Blanche Key Quotations
What does Mitch ripping the lantern off the light bulb symbolize?
, it firstly shows how the working class has deposed the deteriorating upper class, with an action as simple as removing a paper lantern. It additionally shows the fragility of Blanche's illusions, when even though she wished to improve the world, it was only a superficial improvement, and it only took one person for her façade to fall. The decline of the upper class is also highlighted as it is Mitch who destroys Blanche's illusions, as she had previously been able to manipulate him but now there is no-one that she has power over, not even the lowest of the working class. This moment is significant for Blanche as it is the moment that Mitch sees the truth about her, and decides he does not want to be with her, which is another blow to Blanche's faltering sanity, pushing her closer to madness. It can be seen as a triumph for Mitch, as he has broken free from Blanche's manipulation by himself, and has managed to see the truth through her façade. This moment also foreshadows Blanche's rape by Stanley later in the play, as Mitch initially came with the intention to rape Blanche, but he was not able to do it.
Oh, I'm not going to be hypocritical, I'm going to be honestly critical about it!"
Hypocritical
137 "I like an artist who paints in strong, bold colours, primary colours. I don't like pinks and creams and I never cared for wishy-washy people."
Although this may seem like Blanche is describing how important it is to her that people be bold, she is actually attempting to flatter Stanley, as she knows that this is the kind of person he is. In reality, the colours here represent Blanche's manipulative nature and her control over men.
204/ 169 Blanche: I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell them the truth. I tell them what ought to be the truth. And if that is singful, then let me be damned for it! Dont turn the light on Blanche...-put on soft colours, the colours of butterfly wings, and glow - make a little - temporary magic...'
Blanche clearly says 'I don't want realism.' She would rather her view of the world be like a constant dream which is also her reason for continuously keeping up a façade. She only tells what 'ought' to be the truth in order to avoid shattering her own dreams by facing reality. She feels as if she has never lied ('Never inside, I didn't lie in my heart...) as what she says is the way she perceives things. eam to not turn on the light as it is her only hope of salvaging what is left of the image that she has created for Mitch and herself.
122, 136 Blanche: You haven't said a word about my appearance Blanche: I was fishing for a compliment, Stanley.
Blanche continuously needs to be complimented on her physical appearance as she is aware that her 'looks are slipping' as she ages. However her beauty is the only means she sees herself as having in order to attract men to fulfill her sexual desires.
138 [She sprays herself with her atomizer; then playfully sprays him (Stanley) with it. He seizes the atomizer and slams it down on the dresser. She throws back her head and laughs.]
Blanche is not afraid of Stanley which is a strength that her character portrays. Throwing her head back and laughing shows her signs of flirting which is her means of manipulating men. This helps contrast to the way she acts around Mitch where she is looking for something more then just sexual satisfaction.
"She [Blanche] moves out of the yellow streak of light"
Blanche is scared by bright light, as it reveals her true appearance, and destroys her fragile illusions. The light being yellow represents the strength of the more vibrant lower class.
129 Stanley:.. [He holds the bottle to the light to observe its depletion] Have a shot? Blanche: No, I - rarely touch it.
Blanche prefers to keep up a façade hiding her true habits even when it's obvious that the people around her know about her pretence. She does this as she prefers to view life as a pleasant dream as opposed to having the ugly realities of life exposed.
141 Blanche: He's just not the sort that goes for jasmine perfume! But maybe he's what we need to mix with our blood now that we've lost Belle Reve and have to go on without Belle Reve to protect us....
Blanche seems to acknowledge the fact that her and Stella do not belong to the Southern elite anymore and that maybe some of Stanley's raw vitality would be good to mix with the sophisticated upper class. This relates back to William's final message which acknowledges the decline of the upper class but conveys the idea that some of Stanley's bourgeois class ideals, mixed with others from Blanche's upper class is what we should strive for. Unfortunately, with the way society is going, we may not be able to achieve this.
