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Bellocq’s Ophelia recounts the fictional tale of Ophelia, a sex worker in the early 1900’s. Ophelia is not only objectified because of her job but because she is a light-skinned black woman. She is seen as one of the “exotic curiosities” (pg. 26) of the brothel for this reason. The men who come to gawk and purchase these women’s time fuss about her and the other light-skinned women as if it is some sort of game looking at them or as a notch in their belts to brag about louder than any other.

Eventually, Ophelia is able to find some freedom and strength thanks to Bellocq and his photos. The poem titled “August 1911” ends with the lines:

“I looked away from my reflection– small and distorted– in his lens.” (pg. 26)

This explains just how much being an object for these men to look at has crushed her view of herself. She does not see a strong woman doing what she must for herself but a small, gross individual whose identity is distorted through a man’s gaze. In the very next poem, titled “September 1911,” Ophelia has picked up a camera, a different type of lens, but this time instead of looking at her reflection she is looking at the world and its beauty.

In the poem titled “October 1911,” Ophelia talks about getting arrested and her mugshot. Here is another lens looking at her as if it knew all there was to know about her and her life, a lens showing her just as “small and distorted” as the lens of the man’s glasses back in August. Her reflection in these pieces of glass hold only the facade the world has given her; the real Ophelia can only be seen through her own camera lens, not as the photograph but as the photographer. She is meant to be the observer, not the object.

In our society, there are a lot of misconceived narratives about sex work which are accepted as fact. If you choose to believe these, you’ll believe that every full service sex worker is in it against their will, too drugged up to fully live, and, perhaps worst of all, ashamed of their profession. While some of these things may absolutely be true of some sex workers, they are stereotypes of a particularly vulnerable class of people, which most people have never bothered to question. I had held many of these as facts until I took the same position of Constance in Bellocq’s Ophelia, which is to say, the main emotional support of a sex worker who does not fall into these tropes.

At the beginning of the work, I was afraid Natasha Trethewey would fall into those same tired notions of what sex work is, particularly at the description in the opening poem, “this other/ Ophelia, nameless inmate in Storyville,” (pg. 3) my concern being with the word “inmate.” You can then imagine my shock at the January 1911 letter to Constance, particularly when Ophelia writes,

My dear,

please do not think

I am the wayward girl

you describe. I alone

have made this choice.

Save what I pay for board,

what I earn is mine. (pg. 15)

This single poem was able to change the narrative we’re typically given into one more in line with a lot of people’s truth. Though there are obvious differences in their situations, I sent this poem to my friend Vivian to get the thoughts of someone who had been in Ophelia’s position. She responded “Rachel yes!!!!” and offered to write something for the class. She wrote:

Every job I’ve had is about selling my body. Certainly, there’s a material difference between getting [redacted for vulgarity] and cleaning bathrooms, but I was making $8.50 cleaning the bathrooms and felt way more tired than after a “shift” of being a hooker.

Trethewey’s presentation of sex work was a refreshing bit of realism in a sea of misinformed ideas of what it is these people do.

Ophelia

“Later, I took arsenic – tablets that I swallowed to keep me fair, bleached white as stone.” – pg. 20 

This particular quote struck a chord with me the first time I read it and it still does as I type it. The sentiment that black women are only valid if they have lighter skin is still present in today’s society and is taken to lengths that are almost as extreme. Skin bleaching is common in darker skinned women in Jamaica and darker skin women are seen as less desirable, even by men of the same skin tone. There are even Photoshop apps that allow one to lighten one’s skin. It’s sickening.

Although, light skin isn’t made a spectacle or fetishized as openly as it was in the time Ophelia was written, but it shows how humanity hasn’t changed much in all this time. The times have changed to be more accepting, yes. But there’s still the inherent urge to place one higher than the other. In the beginning of the collection, Ophelia compares herself to the darker skinned black women, and it’s a common theme throughout the book that lighter skin is better than darker. People even go as far as trying to find the dark skin underneath the light of all the workers in the brothel.

There’s not much more I can say on the topic without being more repetitive than I feel I have been.

