On Blanche’s Journey to Dementia.doc

on blanches journey to dementia 论布兰琪痴呆之旅 contents acknowledgements.i abstractii 摘要摘要.iii 1 introduction.1 2 blanches life journey from desire to dementia3 2.1 tense relationship with people around urged her to madness4 2.1.1 blanche and stanley:two polar opposite.4 2.1.2 blanche and stanley:two southern gentlewomen.7 2.1.3 blanche and mitch:two lonely souls9 3. a bruised soulthe personal and autobiographical tragedy .12 3.1 blanches life: incompletion and desperation.12 3.2 desirethe main driving force.14 4. social reality that forced her to the broken world16 4.1 old south vs. new south16 4.2 the inevitability of blanches dementia16 5. conclusion17 references.20 abstractabstract tennessee williams is one of the greatest american dramatists. he won two rockfeller prizes, the gold medal for drama from the american academy of arts and letters and the national institute of arts and letters, the medal of honor for literature of arts club, and two honorary doctorates. williams was honored by president carter at kennedr center in 1979. williams s greatest achievement is a streetcar named desire (hereinafter, streetcar), which premiered at the ethel barrymore theatre in new york on december 3, 1947. the writer of this thesis tries to understand all kinds of reasons that lead blanche to dementia. here, this thesis focuses on the following reasons: tense relationship with people around; her life of incompletion and desperation; desire; social reality. by the analysis of blanches journey from desire to dementia, we can see that the inevitability and symbolica l mea nings of blanche s destination is doomed. key words: tennessee williams; a streetcar named desire; blanche; desire; demenia 论布兰琪痴呆之旅论布兰琪痴呆之旅 摘要摘要 本文作者尝试从以下几个方面理解欲望号街车中布兰琪从欲 望走向痴呆的过程，它们分别是：布兰琪与其周围人们的紧张关系； 布兰琪绝望的生活; 不节制本能的欲望；社会现实，尤其是新南方和 旧南方的对立这一社会现实，被认为是布兰琪走向痴呆过程中最为主 要的原因。布兰琪不可避免并且富有象征意义的命运最终被验证。 关键词关键词：田纳西.威廉斯；欲望号街车；布兰琪；欲望；痴呆 1.introduction if such playwright as eugene oneill, susan glaspell, and thornton wilder dominate american theatre in the first half of the twenties century, and arthur miller, edward albee, sam shepard, and among many others, david mamet the second half, tennessee williams animates the middle years of the century. he won two rockefeller prizes, the gold medal for drama from the american academy of arts and letters and the national institute of arts and letters, the medal of honor for literature from the national arts club, and two honor doctorates. williams was honored by president center in 1979. what many regard as williamss greatest achievement is a streetcar named desire (hereinafter, streetcar), which premiered at the ethel barrymore theatre in new york on december 3, 1947. it ran for an unprecedented 855 performances and became the first play ever to win all three major awards, the pulitzer prize, the new york drama critics award, and the donaldson award, and this catapulted williams to the front of american dramatist. in 1996, the thirty-two-cent united states postage stamp was issued in commemoration of tennessee williams, featuring a portrait of williams in a white linen suit against a twilight sky and, in the background, a streetcar. the choice of the streetcar as the only element in the design that can be specifically tied to one of williamss plays testifies to the centrality a streetcar named desire in his dramatic canon as well as in the american cultural consciousness. from beginning to end or his long and illustrious career, tennessee williams wrote about the extreme situations of human life, especially of “solitary misfits”(tischler,529), entangled by the issuers of alienation, loneliness in search of purpose, thawed desire, insanity, depression, alcoholism, abuse, violence, torn families and homophobia. as williams once wrote： every artist has a basic premise pervading his whole life, and that premise can provide the impulse to everything he creates. for me the dominating premise has been the need for understanding and tenderness and fortitude among individuals trapped by circumstances. (williams, “person-to-person” 77). on another occasion he said：“i have only one major theme for my work which is the destructive impact of society on the sensitive non- conformist individual”. (letter, 1939, to audrey wood). what is interesting to note is that in williamss plays the “non-conformist” individuals trapped by circumstances” are often women. and blanche, the protagonist in a streetcar named desire is one of them. in the preface to streetcar, williams quotes the fifth stanza of hart cranes 1932 poem the broken tower as the epigraph of the play: and so it was i who entered the broken world to trace the visionary company of love its voice an instant in the wind (i know not whither hurled) but not for long to hold each desperate choice williams and his outcast characters are in a sense the broken people in the broken world. blanche, a prim prostitute, is williamss prototypical heroine trapped by the harsh pragmatics of the modern worlda broken one to herrepresented by stanley, her antagonist. blanches complexity and her inner disharmony, together with her conflicts with people such as stanley who dont understand her, gives the play a particular tension that is lasting and thought provoking. this paper mainly concerns about how blanche went from desire to dementia to better understand the deep connotations and probe into the determinate factors for her tragedy. the structure of this paper is as follows. it begins with a brief review of blanches life journey which is from desire to dementia. following that, the tense relationships between her and stanley, stella and mitch are provided respectively. the personal and autobiographical tragedy of blanche, a bruised soul, is analyzed in chapter 3. next in chapter 4, the social reality is studied, and the focus is on the old south and the new south, which is considered as the main factors forcing blanche to dementia. finally, the inevitability and symbolical meanings of blanches destination is examined. 