witnessing and participating

8/2/2019 Witnessing and Participating

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Mariah Stewart2-Champine

4/1/11

Witnessing and Participating

A Streetcar Named Desire is the story of a broken woman coping with loss by drowning

her sorrows, more importantly, her reality, in a web of lies, fantasy, sex, and alcohol. After the

death of her much adored young husband, Blanche DuBois spirals out of her old south propriety

and into everything she looks down upon. Disgusted with her own imperfections and

shortcomings, she masks her promiscuity with prudence and envelopes her own mind in fantasy.

This denying of reality is a shielding mechanism that people who suffer great tragedy often slip

into as a way to avoid the truth. This muddled fantastical existence is the very thing that drives her

into a deep, confused, imaginative, and destructive mental state. The audience follows Blanches

demise through the physical effects on stage that push her deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole.

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams supplements the theme of the conflict between

reality and fantasy by the precise placement of music cues, Blanches long baths, and the

reoccurrence of the lurid shadows on the wall and the animal noises.

Throughout her stay with Stanley and Stella, Blanche takes several long luxurious baths.

These baths are relaxing and she uses them to calm her nerves in the same way shell take her

whiskey straight; in order to loosen up a little bit. Not only are baths inherently calming, but

theyre an escape for her. By closing the bathroom door on the rest of the house she is able to

dwell in her imagination and pretend shes in a whole other world that, of course, includes

luxurious baths. In scene seven, when Stanley confronts Stella about Blanches lies, Blanche has

been soaking in the tub all afternoon and she is singing Its Only a Paper Moon. This tune is in

direct contrast with the dialogue going on in the room next to her but it is the perfect testimony to


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how she indulges in delusion when given all the alone time in the bath. She sings it wouldnt be

make-believe/ If you believed in me! and this is her plea, this is the greatest wish Blanche has

throughout the whole play. The only way to maintain her sane status is just to make sure everyone

around her believes her faulty persona is real (99).

Bathing is of course also a cleansing process and for Blanche; she is scrubbing away her

nerves, the dirty quarter, and all of her dirty deeds in Laurel. Her holier than thou attitude is

apparent in that throughout the whole play, not only is she better than her current living situation

but she hates the quarter. As she is finally leaving for her so-called vacation, cathedral bells chime

and she says, Those cathedral bells theyre the only clean thing in the Quarter, which is ironic

because she knows that she, herself, is among the dirty things in the Quarter. A long bath is the

closest shell get to baptizing herself virginal again. The baths are cleansing and healing, but also

the breeding grounds for new delusions.

In several scenes, including when Blanches anxiety is most aggravated, she imagines

ominous shadows and lurid reflections on the walls around her. There are also inhuman jungle

noises heard accompanying these shadows. The stage direction describes these shadows as lurid

which is used to describe much of the setting of this story (128). The beginning poker scene is

painted bright, nauseating colors intended to make one uneasy. In the rape scene between Stanley

and Blanche, these menacing shadows appear as Blanche begins to feel threatened and the

inhuman voices like cries in a jungle, follow shortly after (128). These special effects are simply

the physical manifestation of her panic so as to make the audience feel as disconcerted as Blanche.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilmans, The Yellow Wallpaper, the protagonist is a woman, much like


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Blanche whose descent into madness is brought about by the abuse of men. They also share a

common thread in that they are taunted by these grotesque figures that move sinuously as flames

along the wall spaces, (128). These figures are not only used as effects for the audience to feel the

distorted reality in the mind of said crazy person, but theyre also a metaphor for the originally

sane mind being trapped in delusion. They are the product of Blanches own mind and they drive

her deeper and deeper into insanity. In the plays final scene, before the doctor arrives, Blanche is

anxious to get out of here this place is a trap!(135). On the surface, she is speaking of her

sisters flat where she is staying but really she is trapped in her own mind and will never realize it

because of her persistent denial of reality. In the two instances when the shapes and animal noises

appear, however, Blanche is physically trapped when Stanley is about to rape her and when the

Doctor and matron arrive and hold her down. They are the physical representation of what building

anxiety is going on inside her that she projects onto the sensory world around her as being reality.

The music in Streetcaris so finely activated within the context of its placement in the

storyline that one feels it directing the angle of the drama and swaying the characters intentions.

Most tales, be it movie, book or play (that are accompanied by music) let the action of the story

guide the music. However in Streetcarthe cues inspire the characters and the direction of the plot

itself. The polka music was playing the last time Blanche saw her young husband before offing

himself. This is the traumatic experience that triggered her shielding mechanisms that caused her to

deny reality. So its only natural that this music would play as she escapes the realm of normalcy.

As the action gets more and more heated the music swells. When Blanche feels she is caught in a

trap (128) right before she is raped by Stanley, the blue piano gets so unbearable that she


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presses her fists to her ears until it has gone by (129). The music expedites Blanches demise by

repeatedly bringing her back to that tragic day when she lost grip with her once beautiful reality;

thus furthering her confusion with what is real and what is imagined.

Tennessee Williams story of a beautiful woman cruelly destroyed by her own self

sabotage is articulated by special effects that both reel the audience into her troubled mind and also

feed the delusion of her growing fake world. As the reader we feel the terrible intensity of the

images and sounds, (referring to lurid shadows, animal noises and music). But also witness as a

third party observer of Blanches self destructive nature (excessive bathing). We hate her a little bit

for being so pompous and simultaneously feel her suffering. The audience witnesses Blanche

makes herself crazy but also participates in the insanity.

witnessing and participating

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