In ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’,
self-deception and reality are key ideas presented throughout the entirety of
the play and are perhaps the two most important themes which are explored. The
11 scene play shows the downfall of the protagonist Blanche DuBois and the web
of lies she spins whilst the other characters, notably Stanley, try to sift
through the truth.
The character of Blanche DuBois is single-handedly the most
obvious example of self-deception in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. It is her
hamartia. From the immediate onset of the play, the audience see Blanche
deceiving herself as her “appearance is incongruous to [the] setting”. She is
dressed in white, a colour which connotes purity and innocence an image that
Blanche attempts to portray, however this juxtaposes her surroundings as there
is an “atmosphere of decay”. The white colour makes her stand out from her
dingy surroundings of mundane New Orleans and represents how she is a social
outsider, consequently reinforcing how at times she feels like a victim and why
possible audiences may feel sympathy for her. Throughout the play, Williams
uses dramatic irony to show Blanche consistently lying to the other characters
making her seem somewhat unlikeable. One of the first things Blanche does when
she arrives at her sister’s house is look for a drink. “She springs up and
crosses to it, and removes a whiskey bottle” The use of “springs” makes it seem
like a drink for Blanche is a necessity and she deceives herself in to thinking
it will get rid of all her problems. She then repeatedly denies her intimacy
with alcohol saying “One’s my limit” or “I rarely touch it” when the audience
know fully well that she drinks as they have seen her already have multiple
drinks within the first few scenes. She experiences difficulty when confronted
with her past (which was full of pain) and it’s later revealed that she drinks
as a coping method but her failure to be able to face the truth form the
exposition of the play catalyses her decent in to insanity and has resulted in numerous
stories all of which are lies and fakes, and it is this deception used by
Blanche to keep reality at bay not only for herself but also for those around
her. Blanche’s alcoholism may be modelled of William's own personal experiences
as he was known for modelling his most memorable characters off aspects of his
own life. William's father was a heavy drinker and he loathed his father, which
may be an explanation as to why he created Blanche in an obnoxious manner. At
the play progresses we see Blanche’s developing obsession with bathing.
"Blanches is bathing." Throughout the play we see Blanche phase many
times it is her way of coping with the past as she says it relaxes her. However
it may be symbolic of how she is trying to cleanse and purify herself from her
sins, perhaps the sin of lust as she has had "many intimacies with
strangers". She is yet again trying to deceive herself into thinking
that she is pure and innocent and this is representative of the internalized
guilt that she feels. In Scene 3 Mitch places the paper lantern over the naked
bulb as requested by Blanche. At this point in the play he honestly believes
all the things Blanche tells him. She has created a “phony world” and her
compulsive lying has become second nature to her - even her character believes
in them. She lies about her drinking, about her age, about the loss of the
family estate and why she lost her job and it is these cold, hard and
unpleasant truths that Blanche is unable to cope with. The paper lantern dims
the light, enabling Blanche to hide from the truth and reality more easily.
However in Scene 9 Mitch “tears the paper lantern off the light bulb”. The
light is symbolic of the truth and reality, - something Blanche has been hiding
from throughout her stay with the Kowalski’s. The verb “tears” is the first
mildly aggressive action we see from Mitch, which emphasises the frustration
the other characters feel due to her countless “make-believe” stories. The
plastic theatre of the light representing the truth connotes that of an
interrogation light, shone in the faces of those when the truth is trying to be
revealed. However, for Blanche it means she can see herself for who she is, she
cannot pretend to be young, as the light shows her true age – she can’t hide
from the truth. Blanches descent into insanity is highlighted significantly by Williams
play and is also a key ingredient of the Young Vic Production (2014)
directed by Benedict Andrews, in this scene Blanche is characterized in such a
way that highlights and emphasises her decent into insanity. When Blanche
finally looks at herself in the hand mirror in the light (the light being
reality) she “slams the mirror face down with such violence that the glass
cracks”. The verb “slams” shows how she is horrified by her reflection in the
light or rather reality. That fact that she chooses to put the reflective side
down stresses how she cannot deal with the person she has become and her past
in Laurel disgusts her. Women in the Old South had a social and symbolic role,
were expected to be passive and chaste.
