The inevitability of Shame
Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a marvelous southern gothic play whose end contains quite a plot twist. In this play Blanche Dubois a posh and delicate southern woman surprises her “little” older sister Stella who lives in downtown New Orleans and is at the constant disposal of her husband Stanley, a former World War II sergeant with a short drunk temper. Blanche suffers from anxiety and exhibits suspicious behavior. Throughout the play Blanche and Stanley do not see eye to eye and it doesn’t help that Stanley is insipid and beats his pregnant wife Stella when he’s drunk. Stanley soon gets fed up with Blanche and investigates on her so called very posh lifestyle. All the while Blanche starts to fall…show more content… Throughout the play Blanche is at a continuous struggle with her past and of what is to come of her future. Throughout the play she refrains from telling anyone her true age and is worried about her youthness fading, as well as not going into any harsh light that she thinks will show that she is “past her prime.”Besides most of Blanche’s internal conflict comes from shame.Shame of her husband’s passing and the unfortunate events that lead up to his passing. Blanche blames herself for driving her husband into committing suicide. Blanche’s first love was like “suddenly turning a blinding light on something that had always been in shadow.” Blanche said she was unlucky.”Deluded.”She had always known something was different about the boy a “nervousness, a softness and tenderness which wasn’ like a man’s”(Williams 114) She thought she had failed him he was in the quicksands and instead of her holding him up she was sinking in with him. As Blanche is telling Mitch she starts to hear the varsouviana which only occurs when she is asked about Allan, she goes on to say that she found out her husband’s secret in the worst of ways by coming into a room she apparently thought was empty but wasn't empty. In the empty room there contained two people….the boy she married and an older man, the varsouviana played louder, who had been his friend for many years.…show more content… In scene 10 after Mitch confronts Blanche about her misconduct and betrayal, Blanche is bewildered. All the things she was ashamed of to ever tell Mitch about her past about, the prostitution and lies about Laurel( the town she had come from before)and a 17 year old boy who she had relations with which caused her to lose her teaching job. In the last scene (scene 10) Blanche loses Mitch and loses the opportunity to ever have a future with him. Then to make matters worse in the end of scene 10 Stella (Blanche’s sister) goes into labor and if Blanche had not already been through enough Stella’s husband Stanley rapes Blanche while wearing his wedding night pajamas. Scene eleven if the shame and being violated by her sisters husband weren’t the worst thing that had ever occurred to Blanche, her own sister didn’t believe that her husband Stanley could ever do such a thing and called a doctor from a psychiatric hospital to come and get her, and best believe that Blanche didn’t go without nearly scratching the nurse’s eyes out causing a huge scene all the while Stanley continued to play poker with his friends including Mitch who stood there looking down at the his lap. Then for the biggest plot twist and finale Blanche realized she would not be taken away like an animal but like a lady and left on the doctor’s arm saying “ Whoever you are- i have