With the constant observation of both male guests and the direction of Countess P, Ophelia becomes less of a person and more of an art piece during her time at the brothel. Countess P instructs the girls to sit still and quietly, stretched out in poses that highlight their figures. Patrons of the brothel can look upon each woman and then pick one to service them for the evening. In the letter from February 1911, Ophelia describes how some men only want to gaze upon her, while her face is turned away from them and they touch themselves. These men do not want to see her face or look into her eyes. They don’t want to see her as a person. They want her to be a beautiful object for which they can gain pleasure from.
Ophelia and the other women working at the brothel also are watched and made spectacles of due to their mixed-race heritage. They are known as octoroons because they have white skin. In August 1911, Ophelia describes the way the patrons of the brothel study them (26). The men survey at them, trying to find indicators of their African American heritage. These men move in close, staring them down while looking at the tiniest details of their appearance. Even fingernails are inspected.
Ophelia continues to be watched and turned into a piece of art when Bellocq comes to the brothel. Bellocq is a photographer who is there to capture the images of the sex workers in New Orleans. Although their interactions are not sexual, Ophelia still models and poses for Bellocq just like she would for any other patron, but Bellocq isn’t looking for the same type of statuesque posing as the other men. He wants something more candid. In the poem Vignette, Bellocq doesn’t take her photo while she is situated perfectly like a statue, he waits until her guard is down and she is lost in thought, then takes the photo. One part highlights this by saying, “This is how Bellocq takes her, her brow furrowed as she looks to the left, past all of them” (48) After a whole life of being watched, Bellocq finally captures her in a way that makes her feel more seen. With his photographs, he immortalizes her and sets her up for an eternity of being viewed.

Bellocq’s Ophelia

In Bellocq’s Ophelia, Violet has high expectations for herself because she was light-skinned and had an education. She cannot find employment, but, she sees “dark maids ambling with their charges” (p.7). She is forced, by having no money and being evicted from her hotel, to take work as a prostitute. She writes,” please do not think me the wayward girl you described. I alone have made this choice…Now my labor is my own” (p.15). She does not enjoy her work. However, it feeds her and allows her financial freedom. She continues to dress properly when she is not working, unlike the other girls who choose to be covered only in their undergarments. She doesn’t want her position as a prostitute to define who she is, thus allowing her to keep her dignity.

She states, “It troubles me to think that I am suited for this work…But then I recall my earliest training…my mother taught me to curtsy and be still so that I might please a white man…” (p.20). Is she losing herself because of her work, or was this her lot in life regardless of her advantages of light-colored skin and her education?

The photographs Bellocq takes of Violet allow her to be the lady she proclaims to be, beauty and grace in an ugly world, even if only for a moment. “Now I face the camera, wait for the photograph to show me who I am” (p.21).  However, the camera shows “half-truths” (p.30). She purchases her own camera hoping to capture beauty through her lens, but she sees how fragile life, like the photographer’s plates, can be. She attempts to take a picture of a red bird, but it flies away, and instead, she photographs rats eating garbage. A photograph can be manipulated, unlike life, to show only the beauty, to focus on the good.

 

In the poem “Countess P-’s Advice for New Girls,” from Natasha Trethewey’s Berlocq’s Ophelia, the head countess of the brothel gives recommendations to girls new to the brothel on how they should act. The girls are told to empty their thoughts, let the man’s gaze animate them before they move, and “wait to be asked to speak” (11.)  Although in this context, these recommendations are for the girls in the brothel, the recommendations could also be applied to how a wife must conduct herself once she is married to a man in the 1900’s to even as late as the 1940s. The way men would like their wives to behave in that time period is quite similar. Wives were generally not allowed to have meaningful lives outside of the home, meaning, for the most part, their thoughts could be considered empty. Wives were encouraged to submit to their husbands and do things like chores for them, which could also be seen as not having any internal motivation to do things and thus being devoid of thought. Husbands in these times saw themselves as the head of the house and had the final authority, even if the wife disagreed, she was expected not to talk back. It is also expected that wives did not give their husbands orders. This can be seen in Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire when Stella tells Stanley he needs to come outside with her while her sister Blanche is getting dressed. From his response “since when do you give me orders”(Williams 35), one can infer that it was uncommon for wives to call upon their husbands and in a way, that as a wife one should not speak unless a man has given permission for one to do so.

