“Blanche is no tragic heroine, just an infuriating, self-pitying snob.” Examine the view of
Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
In Tennessee Williams’ play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, the journey of the character
of Blanche DuBois is a key focus. Whilst it may be argued that she is not a tragic hero and is
instead a “self-pitying snob”, Williams’ portrayal of Blanche is largely sympathetic, with her
life and subsequent downfall following Aristotle’s model of a tragic hero.
Aristotle’s tragic heroes are written into storylines including noble birth, hamartia,
peripeteia, anagnorisis and catharsis. Blanche fits perfectly into this mould, begining with her
upbringing at Belle Reve, a plantation referred to by Eunice as “A great big place with white
columns”. Williams’ contemporary take on noble birth sees Blanche clinging to the Southern
Belle persona that she was brought up to conform to, along with her Old South values.
Although her traditional, often elitist values can make Blanche appear snobbish, especially
when referring to Stanley and his friends as “Heterogenous types” and characterising
Stanley as a “Polack”, this is only a superficial persona that she desperately seeks to exude;
from Blanche’s past as a sex worker, which is revealed when she tells Stella that she had to
“make a little - temporary magic just in order to pay for - one night’s shelter!”, it is made clear
that Blanche does not really hold such traditional values, but wishes to fool people into
thinking that she does so as to secure a husband and rebuild her reputation. It could be
suggested that Blanche’s hamartia is her lying, sexuality, perversion and alcoholism;
Blanche states to Mitch after Stanley tells him the truth about her that “I don’t tell the truth. I
tell what ought to be truth”; she admits to Stella that she hasn’t been “so awf’ly good lately”,
alluding to her promiscuity; she is attracted to young men and tells a boy that “It would be
nice to keep you, but I’ve got to be good and keep my hands off children”; she has an
alcohol dependency which Stanley is aware of from their first meeting, stating that “Some
people rarely touch [alcohol], but it touches them often”. Blanche’s peripeteia occurs when
Mitch leaves her following Stanley’s exposure of her past, causing Mitch, Blanche’s only
suitor, to claim that she is “not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother”. The
anagnorisis stage occurs when Blanche admits her past to Mitch, telling him that she
engaged in “intimacies with strangers, and then when Stanley rapes her. Finally, the
catharsis is in the final scene where Blanche accepts the doctor’s help and allows herself to
be institutionalised, with Williams including in the stage direction that “Blanche walks on
without turning” so as to emphasise her moving on in life. These factors clearly show that,
although Blanche may be “infuriating” and a “self-pitying snob”, she does fit into the tragic
heroine mould, thus explaining if not justifying her behaviour.
Williams’ portrayal of Blanche is, overall, a sympathetic one, as is made clear by her
tragic monologues throughout the play. Her difficult past is first highlighted in the first scene,
where she explains to Stella how she lost Belle Reve due to all the “sickness and dying” that
she had to pay for whilst Stella was “In bed with” Stanley in New Orleans. The monologue,
whilst accusatory and bitter in nature, highlights the struggles that Blanche had to go through
alone. Additionally, Stella’s response to all of Blanche’s monologues is dismissive, with her
exclaiming “You be still! That’s enough!” in the first scene, and “I don’t listen to you when you
are being morbid!” in the fifth scene. In fact, the only character who responds to Blanche with
sympathy is Mitch, who responds to her story about the death of Allan by “drawing her slowly
