The article “Blanche Dubois: An Antihero” by Lauren Seigle argues that the character of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire is meant to be both flawed and sympathetic. Seigle’s reasoning for this is that Blanche is portrayed as heartbroken over the loss of her husband, which is a very sympathetic quality. Seigle also notes that Blanche’s downward spiral did not begin until after she lost her husband. She is not portrayed as inherently awful, but instead as someone who is acting badly after a traumatic experience.
Seigle disagrees with other critics views that Williams meant for Blanche’s rape and subsequent incarceration to be the karmic reward she got for her bad behavior. Seigle notes that the rape scene was depicted in an incredibly sinister way. The words “grotesque” and “menacing” are used during the scene and Blanche protests quite clearly (Seigle 45). Moreover, Seigle argues that the rapist, Stanley, is described in a villainous manner throughout the play. Seigle states that he is described as thinking crudely about any woman he meets and as making the women around him uncomfortable. Seigle says it is clear that Stanley is meant to be “bad” and Williams sympathies lie with Blanche.
Seigle then notes that Blanche is portrayed as very sad and vulnerable in the scene where she is institutionalized against her will, and that was certainly meant to arouse the audience’s sympathy. She also notes that Williams portrays Stanley’s household as one ridden with domestic abuse. Far from portraying Blanche as the evil stain on the perfect Kowalski family, Blanche is the one who is the victim of her evil surroundings and is cast out by an abusive household. Seigle concludes that Blanche is meant to be a flawed but tragic hero who is broken by an uncaring society and that Blanche’s victimization is Williams’ way of criticizing the misogynistic society that harms women like her.
I agree with Seigle that Blanche is meant to be sympathetic. This is because an examination of Tennessee Williams’ background unearths further evidence that he was on Blanche’s side and was trying to raise awareness about the tragedy of her situation. There is a very clear parallel between Blanche’s story and the sad history of Tennessee Williams’ own sister, Rose, who was sent to mental institution after accusing a family member of sexual abuse and subsequently lobotomized.
One can even find strong parallels between the dynamics of the Kowalski household in Streetcar and Williams’ childhood home. The married couple of Stella and Stanley could be considered to be a reflection of Williams’ parents, Edwina and Cornelius. Stella was a victim of domestic abuse from Stanley in the same way Williams’ mother was a victim of his father’s abuse. The Williams household was “filled with bitter and violent quarrels” whenever Cornelius “flew into a rage” (Jacobs 323). Edwina described one of the frequent violent assaults she suffered from Cornelius in her journal, talking of how Cornelius threatened to burst in a room after her and then did so immediately after, striking her with the door and “knocking [her] to the floor where [she] lay dazed” (323). This is very similar to the scene where Stanley hits Stella.
The parallels between Blanche and Rose come in when one looks at the final fate of Williams’ sister. Rose interfered in one of her father’s inebriated attacks against her mother (much like Blanche is shown trying to interfere with Stanley hitting Stella in Streetcar) and went into hysterics doing so. When her father restrained her, she charged that he touched her in a sexually intimate way. This caused a breakdown that lasted for days. Later that year, Edwina came home to find Rose in a worse state than ever, claiming “that her father had come into the room drunk, and had spoken and acted in a lewd, provocative way. She insisted wildly that Cornelius wanted her, his own daughter, to go to bed with him” (Spoto 59). Rose was hospitalized two days later and subjected to a frontal lobotomy because this was “unthinkable, unutterable for Edwina” (59).
In Streetcar, Blanche is institutionalized after accusing Stanley of rape and the play shows clearly that she is telling the truth. In the disturbing scene, Stanley advances on a protesting Blanche in her bedroom, snarling “let’s have some roughhouse” and that “We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning!” (Williams 1216). She tries to fight him off with a broken bottle top, but he forces her to drop it and carries her limp and resigned figure off to bed.
Stella reacts like Edwina did, finding the possibility of the truth too great to bear and saying “I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley” (1217). When reading Williams own accounts, it is clear Williams did not think his sister should have been institutionalized and lobotomized and that he was angry at his parents for doing it to her. He laments that “[My mother] had [the lobotomy] done while I was away” and rages that he was unable to be there to stop it. But the reason he wasn’t there to stop it was because he couldn’t stand to live in the twisted household his parents had created (Spoto 60).
When one takes into account Williams’ own family history and his negative feelings about his sister being committed, it is clear that he is firmly on Blanche’s side. Williams believed that his sister was unjustly locked up by his abusive family, so he depicts the same thing happening in his play in order to bring her tragedy to light. He was criticizing his own family and intended that the audience would mourn for Blanche the way he mourned for his sister.
In conclusion, research into Williams’ background points to Seigle’s analysis being absolutely right. All the evidence suggests that Williams intended for Blanche to be flawed but sympathetic figure, for Stanley to be in the wrong and for what happened to Blanche to be a tragedy that underscores how a misogynist society will allow women to be abused.