The overarching recommendation of the poem is “Become what you must. Let him see whatever/ he needs. Train yourself to never look back” (11), which means that the girls in the brothel need to act in whatever manner the male client desired, not the way they normally would. The brothel girls do not have their own identity or personality when they are with the client, much like the way a wife must adapt herself to the way her husband wants her to behave. Not only the brothel girls should train themselves to not look back and second guess the false identity they portray when with a client, but wives should too. If a wife was to look back on herself, she might realize she was not being her true self as Edna did in the Awakening. Even though the poem is intended to advise the brothel girls on how to conduct themselves, it also can be seen as a commentary on how all women should behave in regard to a man during that time period.

Bellocq’s Ophelia

[…] She calls me Violet now –

a common name here in Storyville – except

that I am the African Violet for the promise

of that wild continent hidden beneath

my white skin. At her cue, I walked slowly

across the room, paused in strange postures

until she called out, Tableau vivant, and

I could again move – all this to show

the musical undulation of my hips, my grace,

and my patience which was to mean

that it is my nature to please and that I could,

if so desired, pose still as a statue for hours,

a glass or a pair of boots propped upon my back. (p. 13)

Countess P–’s Ophelia is stripped of her identity and given another. She is the African Violet, a living picture for the entertainment of white men. She is motionless and silent, strategically posed; she is to be seen, to be chosen and used for Countess P–’s profit.

There comes a quiet man now to my room –

Papá Bellocq, his camera on his back.

He wants nothing, he says, but to take me

as I would arrange myself, fully clothed –

a brooch at my throat, my white hat angled

just so – or not, the smooth map of my flesh

awash in afternoon light. In my room

everything’s a prop for his composition –

brass spittoon in the corner, the silver

mirror, brush and comb of my toilette.

I try to pose as I think he would like – shy

at first, then bolder. I’m not foolish

that I don’t know this photograph we make

will bear the stamp of his name, not mine. (p. 39)

Bellocq’s Ophelia is motionless, silent and strategically posed as well. However, Ophelia is given autonomy from Bellocq, permission to choose her costume and pose. When she is not his living picture, she is his apprentice. Bellocq’s Ophelia is his model, “right for the camera (p. 42).”

Natasha Trethewey’s Ophelia is Bellocq’s Ophelia. Ophelia has given her body to Countess P– and Bellocq but she has not given herself. She has saved herself in letters directed to Constance, detailing the Ophelia that Countess P– and Bellocq have created and the Ophelia that she has become while in Storyville. Tretheway’s Ophelia is not a living picture, she is not still nor silent,

Imagine her a moment later – after

the flash, blinded – stepping out

of the frame, wide-eyed, into her life. (p. 48)

Ophelia’s feelings of New Orleans remain largely negative throughout Bellocq’s Ophelia: “the gray husk of winter”; “…the city’s dull palette of gray”; “flies buzzing the meat-stand, cockroaches crisscrossing the banquette…and mosquitoes skimming flat water like skaters on a frozen pond.” To her, it is a prison (a larger one from the brothel) that she cannot escape from. She thinks wistfully of all the places she has yet to travel to that she once learned about: “I recall how you spun it, showed us Africa, moving your finger back and forth across an expanse of blue.”; “…the word travel, no place so distant that I couldn’t dream myself there.” At certain points, though, she is able to find beauty in New Orleans—“I find myself drawn to what shines—iridescent scales of fish on ice at the market, gold letters on the window of the apothecary shop, sunlight held in old bottles and jars lining the sill.”; “…the wet grass throbbing with crickets, insistent, keen as desire.” She is even able to find beauty in the brothel in which she lives, the place that she loathes most—“Imagine, then, my surprise at finding that Countess keeps a library here, in the brothel! It’s a lovely room—stuffed chairs, a Persian rug, morning light through the window, a fat dictionary on one side and a globe on the other.”; “They like best, as I do, the regular meals, warm from the cooks in our own kitchen, the clean indoor toilet and hot-water bath. We like, too, the perfumed soaps and fine silk gowns we wear in the evenings.”