This ‘liberal’ world could not give Blanche what she needed and so she
tried to marry into the 'light and culture'; however, she discovers that there
is corruption and deceit behind the façade. Her only way to deal with it is to
pretend none of it is real. So yet again she deceives herself, by telling
Stanley that she has been invited on a cruise by Mr Shep Huntleigh – a blatant
lie that Stanley picks up on immediately. She doesn’t “want realism” – it, in
its own tragic way, is too hard for her to comprehend, her reality is the
“Varsouviana polka” music playing in her head again and again (and for the
audience to hear which allows them to empathize with Blanche) which is
suggestive impending doom as it was the last thing she heard before the gunshot
of her late husband’s suicide. She can’t escape it no matter how hard she
tries.
Stanley on the other hand is a
voice of reason in the play and the polar opposite of Blanche which leads to
the inevitable conflict between the two. He has no imagination, nor patience
with Blanche living in a fantasy world. Like how Blanche uses self-deception as
a means of survival, Stanley uses sheer force. His desire for the truth is
shown through his bluntness and primatal behaviour. According to Blanche he is
“simple, straight forward and honest [as well as] a little bit on the primitive
side”. Being primitive in essence is about one thing: survival, and this
highlights the simplicity of life in Stanley’s eyes. There is truth, and then
there are lies. Stanley’s honesty, combined with his primitive behaviour makes
him an ideal character to bring the truth to light as he will go out of his way
to make sure it’s known. It gives him the determinism that enables his
character to keep pushing Blanche until he gets what he wants that being the
truth. When he questions Blanche about Belle Reve, he doesn’t play in to her
games and give her compliments, instead is very aggressive. In Scene 10 he
accuses Blanche again of “lies and conceit and tricks!” The list of three
emphasises the anger he feels towards Blanche which has been heightened
throughout the course of the play for her persistence to live in a world other
than reality. He mocks her failure to deal with reality as he says “behold the
place has turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile!” By depicting
Blanche as “queen” in this fantastical illusion, he implies that she believes
she is above him when in reality that is not the case – Stanley believes to be
on a least the same level as Blanche. His parents may be immigrants from Poland
but he is “one hundred percent American”. Stanley represents the new American
society, which is full of much more diversity and equality as immigrants become
increasingly prosperous in the land of the free. Contextually, From
another perspective, A Streetcar Named Desire can be seen as a thriving,
exuberant atmosphere, one that nurtures an open-minded sense of community. In
the play's beginning, two minor female characters are chatting. One woman is
black, the other white. The ease at which they communicate demonstrates the
casual acceptance of diversity of the French Quarter. In the low-income world
of Stella and Stanley Kowalski, racial segregation appears non-existent, a
sharp contrast to the elitist realms of the old South (and Blanche Dubois'
childhood). As sympathetic as Blanche may appear, she often says intolerant
remarks about class, sexuality (in the case of her homosexual husband who was
devastated by her negative comments), and ethnicity. In fact, in a rare moment
of political-correctness, Stanley insists that Blanche refer to him as an
American (or at least Polish-American) rather than use the derogatory term:
"Polack.". Before Blanche’s
arrival with her superior attitude, Stanley was the “king” of the house. He was
in charge and Stella listened to him. He got to decide what to believe and what
not and Stella went along with him. However Stella strays from this and begins
(albeit temporary) to believe Blanche and his sense of reality becomes
distorted by Blanche’s deceptions. He feels as if he been cheated by the truth
and so he dives into the problem without taking any shortcuts headed straight
for the truth. He does not care if the truth hurts Blanche’s feelings, he only
wants to see it through until the end. An audience watching the play ordinarily
have one of two opinions of Stanley. They may see his character as doing the
right thing in finding out the truth about Blanche and telling others the
reality of her situation. Although people may think he goes about it in a
rather brutal manner that inevitably causes Blanche’s considered mania to
worsen, he is doing what he believes is the right thing to do, and therefore is
not at fault and is some ways perhaps heroic in the sense that he opened the
other characters (predominantly Mitch and Stella) to Blanches façade. However
the audience may feel that he was poking his nose in to business that did not
concern him and he was the sole cause of Blanche’s downfall. If he hadn’t
pushed the truth out of her she would have had a chance to fall in love with
Mitch, filling the hole in her heart that has remained empty since the death of
Allen. Mitch would have been able to provide Blanche with a sense of stability
in her life, and she would eventually have been able to live with herself and
reality without the need for self-deception.
In conclusion, Williams explores
self-deception and reality in a variety of ways in his play ‘A Streetcar Named
Desire’. Not only does he use language and action to convey the two themes but
also Plastic Theatre, which he uses to enhance the performance. Williams
did this as he wanted to create a theatrical experience greater than realism.
It is these audio and visual effects combined with the literacy itself that
present self-deception and reality as overwhelming themes in ‘A Streetcar Named
Desire’.