2blanches life journey from desire to dementia a streetcar named desire concerns the journey of blanche dubois, a middle-aged southern spinster, who comes to stay with her sister stella, and her husband, stanley and ends with blanche sent to the institution. as the play has as its axis blanches journey that begins with her arrival, progresses with her stay in the kowalskis and concludes with her departure, there may be three symbols that define her journey: death, desire and dementia, as suggested by her first line in reference to the streetcars that brought her here: “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 field!” (i15) 2.1 tense relationship with people around urged her to madness 2.1.1 blanche and stanley: two polar opposite “he acts like an animal, has an animals habits!. something-ape-like about him!.thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by: and here he isstanley kowalskisurvivor of the stone age!” (williams, a streetcar named desire 72) -blanche, iv-72 the first time i laid eyes on him i thought to myself, that man is my executioner! that man will destroy me” -blanche, vi-93 “but sister blanche is no lily! ha-ha! some lily she is!” -stanley, vii-99 “weve had this date with each other from the beginning!” -stanley, x-1 a streetcar named desire is a play teeming with conflicts, subtle or obvious, among the characters. the center and souse of the swirling conflicts is blanches dubois. the play is built on the whole gomuti of her experience in new orleans, beginning with her departure. her strife with stanley, her sisterly relationship with stella and her short-lived romance with mitch constitute the mainmast of the play. amidst the muti-faceted conflicts the antagonism between the two polar opposites, blanche and stanley, comes to the fore. the clashes between them are inevitable. firstly they come from different backgrounds. blanches home is “a great big place with white columns”(i-17), while stanley lives in a small two-room flat. blanches refinement and property, which she makes a point of showing off, reflect her cultured upbringing and stanley strikes one as uncouth and sometimes “bestial”. in a more important fashion, they represent two different views of life. blanche is a relic of the decayed southern plantation and more than that she clings to her aristocratic heritage so tightly that she evasive and escapist attitude toward life and finds shelter in a world of illusions, while maintaining the faade of a prim proper and prudent frailty, stanley is described as a richly feathered male bird” of power and pride “among hens (29)”, overflowing with vitality. he embrace heartilyand lustfulthe pleasures of life and enjoys everything” that is his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer (29)”. these two utterly different views of life, when placed together, are bound to collide with each other with immense force. the evident blanche-stanley conflict in the play goes as: blanche as a belle of the decayed southern aristocracy enters the life in her sisters house and comes to be regarded as an intruder by her out of his territory. we the audience should go beneath the surface level of obvious conflicts, down into the deep stratum that is rich in sociological and psychological significance. there is, however, more to the polar opposites. we find, upon close inspection, that beneath the obvious opposition there are several underlying- and underpinning-dichotomies operating throughout the play. one of them is fantasy vs. reality. clearly blanche belongs to the fore. “i dont want realism, i want magic!” “i dont tell the truth. i tell what ought to be the truth.”(ix-117) only in a world of illusion can she live for how things ought to be, not how they are. then why does she choose to avoid the tormenting reality and seek refuge in illusion？that is to go to the question what is truth or realism for her. too much things occurred for the fragile blanche to bear: the guilt she feels for having caused her husbands death, and for her later sexual indiscretions, as well as the woe of witnessing older family members dying one by one and then for the loss of the family estate. most importantly, it is, for one thing, the haunting reality of what she has lost: her love, her purpose in life, her dignity, and the genteel society of her ancestors. her world is that of illusion, which according to bigsby, have made blanche a convincing actor in her own drama, and have changed the anarchy of her life with shape and purpose (19). but this fantasy world cannot be maintained all the time, not for long. at times the aforementioned sensitive of hers brings her back to the pain. naturally she has to be constantly lying and fantasizing. her sort of magic, such as her proclivity to pompous poetic rhetoric instead of pinpointing the concrete and physical, and he predilection for semi-darkness which enables her to work magic on her aged face until mitch removes the lantern, is to fantasize and make others believe that she is still a captivating southern belle, while in fact she is, in her own words, a lily “thats been picked a few days” (iii-47). just as bubbles are bust by needles, so blanches fantasy is impaled by the no-nonsense realist stanley. a man of reality, he is rough, straightforward, and experts people to “lay cards on the table” (ii-40). while blanche conducts her use of flattering/flirting, stanley booms “now lets cut the re-bop!” (40) he celebrates the present and enjoys everything that is his, which brings him real and concrete joy: poker, life with stella. for a guilt-ridden blanche, to boundary between illusion and reality has become blurred. she chooses make-believe, living for “what ought to be truth” (ix-117). it takes an obtrusive stanley-reality to whisk her down from the fantasy world into the real one and then ultimately deliver her back into fantasy, never to return to reality. in a wider social context, it also reflects the substitution of the new south for the old south, the conflicts between primitive and civilized, which are to be discussed latter. 