagen
took over the role of Blanche for the national tour. The tour was directed not by Elia Kazan
, who had directed the Broadway production, but by Harold Clurman
, and it has been reported, both in interviews
by Miss Hagen and observations by contemporary critics, that the Clurman-directed interpretation shifted the focus of audience sympathy back to Blanche and away from Stanley (where the Kazan/Brando/Tandy version had located it).
The character was also portrayed by Vivien Leigh
both in the London stage production which was directed by her then-husband Laurence Olivier
(some key moments were censored) and later, when she was cast in the 1951 film adaptation. The film was directed by Elia Kazan
, and Leigh won her second Academy Award
for this performance. Film critic Pauline Kael
had this to say of that performance: "Vivien Leigh gives one of those rare performances that can truly be said to evoke pity and terror. As Blanche DuBois, she looks and acts like a destroyed Dresden shepherdess. No one since the early Lillian Gish
.....has had this quality of hopeless, feminine frailty; Shakespeare must have had a woman like this in mind when he conceived Ophelia
. Blanche's plea 'I don't want realism … I want magic!' is central to STREETCAR."
Blanche has been portrayed onstage by Faye Dunaway
, Jessica Lange
, Natasha Richardson
, Laila Robins
, Arletty
, Claire Bloom
, Rosemary Harris
, Rachel Weisz
, and Cate Blanchett
and Ann-Margret
(and Lange) in television versions.
At the play's opening, Blanche has just travelled from Laurel, Mississippi
, to visit her younger sister Stella
in New Orleans (Blanche insists that Stella is the younger of the two because she wants herself seen as her protectress). Blanche has ridden a streetcar named "Desire" and transferred to one called "Cemeteries" on the final leg of her journey. Blanche is appalled by her sister's poor, even squalid, living quarters 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 shames Stella for marrying a man so violent and animalistic. But Stella defends her marriage, as she is powerfully attracted to Stanley in spite (and even, it is implied, because) of his violent nature. Blanche is not shy about expressing her contempt for Stanley and the life he has given her sister, which makes him proud. He is convinced that Blanche has selfishly squandered Stella's portion of money from the sisters' ancestral home. Blanche's plausible version of the story is a familiar one: the disintegration and decay of the Old South and a series of harrowing, costly family deaths to which she was witness.
Desperate and dependent, living in the Kowalski home, Blanche flirts with and embraces Stanley's friend Harold Mitchell (Mitch), who is distinct from Stanley, Steve, and Pablo in his courtesy and propriety. Blanche also invents stories about millionaire Shep Huntleigh, whom she bases on a person with whom she went to a college promenade, and whom she supposes will save her and Stella.
Blanche was a broken chute before she arrived at Stanley and Stella's house. Evicted from "Belle Reve" -- French for "Beautiful Dream" -- after the death of family members required mortgages on the family homestead to pay for funeral and estate expenses, Blanche took up residence in a hotel in her hometown of Laurel as a woman of loose morals willing to sleep with anyone merely for recognition of her existence.
However, Blanche's mental decline started with the death of her first and only husband, Allan Grey. Blanche was completely and irrevocably in love with him; as Stella described it, "She worshipped the ground he walked on", and Blanche was heartbroken when she witnessed him having sex with a man. Although she at first kept quiet, Blanche later blurted out that he disgusted her when they are in each others' arms together on the dance floor. Allan then bolted outside and shot himself, and it is this tragedy which precipitates Blanche's downward spiral. (The polka song "Varsovienne
", which played on the night of Allan's death, is played as a motif whenever Blanche is experiencing a particularly distressing moment, whenever her tragic memories threaten her connection to the present.) Blanche reveals the story of her marriage one night while she's on a date with Mitch, and his lack of recrimination fills her with hope. "Sometimes there's god
- so quickly," she says.
Stanley ruthlessly reveals to Stella that he has learned of Blanche's past and has informed Mitch of Blanche's improprieties (unconscionable for that day and time). Blanche's hope of being rescued by Mitch evaporates. She begins to drink heavily, conjuring up the notion that an old flame, a millionaire named Shep Huntleigh, is imminently planning to take her away.