We’ve seen a similar approach to place in both The Awakening and A Streetcar Named Desire; while it does provide some comfort, some escape, it ends up doing more harm than good in the end. For Blanche, she travels to New Orleans to escape her past, to start again. She is able to find temporary happiness with Stella and with Mitch in this new setting, but ultimately, New Orleans is where she finally and completely loses her grip on reality. For Edna, everything that she hates about her life—her husband, her children, her acquaintances—ties her to New Orleans, and yet, she is able to find brief moments of happiness as well, such as taking her own house and spending time with Alcee and Robert. For Ophelia, similar to Blanche’s own situation, New Orleans is where she has come to begin again, to escape oppression and finally put her skills as an educated woman to use. Her outcome is initially cautiously optimistic, then turns hopeless as she becomes a prostitute, viewing New Orleans as a prison that she can’t escape from in which she is again being oppressed and used by men. Over time, though, as she finds ways to reclaim her own agency (sending money home to her mother; becoming an amateur photographer; becoming the subject of Bellocq’s photographs), she is able to find beauty in the city, most notably when she begins to take photographs of the area (“I find myself drawn to what shines—iridescent scales of fish on ice at the market, gold letters on the window of the apothecary shop, sunlight held in old bottles and jars lining the sill.”). In all three of these instances, place is both a comfort and a pain; each of these women is able to find both joy and sorrow in New Orleans.

As a whole, Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia is a stunning collection of poems that are written from the viewpoint of one of the famous photographer’s subjects. I think that by using poetry, Trethewey elevates the fictional story being told: there is a certain amount of mystery around Bellocq – details about his life, his choice of subject matter, the identities of his subjects – that is heightened by the fluidity and elusiveness of the form. His name is not mentioned until the March 1911 entry, on page 20:

“Later, I took arsenic–tablets I swallowed / to keep me fair, bleached white as stone. / Whiter still, I am a reversed silhouette / against the black backdrop where I pose, now, / for photographs, a man named Bellocq. / He visits often, buys time only to look / through his lens.”

This poem continues with an extremely close eye on its subject, whose eye is on the “you” that used to care for her, possibly “Constance,” and then on herself through memories, until the final line: “Now I face the camera, wait / for the photograph to show me who I am,” (21). This brought, to my mind, the earlier poem, titled, “Countess P–’s Advice for New Girls,” in which the narrator, the Countess, says: “For your customers / you must learn to be watched… See yourself through his eyes… Become what you must. Let him see whatever / he needs. Train yourself not to look back,” (11). When thinking of the Countess’ advice, it seems as if the narrator of the March 1911 poem thinks in extreme detail about “you,” remembering their fingers sifting through the fine strands of her hair, the expression on her face that mirrored that of “you,” while stand-alone details about herself are more obscure; steam over her face, a sea of cotton for her to be lost in. While these are things that veil the memories of her true “self,” as Edna Pontellier would say, they are also things that are distinctively white. 

The other poem that I found most interesting in regard to Ophelia’s identity was the April 1911 entry, on pages 23 and 24 (my personal favorite). It begins:

“My dear Constance, You are as steadfast as your name / suggests, and I am as mute / as my own namesake.”

I took this description of Constance’s character as a reflection of Ophelia’s: where Constance is constant, she is not, or possibly that she cannot be. From Countess P–’s instructions and her own admission needing to be shown, Ophelia does not know who she is, or perhaps her question is who should she be. There is existing evidence of people coming from mixed backgrounds struggling with which lineage they should more closely identify, and there would certainly have been very different lifestyles between Ophelia’s different ancestors. From our class discussions and the literature we have read so far, it seems that white men were fascinated by women of mixed descent or octoroons. In the December 1910 poem, on pages 13 and 14, Ophelia says:

“She calls me Violet now — / a common name here in Storyville — except / that I am the African Violet for the promise / of that wild continent hidden beneath / my white skin… all this to show / the musical undulation of my hips, my grace, / and my patience which was to mean / that it is my nature to please and that I could…” 

This entry romanticizes Ophelia’s blackness and shows great beauty in it, where there are also several instances of encountering white men who refer to her as the n-word. I got the impression, from these encounters and her final entry in the April 1911 poem, that becoming one of Countess P–’s girls put emphasis on the color of Ophelia’s skin in a way that she had not considered before. It brings to my mind a quote from Zora Neale Hurston: “I feel most colored when I am thrown against an all-white background.” The Countess’ advice, to “Become what you must,” would likely vary from customer to customer, and by waiting for the photograph to show her who she is, I think she wanted a clear answer; black or white? 

My favorite passage from this collection, the final passage of the April 1911 poem, reads:

“Once, I could have said / what I wanted. I might have answered, Only / the things that anyone would — clean living, / a place with light and plenty green. / That would have been enough. Though now, / when I think of the cotton field, nettles / pricking my fingers, a circle of shade / from my straw hat, my mother up ahead, / her face sunken where she’d lost her teeth, / the 100 lb. sack dragging behind her / like a bride’s train — the life I’ve led / thus far — I want freedom from memory. / I could then be somebody else, born again, / free in the white space of forgetting,” (24).

