A Streetcar Named Desire

10 Pages 2617 Words

Deception and Illusion in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire


Blanche DuBois succinctly summarizes herself and her vision of the world with two words: “I misrepresent.” (A Streetcar Named Desire, hereafter SND, p. 117 ). In fact, she misrepresents virtually everything about herself and her world. For Blanche DuBois, the world is composed of multiple elements in which she either deceives herself unknowingly or intentionally embraces an illusion. Blanche shows up at her sister’s home in New Orleans, having lost the family plantation in Mississippi. She holds herself blameless for this loss—a deception of personal responsibility. Symbolically, the plantation’s very name, Belle Reve, implies a beautiful dream of a life style that may never have been a reality. Blanche further deludes herself by maintaining a contradiction about the importance of her own physical appearance and constantly misrepresents her own age. She has a personal illusion about love which was tragically shattered when she was very young, and pursues a relationships with Mitch which is, itself, shattered when the deceptions of her past are revealed. This illusion is highlighted by the dynamic tension between Blanche and Stanley, culminating in a harsh rape scene wherein he enacts the reality Blanche has been trying to avoid. As she slips totally into a world of unreality, Blanche even speculates that a knight in shining armor, Shep Huntleigh, an alleged millionaire, is going to come for her. In each of her illusions, Blanche clings to unrealistic views of herself and her world, in order to deny the sad reality to which she has descended as a charity case in her sister’s meager existence.
Blanche comes to her sister Stella Kowalski’s home with a valise full of clothes and trappings from another kind of life. It is a life she wants desperately to believe she once led. It bears no semblance to Stella’s rather drab r...