155 Blanche: I'm not used to such - Blanche: Violence! Is so - Blanche: Why! I've been half crazy, Stella! When I found out you'd been insane enough to come back in here after what happened - I started to rush in after you!
Blanche who is not used to Stanley's violent displays of affection is stunned by him 'charg[ing] after Stella'. However no one else around her seems to feel as shocked as she does.f
150 Blanche: I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
Blanche's avoidance of light is due to her fear of people seeing her clearly which will lead to her real age being revealed. Instead she continuously avoids light by covering it up with 'lanterns' or staying in rooms with dim light. Additionally light will more clearly expose the 'rough' society in that Blanche is currently living in and which she sees as being 'beneath' her, again giving her a reason to avoid light.
225 Blanche: Whoever you are - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Blanche's dependence on strangers to fulfill the emptiness she feels has only led her to the position she is in by the end of the play. Blanche's inability to accept that strangers have only been kind to her in return for sex reflects her magical perception of the world. These being her final words in the play, referring to the 'kindness' of the doctor who is not the man (Shep) she was hoping for, shows her complete detachment from reality and the pathos of her empty belief in magic and kindness.
207 Blanche: Then marry me, Mitch!
Blanche's loneliness and need for companionship is displayed in her plea for Mitch to marry her. It is not important whether she truly loves Mitch or not but more like a means of a way out the trap she finds herself in. There is evident pathos here as she and the audience are well aware that Mitch came to her house with the intention of raping her. Her willingness to marry a man who would do this to her clearly illustrates Blanche's desperation.
192 Blanche: Oh, I feel so good after my long, hot bath, I feel so good and cool and - rested.
Blanche's numerous baths and time spent in the bathroom throughout the play are all her attempts at purifying herself of her past misdoings and her way of escaping everyone and everything and having time to herself in private.
170/183 [Stella pours the coke into the glass. It foams over and spills. Blanche gives a piercing cry. [A locomotive is heard approaching outside. She claps her hands to her ears and crouches over. The headlight of locomotive glares into the room as it thunders past. As the noise recedes she straightens and slowly continues speaking.]
Blanche's overreactions towards little, everyday occurrences are an indication of the fragility of her current mental state. Her hyperbolic actions suggest that once a major event occurs Blanche's loose hold on sanity will be lost.
180 Blanche: I guess it is just that I have - old fashioned ideals! [She rolls her eyes, knowing he cannot see her face.]
Blanche's rolling of her eyes shows that she is putting on a pretence. She is not physically attracted to Mitch, and after this act one cannot say if she is emotionally attracted towards Mitch either or if she is just attracted to the idea of protection that Mitch offers.
Role in the play
Blanches role in the play is to represent the declining upper class and the rise of the Bourgeois middle class in the America of Williams' time. As a character she is used to contrast directly with Stanley as her sophisticated, cultured and refined background is directly at odds with Stanley's vibrant, lively and raw working class background. The key moment for Blanche is at the end of the play where she is lead of 'as if she were blind' in order to be taken away to a mental asylum. This signifies the end of the Southern elite that Blanche stood for as she is unable to support herself anymore and relies on the Doctor for 'support' as she is 'lead' out. This depicts the final destruction of Blanche's character as her delicacy, sensitivity, refinement, were all just too weak to survive in the real world. There was no place for her illusions to exist in the Elysian Fields and the world of Stanley Kowalski and once her illusions were destroyed, she was destroyed too. Blanches sophistication and fantasy world are also used to raise an important question by Williams: If Stanley's world, although true, consists of violence to the extent of rape, then aren't some of Blanche's aristocratic morals worth keeping?
Page 117 They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields
Desire and death are two aspects that became important in the latter part of Blanche's life. The literal death of her husband along with the metaphorical death of her social life were both caused by her strong carnal desires which have caused her to be in the position she is in the play. This eventually leads to her downfall in Elysian Fields where she gets off the street car.