I think this passage highlights her internal conflict with which race she should more identify: the comparison of her mother’s dragging of a sack to a bridal train symbolizes the work that comes with being a person of color, where her “somebody else, born again,” is free to forget, but specifically in a white space. I find it even more interesting that this storyline is told through one of Bellocq’s prostitutes because he was a white man and thus the very inspiration for this narrator was, in a way, one of Countess P–’s girls, being seen through “his” eyes and learning to be watched. 

I also found the “Disclosure” poem, on page 44, very interesting because of the way the narrator takes back possession of both the ways she is seen and how she sees the world. “… I’ve learned to keep / my face behind the camera, my lens aimed / at a dream of my own making. What power / I find in transforming what is real–a room / flushed with light, calculated disarray. / Today I tried to capture a redbird / perched on the tall hedge. As my shutter fell, / he lifted in flight, a vivid blur above / the clutter just beyond the hedge–garbage. / rats licking the insides of broken eggs.” Despite her situation in life, she can look beyond the ugly to find the beauty, and vice versa, and I think this is telling both of herself as a character and probably women that really lived their lives in her station.

Ophelia 1851-2 Sir John Everett Millais, Bt 1829-1896 Presented by Sir Henry Tate 1894 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N01506

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element; but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

 — William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene vii

bellocq_39

 

“Darling Shep…”

Blanche. […] Do you remeber Shep Huntleigh?

Stella. No.

There is an overarching theme in A Streetcar Named Desire of men we never get to see but are named and talked about often. The most obvious one is Blanche’s dead husband Mr Allen Grey who committed suicide after Blanche confronts him about being gay. This incident traumatizes Blanche so much that she is constantly reliving the moment during her everyday life, shown by the repeated playing of the Varsuviana, and causes her to decent more and more into madness. We could go on and on about Allen’s death and how Blanche is effect in more detail but that is a common theme already explored.

However, this theme pops up again with the mention of Mr Shep Huntleigh. The absence of Blanche mentioning Shep until the end of the movie is bothering, like her drinking (another element more or less glossed over in the movie) I believe to also be a sign of her deteriorating mental health. Back in February, I was a part of a production of this play, during our rehearsal process the director, my self, and our actress playing Blanche had a conversation about her development of the character. During this conversation, we continuously came back to the subject of Shep, more specifically if Shep was even a real person.

For one, it’s hard to believe that Blanche who is so traumatized by her young husband’s death would jump into a serious enough relationship to “[wear] his ATO pin” while she was in college. She even says that after Allen’s death “intimacies with strangers was all [she] seemed able to fill [her] empty heart with.” (p. 81) Stella also does not remember this man, shown in the quote above, and towards the end of the play Blanche believes to have gotten a “wire” from this man but it turns out she was lying.

I first read A Streetcar Named Desire when I was a sophomore in high school. I was under the impression that reading classic plays would make me an interesting and cultured individual. This endeavor only made me more confused about the literary canon, but it did make my dad take me to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, so that was a win in my book.

A Streetcar Named Desire particularly went over my head. This was for several reasons:

  1. Tennessee Williams’s script allows a lot of creative freedom for actors and directors. While stage directions tend to be rather specific (especially when Stanley and Stella make up after poker night on page 67. Not to romanticize a terrible man and how he treats his wife, but hubba hubba!), he gives a lot of room for specific productions to have different interpretations of certain lines or scenes. While I am a theatre lover and adore all of the delicious possibilities that stem from this practice, I am autistic and take all of the things they say at face value. This led to me missing jokes, missing characterization, and generally misunderstanding the characters.
  2. Plays are not meant to be read. There is a lot of value in reading scripts, but theatre is a performance based medium. Even if my brain was perfectly regular, reading a script to understand a play is like looking at sheet music to hear the song. It’s like the story of the expert on color who had lived their entire life in a black and white room. Yes, it’s all there, but there’s a fundamental piece missing.
  3. I was fifteen. At the age of fifteen, I assumed I was grown-up with all the knowledge in the world, with a whole year of high school under my belt. I knew stories weren’t always black and white, but thought they always a clear bad guy. I knew people in abusive relationships typically stayed, but I thought that descriptor couldn’t possibly be applied to Stanley because Stella really seemed to like him sometimes. I couldn’t understand to what extent Blanche was or wasn’t a liar, or why she was so deceitful about things like her age or the hotel she stayed in. I thought seventeen was a whole hell of a lot older than it really is.