The night Stella goes into labor, Stanley and Blanche are left alone in the apartment, and Stanley, drunk and powerful, rape
s her. This event, coupled with the fact that Stella does not believe her, is the trigger that sends Blanche over the edge into a nervous breakdown
. In the final scene, as Stella makes her stand with her husband, Blanche is led off to a mental hospital by a matron and a kind-hearted doctor. After a brief struggle, Blanche smilingly acquiesces as she devolves into her fantasy life, addressing the doctor with the most famous line in the play: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
' 1947 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
. The role is challenging and controversial in that the former Southern belle has a lurid past (a marriage to a young homosexual who committed suicide when she discovered his secret; notorious sexual promiscuity; ongoing alcoholism, etc.) as well as genuine spiritual idealism and refinement.
Jessica Tandy
Jessica Tandy
Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress.She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films...
received a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for her performance as Blanche in the original Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
production. By report (no filmed record exists), her performance stressed Blanche's high-class affectations, and the audience often sided with the adversarial brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire.-In the play:Stanley lives in the working class Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans with his wife, Stella , and is employed as a factory parts salesman. He was an Army engineer in WWII, having...
, viewing her, as he does, as an alien threatening his home and marriage.
Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...
took over the role of Blanche for the national tour. The tour was directed not by Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
, who had directed the Broadway production, but by Harold Clurman
Harold Clurman
Harold Edgar Clurman was a visionary American theatre director and drama critic, "one of the most influential in the United States". He was most notable as one of the three founders of the New York City's Group Theatre...
, and it has been reported, both in interviews
Interviews
Interviews is:# the plural form of "interview"# a compilation album by Bob Marley & the Wailers, see Interviews # a C++ toolkit for the X Window System, see InterViews...
by Miss Hagen and observations by contemporary critics, that the Clurman-directed interpretation shifted the focus of audience sympathy back to Blanche and away from Stanley (where the Kazan/Brando/Tandy version had located it).
The character was also portrayed by Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...
both in the London stage production which was directed by her then-husband Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
(some key moments were censored) and later, when she was cast in the 1951 film adaptation. The film was directed by Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
, and Leigh won her second Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for this performance. Film critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
had this to say of that performance: "Vivien Leigh gives one of those rare performances that can truly be said to evoke pity and terror. As Blanche DuBois, she looks and acts like a destroyed Dresden shepherdess. No one since the early Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....
.....has had this quality of hopeless, feminine frailty; Shakespeare must have had a woman like this in mind when he conceived Ophelia
Ophelia
Ophelia is a fictional character in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, and potential wife of Prince Hamlet.-Plot:...
. Blanche's plea 'I don't want realism … I want magic!' is central to STREETCAR."
Blanche has been portrayed onstage by Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway is an American actress.Dunaway won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Network after receiving previous nominations for the critically acclaimed films Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown...
, Jessica Lange
Jessica Lange
Jessica Phyllis Lange is an American actress who has worked in film, theatre and television. The recipient of several awards, including two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes and one Emmy, Lange is regarded as one of the première female actors of her generation.Lange was discovered by producer...
, Natasha Richardson
Natasha Richardson
Natasha Jane Richardson was an English actress of stage and screen. A member of the Redgrave family, she was the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director/producer Tony Richardson and the granddaughter of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson...
, Laila Robins
Laila Robins
-Personal life:Robins was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of Latvian American parents Brigita and Janis Robins, who was a research chemist. She attended the Yale School of Drama, and received her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, . Robins has been in a...
, Arletty
Arletty
Arletty was a French actress, singer, and fashion model.-Life and career:Arletty was born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat in Courbevoie , to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years...
, Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...
, Rosemary Harris
Rosemary Harris
Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...
, Rachel Weisz
Rachel Weisz
Rachel Hannah Weisz born 7 March 1970)is an English-American film and theatre actress and former fashion model. She started her acting career at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she co-founded the theatrical group Cambridge Talking Tongues...
, and Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett
Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett is an Australian actress. She came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 biopic film Elizabeth, for which she won British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Golden Globe Awards, and earned her first Academy Award...
and Ann-Margret
Ann-Margret
Ann-Margret Olsson is a Swedish-American actress, singer and dancer whose professional name is Ann-Margret. She became famous for her starring roles in Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, The Cincinnati Kid, Carnal Knowledge, and Tommy...
(and Lange) in television versions.
In the play
At the play's opening, Blanche has just travelled from Laurel, Mississippi
Laurel, Mississippi
Laurel is a city located in Jones County in Mississippi, a state of the United States of America. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 18,393 although a significant population increase has been reported following Hurricane Katrina. Located in southeast Mississippi, southeast of...
