Characterisation Blanche Dubois

Blanche She appears in the first scene dressed in white, the symbol of purity and innocence. She is seen as a moth-like creature. She is delicate, refined, and sensitive. She is cultured and intelligent. She can't stand a vulgar remark or a vulgar action. She would never willingly hurt someone.

She told her young husband that he disgusted her and then he committed suicide. The polka music has been haunting her ever since as she feels she let her husband down.

She has seen a lot of her family die and this has been quite hard on Blanche. To escape her pain, she turned to alcohol and promiscuity. She drinks to stop the polka music and when she hears a shot, she forgets.

She treats Stanley the same way she treats other men-flirting- but this does not work with Stanley. She must change the apartment because she cannot stand the open glaring light.

She meets Mitch and does truly believe that he can make her happy and that she can become the prim and proper girl that he thinks she is. But her past causes Mitch to end the relationship leaving her heart broken again.

Stanley thinks that since she slept with so many men, one more won’t hurt. Before when he was a stranger, this might have been the case but not now that she knows him. The brutality of the rape is enough to force Blanche over the edge.

In all previous sexual encounters, Blanche had freely given of herself In all previous sexual encounters, Blanche had freely given of herself. But to be taken so cruelly and so brutally by a man who represents all qualities which Blanche found obnoxious caused her entire world to collapse.

Blanche's last remarks in the play seem to echo pathetically her plight and predicament in life. She goes with the doctor because he seems to be a gentleman and because he is a stranger. As she leaves, she says, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Thus, Blanche's life ends in the hands of the strange doctor.

She was too delicate, too sensitive, too refined, and too beautiful to live in the realistic world. Her illusions had no place in the Kowalski world and when the illusions were destroyed, Blanche was also destroyed.