2.1.2 blanche and stella: two southern gentlewomen “stella, oh, stella, stella! stella for star!” -blanche, i-18 “youre all ive got in the world” -blanche, i-20 “im not in anything i want to get out of.” “i dont understand you.” -stella, iv-65 “what have i done to my sister? oh, god, what have i done to my sister?” -stella, xi-141 the crux of the discrepancy between the two sisters is the matter of adjustment to the reality of their life, and to its bedrock: desire. blanche has grown up in a culturethat of the victorian erawhere sexual matters could not be discussed within polite society and any sign of sexual passion or narrow realm of sex becomes illicit; love itselflet alone sexual loveis proscribed across boundaries of class, race, and “normal” gender relationships. in a sharp contrast to her sisters hypocritical victorian high ground, stella has found a healthy outlet for her desire by embracing a common but real and vital life with stanley. as a matter of course, there is an intense physical and sexual bond. stella is completely in love with stanley and she doesnt hesitate in voicing her longing for him. “i can hardly stand it when he is away for a night” “when he is away for a week i nearly go wild!” “and when he comes back i cry on his lap like a baby” (i-25) although he beats her when he gets drunk, his lovemaking is evidently delicious balm for the bruises. blanche would never do this as her sisters unabashed expression of desire. yet, their reunion soon after a violent alteration or even a flight astonished her more. in a sense, streetcar is about an emotional tug-of-war between the raw, brute sensuality of stanley and the fragile, crumbling gentility of blanche, with stella in between. both fail in achieving what they what, because as it turns out, the sisterly bind and the husband-wife combination are both stronger than the intentional bad-mouthing on either side. when stella tells blanche calmly the way stanley lives with her, blanche takes for granted that her sister has got into a marital quagmire with a man who has “something downrightbestial” (ix-71) and fantasizes about finding someone to get them both out. stella is very defensive of stanley and their life: “im not in anything i want to get out of”, to which blanche replies: “i dont understand you” (65). indeed she does not understand why her sister can be so contented and forgiving about status quo. nor can she figure out the blatant show and pursuit of desire by her sister and brother-in-law, since she has never reconciled her identity with her own profound desire. as falk comments, blanche is “torn between natural instincts and ideals imposed by a puritanical culture”; moreover, she belongs to those “sensitive people” who “refuse to face the truth about themselves, a habit which prevents their making a reasonable adjustment.” (165) at the end of the play, stella sends her sister to the institution. she has chosen to stay with stanley. stella has known all along that her sister is highly sensitive and vulnerable, and she has given blanche as much love as she could. but she doesnt know that blanches heart has been covered with bruises over the years, and her already fragile nerves have been strained too much: blanche is close to breakdown. in a sense, stella has actually remembering blanche as she was in bella reve and does not really understand her sister. wherever blanche shows any signs of mental shakiness she does not take them seriously and dismissed them as “morbid” or foolish talking. even the lasther sisterdoesnt understand her, blanche cannot and is broken. 2.1.3 blanche and mitch: two lonely souls “theres so muchso much confusion in the worldthank you for being so kind! i need kindness now. -blanche, iii-61 “you need somebody. and i need somebody, too. could it beyou and me, blanche?” -mitch, vi-96 “never inside, i didnt lie in my heart” -blanche, ix-10 “youre not enough to bring in the house with my brother.” -mitch, ix-121 in her romance with mitch when she stays in new orleans, blanche displays her labyrinthine psyche the most, though he comes into her life and then walks out. ostensibly this is an ill match, largely because of their opposing backgrounds. mitch belongs to stanleys sort, while blanche was properly brought up on the aristocratic plantation of relle reve. when the two different worlds are pushed together, they are toward a violent collision due to their incompatibility. yet as we see in streetcar blanches and mitchs worlds seem able to merge or at least coexist peacefully. since they share one thing that transcends the class and background: loneliness. it is loneliness that brings them together. both have had loved ones dieblanche her family members and her husband, and mitch the girl who gave him the cigarette case with the poetic inscription. both know the experience of nursing parents throng lingering deaths. both have had an assumption of security broken by these deaths that opened them to loneliness and their deep need for companionship. while in terms of both the causes and ways to deal with it, they are different. the unbearable emptiness and aging after allans suicide compel blanche to seek protection in strangers. she is aware of the immorality of her hunting methods, which are often applied “in the most unlikely places”; she feels more keenly the urgent need in her to “fill her empty heart” (ix- 118).but she doesnt know she has been suffering from sexual suppression, and overtly she clings to her victorian ladyship like a leech. as a result she is tormented by the conflicting urges in hr to both indulge and condemn her debauche