, to visit her younger sister Stella
Stella Kowalski
Stella Kowalski is one of the main characters in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire. She is the younger sister of central character Blanche DuBois.-In the play:...
in New Orleans (Blanche insists that Stella is the younger of the two because she wants herself seen as her protectress). Blanche has ridden a streetcar named "Desire" and transferred to one called "Cemeteries" on the final leg of her journey. Blanche is appalled by her sister's poor, even squalid, living quarters and the coarseness of her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire.-In the play:Stanley lives in the working class Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans with his wife, Stella , and is employed as a factory parts salesman. He was an Army engineer in WWII, having...
, and his friends Steve Hubbell and Pablo Gonzales, with whom he drinks and plays poker
Poker
Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...
. She calls Stanley an ape, and shames Stella for marrying a man so violent and animalistic. But Stella defends her marriage, as she is powerfully attracted to Stanley in spite (and even, it is implied, because) of his violent nature. Blanche is not shy about expressing her contempt for Stanley and the life he has given her sister, which makes him proud. He is convinced that Blanche has selfishly squandered Stella's portion of money from the sisters' ancestral home. Blanche's plausible version of the story is a familiar one: the disintegration and decay of the Old South and a series of harrowing, costly family deaths to which she was witness.
Desperate and dependent, living in the Kowalski home, Blanche flirts with and embraces Stanley's friend Harold Mitchell (Mitch), who is distinct from Stanley, Steve, and Pablo in his courtesy and propriety. Blanche also invents stories about millionaire Shep Huntleigh, whom she bases on a person with whom she went to a college promenade, and whom she supposes will save her and Stella.
Descent into insanity
Stories, lurid and tragic, about Blanche's past come to light during the play; one of which, she reveals to Mitch in a vulnerable moment. Others come from Stanley: vicious gossip, however true, which he picks up from a traveling salesman.Blanche was a broken chute before she arrived at Stanley and Stella's house. Evicted from "Belle Reve" -- French for "Beautiful Dream" -- after the death of family members required mortgages on the family homestead to pay for funeral and estate expenses, Blanche took up residence in a hotel in her hometown of Laurel as a woman of loose morals willing to sleep with anyone merely for recognition of her existence.
However, Blanche's mental decline started with the death of her first and only husband, Allan Grey. Blanche was completely and irrevocably in love with him; as Stella described it, "She worshipped the ground he walked on", and Blanche was heartbroken when she witnessed him having sex with a man. Although she at first kept quiet, Blanche later blurted out that he disgusted her when they are in each others' arms together on the dance floor. Allan then bolted outside and shot himself, and it is this tragedy which precipitates Blanche's downward spiral. (The polka song "Varsovienne
Varsovienne
The varsovienne, also known as the varsouvienne or varsoviana, is a slow, graceful dance in ¾ time with an accented downbeat in alternate measures. It combines elements of the waltz, mazurka, and polka. The dance originated around 1850 in Warsaw, Poland...
", which played on the night of Allan's death, is played as a motif whenever Blanche is experiencing a particularly distressing moment, whenever her tragic memories threaten her connection to the present.) Blanche reveals the story of her marriage one night while she's on a date with Mitch, and his lack of recrimination fills her with hope. "Sometimes there's god
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
- so quickly," she says.
Collapse
Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety, Blanche is an insecure, dislocated individual, an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty. Her manner is dainty and frail, and she sports a wardrobe of showy but cheap evening clothes, as indicated in the stage directions for Scene 10: "She had decked herself out in a somewhat soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown and a pair of scuffed silver slippers with brilliants set in their heels." This occurs at a major turning point in the play, and the cheap clothes are sometimes seen as metaphorical symbols of Blanche's mental condition.Stanley ruthlessly reveals to Stella that he has learned of Blanche's past and has informed Mitch of Blanche's improprieties (unconscionable for that day and time). Blanche's hope of being rescued by Mitch evaporates. She begins to drink heavily, conjuring up the notion that an old flame, a millionaire named Shep Huntleigh, is imminently planning to take her away.
The night Stella goes into labor, Stanley and Blanche are left alone in the apartment, and Stanley, drunk and powerful, rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
s her. This event, coupled with the fact that Stella does not believe her, is the trigger that sends Blanche over the edge into a nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
. In the final scene, as Stella makes her stand with her husband, Blanche is led off to a mental hospital by a matron and a kind-hearted doctor. After a brief struggle, Blanche smilingly acquiesces as she devolves into her fantasy life, addressing the doctor with the most famous line in the play: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."