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In Tennessee Williams' masterful play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the
reader meets a middle - aged woman by the name of Blanche DuBois.
Blanche lives in her own faerie tale world, one of a young, beautiful
debutante, surrounded by admirers, and loved by all whom she
encounters. In reality, Blanche is an aging woman who cannot cope with
the actualities of life. She makes up wild stories, and when Stanley
Kowalski, her brother-in-law, rapes her, the realities of life
cause her to drift into absolute lunacy.
Blanche appears at the apartment house where her sister, Stella,
lives. She brings with her a trunk of fancy clothing, and a mind of
dreams she believes are reality. As Stanley unravels Blanche's story,
she makes up wilder and wilder claims, hoping to place her life back
into her own hands. According to Blanche's story, in her hometown of
Laurel, she had lived in the Hotel Flamingo after the plantation was
lost. While living there, she was surrounded by admirers, the same as
she always had been. However, what Blanche really did was sleep around,
pretending she had several admirers, but always winding up alone.
Furthermore, Blanche claims to have an old friendship with a man who
is now a millionaire, a certain Mr. Shep Huntleigh. She believes that
if she needs help at any m point in time, especially monetary aid,
"darling Shep" will be there to cable in some money. Shep Huntleigh
represents Blanche's idea of the perfect man, a rich, debonair, suave
gentleman. She sees Stanley as everything but that perfect man, cruel
to her sister and even crueler to herself. Blanche constantly claims
she is going to go off and see Shep, and after Mitch reveals his
knowledge of the truth about her, she claims she is going to spend a
month or so abroad. "I received a telegram from an old admirer of
mine," she claims, "A cruise of the Caribbean on a yacht!" However,
Stanley crushes her spirit almost immediately, tearing her fanciful
dreams apart into ragged threads. "There isn't a goddam thing but
imagination!" he screams. It is Stanley who refuses to let Blanche live
in a dream world.
Stanley shreds the dreams of Blanche DuBois, revealing her ugly past
to her sister and her beau. He refuses to leave Blanche alone after he
discovers she believes he is common. After Stanley rapes Blanche, her
whole world crumbles. No one will believe a word of what she says, be
it actually true or not. Stella arranges for her to go to what she
calls "a place in the country," which is most likely a mental hospital.
She says, "I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley."
It is quite ironic that the one completely true story Blanche tells, of
being raped by Stanley, is the one that no one will even begin to
believe.
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