223 Stanley to Blanche
He [Stanley] crosses to dressing table and seizes the paper lantern, tearing it off the light bulb, and extends it towards her. She cries out as if the lantern was herself.
120 'And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won't be looked at in this merciless glare!'
Her dislike of the light is clear in this imperative and her reference of the light as a 'merciless glare' which emphasizes how Blanche is unwilling to confront the reality of her age and beauty. Blanche's harsh description of it being merciless also implies her delicate nature which is incapable of accepting the change in the reality that, she believes, lacks compassion for those who experience the consequences of time.
132 "From the land of the sky blue water"
Here Blanche is singing in the bathroom, and the colour in the lyrics could be said to represent her pleasant dreams, as it covers up what the world she has come from is really like.
140 There are thousands of papers, stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve as, piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications- to put it plainly!
In this speech, Blanche attributes the loss of Belle Reve to the male members of her family. She also confronts Stanley by '[picking up a large envelope containing more papers]' of his accusations that she is 'attempting some kind of treachery on [her] sister'. Blanche also comes across as the victim, having to endure this these unfortunate circumstances whilst her sister escaped to start off a new life in New Orleans. However Blanche probably couldn't have left Belle Reve even if she wanted to as it appears to be engraved in her to live the upper class sophisticated life.
118 Eunice: You want to leave your suitcase here an' go find her?' Blanche: No.
She does not trust the people in this seedy area of New Orleans where she has come to and therefore prefers to watch over her belongings herself.
"Now that you've touched them I'll burn them!"
Love letters
203 Blanche: I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me.
The absence of light comforts Blanche because she is able to manipulate facts and reality. She is able to hide the truth and be in control of whom she is.
177 Blanche...We'll have a night-cap. Let's leave the lights off. Shall we?
The darkness allows her to be superior and in control of the situation with Mitch. It also allows her to easily hide her true self from Mitch and enables her to create an attractive personality in order to make Mitch fall in love.
Stanley: "This is after the home-place had slipped through her lily-white fingers!"
The deterioration of the upper class is represented by the lack of colour in Blanche's fingers, and her subsequent inability to retain possession and control of her property.
Blanche: His Auntie knows candles aren't safe, that candles burn out in little boy's and girl's eyes, or wind blows them out and after that happens, electric light bulbs go on and you see too plainly...[She pauses reflectively for a moment.]
The vagueness of this quotation insinuates Blanche's impending madness, but it also seems to imply that when people are young, their perception is very innocent. However, it is only when they become accustomed to corruption as they grow up that the fire in the eyes burn out and thus, the artificial 'light' (electric bulb) is required. Moreover, the light from this bulb shows the ugly reality clearly and blatantly, which Blanche seems to be unable to accept.
He [Stanley] crosses to dressing table and seizes the paper lantern, tearing it off the light bulb, and extends it towards her. She cries out as if the lantern was herself.
This last action by Stanley emphasizes his victory over Blanche. Stanley, symbolizing the new era of the harsh truth, tears the lantern, implying that Blanche is finally stripped from her dreams and she is left exposed toe the harsh reality with no sympathy as she 'cries out'. Stanley extends the ripped paper lantern to her, giving back her shattered dreams.
"These are love-letters, yellowing with antiquity."
These letters represent the deterioration of the upper class, as all that is left of Blanche's love is these letters, which are fading and decaying away.
"Blanche comes out of the bathroom in a red satin robe"
This again displays how Blanche attempts to romanticise things, as something as simple as a bath robe has to be made from such a material as satin, and in as bright a colour as red. It has no real effect on her life or the way she lives, but it is her way of making the world more beautiful, and making herself feel better. It also has sexual connotations, accentuating the sense created of her here as a sexual predator planning to take advantage of Mitch.
[In the bathroom the water goes on loud; little breathless cries and peals of laughter are heard as if a child were frolicking in the rub.]
