Mutual Desire

In the play "A Streetcar Named Desire," Blanche and Mitch portray similar and different desires. Blanche in the one hand desires attention, protection, and stability. Blanche was raised in a society were middle class women were expected to portray delicacy, beauty, and attraction to others and Blanche was no exception to this. After loosing her husband in a horrible way, Blanche started looking and desiring for what she once had in her matrimony; that magic and romanticism she feels the need to have again. She desires a magic relationship that would give her back the light that she lost after Allan's suicide. That is why when she meets Mitch, Stanley's friend, she hopes to find and live what she desires with him. Mitch is a lonely young man, he has no wife and lives with his sick mother, whom is about to die. Mitch's desire is to have a wife, a woman that would become part of his family before his mother dies. His desire is not a bad or uncommon one; he wants a life companion, something very common to desire during the 1950's, because a man needs a woman. When Mitch first sees Blanche he sees an opportunity. An opportunity of getting to know a single beautiful woman who could offer him what he most desires; a wife. Blanche sees that opportunity as well, the protection and stability she needs and she knows he could offer. However, Blanche's delusional character ruined the relationship they started. The first time they talked to each other she lied to him, and eventually her lies where revealed. She lied to him about her past and her age, but in her mind she did no wrong because she had a justification for everything she said or did. The magical life she was looking for blinded her from being honest and her delusions and desires led her to her own demise. When Stanley tells Mitch the whole story of Blanche's past, the relationship dissolves and his desire to have her disappears as well. At the end, Mitch still has a chance to fulfil his desire with a woman who he can categorize as clean and pure because Mitch just could not accept that Blanche was not as pure as he thought she was. Sadly Blanche will never get the chance to find the man who would protect her and love her, not because she does not want to, it is because her sister and Stanley stole that opportunity from her after they sent her to the mental asylum. Both their desires could have been satisfied by each other but destiny changed the out coming of their future.

Blanche

In the play "A Streetcar Named Desire," Tennessee Williams introduces various characters that portray different types of personalities. One of the main characters is a thirty-year-old woman named Blanche. Blanche is very straight forward since the beginning of the play but only when it comes to criticizing her sister's way of life and the man she married. Blanche is also very conscious of her age; she even avoids sunlight to prevent people from seeing her as what she really is, but even if she tries she still says "It isn't enough to be soft and attractive"(95). A statement that proves that she is not happy of getting older since it is ruining her chances of getting the men she wants. Blanche likes to flirt with young men because they make her feel younger, but every relationship she starts, she ruins with her lies. An example of this is the relationship she started with Mitch, but ended up in nothing after Mitch discovered her true past. Blanche also likes to play the fragile woman in front of people so that she gets taken care of. The play is very detailed, and it make us see Blanche as a woman who is very dependable on alcohol, a woman who seeks protection, and a woman with a dark past, which leave us with a very bad impression of her. She is very different from what she tries to pretend: soft, fragile and pure. Although we see Blanche as this judging and delusional woman, because she lives of fantasies and lies, Stella actually tell us what Blanche used to be like when she says to Stanley, "Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change"(103). It would be hard to believe Blanche was once tender and trusting, but when we read it in Stella's words it is easy to believe. Blanche had a bad experience; she found her husband having sexual relations with another man and he killed himself after she told him that she knew all about it. Blanche's experience makes the reader comprehend why Blanche acts the way she does. The play shows Blanche at her worst and at her best, making the reader see the present Blanche and providing us a different image of Blanche through Stella's words.