I feel like I didn’t fully comprehend Stanley as a character until I saw Marlon Brando play him. He was able to portray the sort of brutal nature which attracted one sister and repelled the other, something that had been lacking in all of the productions I’ve managed to find, but also without giving him too much charming sympathy, the other issue online productions tend to run into. I also feel that what I thought was understanding of Blanche was crumpled into bits by Vivian Leigh’s performance. I feel like I’m finally appreciating for the first time that cinema was invented to give theatre back to the masses.

Gender Roles

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the characters Stella Dubois and Stanley Kowalski express the stereotypical gender roles of the period. Stella Dubois is a woman completely dependent on her husband, Stanley Kowalski, who is “the king’ of the household.

Stanley believes that he is superior and can get away with whatever he wants because he is a man. What he says goes; Stella better not disrespect him without expecting to get put in “her place.” When the news breaks that Belle Reve has been lost, Stanley inserts himself completely in the matter and says, “a man has to take interest in his wife’s affairs” (44) due to the Napoleonic code. The loss of Belle Reve is a Dubois family matter, but Stanly will stop at nothing to prove that he is being “swindled,” regardless of what his wife and sister-in-law may claim. Stanly thinks that because he is a man he ought to deal with the financial affairs and pay no consideration to any women, despite whether or not they might actually know more.  Stanly has no respect for women at all. This can be seen all over the place in the play but is especially seen when Stanly rapes Blanche like it was no big deal. This can be seen again after Blanche is taken away to the mental hospital and he tries to sleep with Stella while she is uncontrollably sobbing. If Stanly had any bit of respect or decency, he never would have done those things.

Stella occupies the typical female gender role. Not only does she put up with all of Stanly’s abuse – physical and sexual – she remains completely in love with him regardless of this abuse. She “stands by her man” regardless of what horrible things he does to her because that is what is expected of her. Even though she sometimes tries to exert a small amount of authority, like when she asked Stanly to clear his plate, she is met with a rage-filled outburst from her husband. Stella would not dare try to push further or take control of the situation because she knows she has stepped out of line in her role as a wife.

Exposed under the light

The movie we watched today based on the play “A Street Car Named Desire” was different in quite a few ways. The movie chose a different and perhaps a happier ending when the play did not. The play ended with Stella, Blanche’s sister, being held by her husband when she was upset over Blanche leaving for the asylum. But the movie showed Stella refusing to go back to her house with her baby while Stanley is screaming at her to do so. Since the plot depicted Stanley to be abusive and having anger issues, especially toward Stella – Stella’s decision to not go back to him was a happy ending for me.

The part where Mitch and Blanche were arguing after Mitch found everything out about her was one of the most important parts. Blanche had been living her life in the darkness. She just did not hide her past or her mind, but she was a walking secret. She hid from everyone. She put on a drape over everyone’s eyes. She was insecure about her looks and she needed constant validation from everyone. She was scared of losing her youth and beauty to age. She always spoke in a gracious and careful way. Her words were always trying to form into poetry when spoken. She presented this artistic tragedy throughout the play. She carried the guilt of her husband’s death. She internalized the guilt and it caused her to be insecure and scared. Yet, she attempted to have a somewhat positive outlook toward life. But during that part with Mitch, she was exposed under the light. Mitch forced her into revealing her true self – both about her past life and about her physical beauty. She did not want people to see her for who she was because Blanche believed she was ugly. She admitted to hiding behind the darkness. She admitted to having lived a life where she had to sleep with many men to bury her sadness and guilt about her dead husband. She finally opened up and was true to herself and mitch. Her age was showing on her face and her voice sounded heavy. She was seen under the light. This was Blanche – the Blanche that was owning up to her past and claiming it. She was remorseless about her sexual conduct. She did what she had to. Above all, she respected herself and refused anything less.

Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a classic American play that is full of sex, violence, and symbolism. The first instance of symbolism, or foreshadowing in this case, that I noticed in the play was in scene one, on page 6, when Blanche first arrives at her sister’s home:

“They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields,” (6).