This childish mannerism displayed by Blanche indicates her innocence. Not sexual innocence but her naivety in the sense that she cannot see the real world for what it is. She must continuously see the world in a different light from everyone else. Her need to act young also displays her paranoia of ageing.
Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.
This introduction of Blanche foreshadows her eventual failure in the play because of her delicate nature that appears not to be durable to the roughness of reality, represented by the strong light. Her need to avoid it also suggests that she is unwilling to accept the truth of the reality she lives in and prefers the beautiful dreams that she is able to create in the dark. Her comparison to a moth also implies that she is fated for destruction since moths are attracted to the light which is that cause of their death.
140 Blanche: ... Here all of them are, all papers! I hereby endow you with them! Take them, peruse them - commit them to memory, even! I think its wonderfully fitting that Belle Reve should finally be this bunch of old papers in your big capable hands.
This quotation illustrates Blanche's victory over Stanley in their first argument. Stanley who becomes [...somewhat sheepish] after being presented with all the papers quickly diverts the conversation by bringing up the topic of their child which he was aware Blanche had not been told about and once again reverts back to talking about the 'Napoleonic code' which states that its his duty to 'take an interest in his wife's affairs'.
117 Blanche: They mustn't have - understood - what number I wanted...
This quotation reinforces Blanche's fantasy view of the world. She refuses to believe that this is where her sister now lives after their upper class upbringing in the 'great big place with white columns'.
139 Blanche: Poems a dead boy wrote. I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can't!
This quotation reveals that Blanche does feel guilty for the death of her husband. She feels that it was her final words to him that drove him to suicide. However this quotation also shows that Blanche is once again not afraid to stand up to Stanley at this point in the play this shows the strength in her character that exists currently but will later decline as she descends into madness.
127 Blanche:..And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths - not always.
We as the audience, have no choice but to symphathise with Blanche. She has been through a lot in her past which has driven her to become the person she is today and she is the one who ended up alone as opposed to Stella.
"but it wouldn't be make believe, if you believed in me!"
Williams gives Blanche the song about the "paper moon" as it emphasises Blanche's desire to view the world in a more beautiful light rather than the ugly reality of which it really consists. However, as the song states, to allow this view of the world to be 'true' then she needs other people to believe with her. Williams intentionally has Blanche singing this song in the bathroom when Stanley is telling Stella about the lies that Blanche has been telling so that the audience can realise that it only takes one person to tear these desires and dreams away in order for them to crumble, in this case that person is Stanley.
222 "The 'varsouviana' is filtered into a weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle"
Williams uses this stage direction, which is seen towards the end of scene eleven, to portray to the audience the insanity that has overcome Blanche. The fact that it is not just a simple song anymore and that it has become filtered and distorted with the integration of noises from the jungle re-emphasises strongly that Blanche has now become Insane. However, Williams uses this quote to not only portray her insanity but to also evoke sympathy for Blanche from the audience as, for Williams, Blanche represents a better set of morals compared to Stanley, as she tries to see and show the world in a more beautiful light.
146-47 [She takes off the blouse and stands in her pink silk brassiere and white skirt in the light through the portieres.] [Blanche moves back into the streak of light. She raises her arms and stretches, as she moves indolently back to the chair.]
With the loss of Belle Reve, her family fortune and her fading beauty, Blanche feels as if she now has to use her body in order to attract men. She therefore draws attention to it by undressing in the light where the men playing poker can clearly see the outline of her body.
200 "the rapid, feverish polka tune, the 'varsouviana', is heard; she is drinking to escape it and the disaster closing in on her."
is part of the opening stage direction of scene 9 where Mitch is visiting Blanche after he did not come to her birthday dinner. The fact that this time the varsouviana is being heard by Blanche in a rapid and feverish manor shows that she has further lost her awareness of reality and is beginning to really understand 'the disaster closing in on her', hence she is drinking to escape it. Williams chooses to portray Blanche in this way at the start of the scene to foreshadow Mitch's attempted rape, Stanley's rape in scene ten and her insanity in scene ten and eleven.