During my first reading of the play, I wasn’t sure if Elysian Fields was a real place in New Orleans – I immediately thought of the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology, a separate part of the Underworld where only the greatest heroes go when they die – and I thought that if it wasn’t a real place, then surely the author used that name intentionally. But when I googled it, I found that there is an Elysian Fields there, so I did not think much of it until I’d finished the play, and knew what happened to Blanche. When I read that scene again, I noticed that she’d transferred, first from the street-car named Desire, then to the one called Cemeteries, and finally to the Elysian Fields, which in the end was her final resting place, in a sense. This gave me the impression that Williams might have taken pity on Blanche’s character, and saw the childlike innocence in her, despite the ways in which she lied to and manipulated people. 

I also noticed symbolism in several of the most significant motifs of the play, including light, music, and the comparisons of Blanche and Stanley to animals. The use of light and dark in this play was something that immediately grasped my attention, from the first scene of Blanche, when she walks around the corner to find Stella’s address. She is described as having a “delicate beauty [that] must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth,” (5). Given the context, I took this to mean that something about Blanche either already was, or would become, dark or unpure. I also found it interesting that Williams chose the word moth, given that moths are attracted to light and Blanche vehemently avoids it. In her first scene with Stella, she says:

“Now, then, let me look at you. But don’t you look at me, Stella, no, no, no, not till later, not till I’ve bathed and rested! And turn that over-light off! Turn that off,” (11).

There are many instances similar to this one over the course of the play, but one of the most significant is when Mitch confronts Blanche about his never having seen her in the light. In this conversation, she reveals that she doesn’t “want realism. I want magic,” (145). The light represents reality, which Blanche seeks to never face, instead living in her own illusions: in scene two, she tells Stanley, “All right. Cards on the table. That suits me. I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth…” (41). I also found it interesting that in the implied rape scene between Stanley and Blanche, that when he advances towards her she notices the shadows he casts on the walls. Though it seems odd, Stanley represents light in a way that is not common; he is not good or kind, and he represents Blanche’s downfall, but he also represents that which she seeks to hide, and it seemed significant to me that as he closes in on her, the shadows, or her protection in a way, was just out of reach.

Music also played a significant role in the play. The blue piano is heard several times throughout, but most often when Blanche discusses the deaths that have followed her or her loneliness. In the first scene, when Blanche reveals to Stella that they have lost Belle Reve, the blue piano grows louder. It plays again at the beginning of scene two and grows louder as Blanche talks to Stanley about the loss of the girls’ childhood home. And again, in scene four, when Stanley returns from working on the car and Blanche has just finished telling Stella that her husband is an ape. As soon as Stanley, who heard the conversation, walks in and calls for his wife, she runs to him and embraces him in a hug, while Stanley gives Blanche a cruel smile. The blue piano, here, seems especially significant, as it shows Blanche where her sister’s loyalty lies and leaves her truly alone in a home with a man she is afraid of. 

I also found the comparison of Blanche to a moth and Stanley to an ape intriguing. The moth, as mentioned before, seeks light as Blanche seeks to hide from it, but is also born again from its cocoon, which seems to be all that Blanche wants to do when she arrives in New Orleans and attempts to hide her past from everyone around her. Blanche also compares Stanley to an ape, which are known for their primal aggression and lasciviousness, which are fitting of her sister’s husband. She also mentions him being of the jungle: 

“He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There’s even something—sub-human—something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something—ape-like about him… Stanley Kowalski—survivor of the stone age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle,” (83).

I thought it interesting that Blanche made a point to mention that her name means “white woods,” which is quite different from the jungle, as she is from her brother-in-law. I also found Stella’s role to be important: she represents timidity and is in direct opposition, both literally and figuratively, to Stanley for most of the play. She is the constant between Stanley and Blanche and tries to maintain peace between them. She is comfortable in choosing Stanley through the course of the play until choosing him becomes, in a sense, her only option. On page 165 she says: “I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley.” She has actively chosen her husband over her sister and not thought about the repercussions of that choice until those consequences become so poignant that she feels them herself.

Overall I thought that the use of symbolism in this play added a great deal to the characters and their different situations. 

A Streetcar Named Desire was  character driven play mainly following the life of Blanche after she lost everything and had to move into an apartment with her sister. While there, we as spectators get to watch as she slowly succumbs to the trauma she’s been through. While many things may have lead to her decline in mental health, we could possibly say the start of it as the suicide of her fiance. The incidents were different when translated from play to movie, both ended with Blanche degrading her fiance and him committing suicide during a party. On top of that, she had to deal with the struggles of losing her family members one at a time and then subsequently losing her family home. While this may be the start of her decline, we only hear about it through Blanche’s recollections, which seems to be filled with self blame.

When we meet Blanche in the beginning of the play, she’s well into her fall. She holds many delusions of grandeur while simultaneously believing she’s in the beginning of losing the charm of youth. She avoids the lights cause she knows she’s starting to show her age, but at the same time, she tries to make everyone believe she has multiple suitors trying for her hand in marriage.

There’s only one person who truly sees through Blanche’s acts is Stanley, and it wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t taking advantage of the fact she is mentally ill. He fact checks Blanche on every lie she’s ever told, ultimately, uses her ability to alter the truth when he does what he does at the end. No one wants to believe her because she’s lied so many times in the past. What’s the truth and what’s made up is an interwoven braid with Blanche and it’s hard to figure out which is which.

Ultimately, the only thing Blanche wants in life is to be loved and have someone who’s always going to be on her side.

Allan Grey is a ghost that haunts the storyline of A Streetcar Named Desire. He is a character with no speaking lines or appearances, yet he is spoken of frequently and is a key player in the decline of Blanche DuBois’ mental state. When Blanche was sixteen, she fell deeply in love with Allan. At a young age, they were united as husband and wife. He was described as a boy with a nervousness and tenderness that made him different from the other men (114). Allan Grey was poetic and wrote Blanche several love letters. She still values them very much and gets upset when they are touched (42). Allan Grey died by suicide the same night Blanche accidentally stumbled in on him with an older man. She originally ignored and went out dancing, but while on the dance floor she couldn’t hold back and said, “I saw! I know! You disgust me!” (115) After this happened, Allan ran outside and shot himself.

Allan Grey’s death was the beginning of Blanche’s downward spiral into delusion. Blanche bears the guilt of his death on her heart. The emotional trauma she endured weighs heavy on her. When picking up the letters while talking to Stanley she says, “I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me”. (42) Blanche feels that Allan Grey came to her for help and she was unable to do anything (114). Although she loved him very much, she couldn’t see his truth. The polka song playing during the last dance they had together before he died plays over and over again in Blanche’s head. It ends with the sound of the shot from his revolver. This music is heard in various scenes, for example: when she is describing his death, when Stanley gets her a bus ticket, when Mitch is ending things with Blanche, and when she gets taken by the doctor. The music is very disruptive in Blanche’s mind. It becomes more prominent the more delusional she gets. This music playing each time Blanche slips further down the rabbit hole connects everything that has happened back to the death of her love Allan Grey.

From C-SPAN:

Author and playwright Tennessee Williams is best known for his plays, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948. Kenneth Holditch, co-founder of the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, talked about Williams’ life in New Orleans and the influence it had on his work.

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Blanche’s overly sexual nature most likely came from discovering her first love and husband in bed with another man. Blanche saw his homosexuality as personal rejection and inadequacy and caused her to be licentious as well as obsessed with her age and looks. She tells Mitch,” …I’d failed him in some mysterious way…” as though she had caused him to be gay or that her his suicide resulted from her condemnation of his homosexuality. (P.114). Blanche’s sexual desires and her damaged past cause her social death. Her reputation for promiscuity follows her to Elysian Fields, as does her lusty relationship with a seventeen-year-old boy. What dishonors her also causes her to lose her job and places her in a position of destitution whereas she must rely on her brother in law for support and eventual leads to her rape and, the need to be institutionalized.

Stanley rapes Blanche and pushes her over the edge to a mental breakdown. The first time Blanche and Stanley meet you can see her lust for him, and it continues as she openly and admittedly flirts with him.  Stanley says just before he rapes her “Tiger-tiger! …We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning” (p.162).

A Streetcar Named Desire is also about women depending on men and their use of sex to obtain what they need and want. Both Blanche and Stella depend on men for their happiness. Blanche wants to marry Mitch so she can “breathe quietly again” (p.95). She is not marriage material after her past is disclosed. Stella accepts the abuse from Stan and even denies that he raped Blanche and continues to live with him, and their fights often lead to the bedroom.

 

 

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