Blanche Revealed

Tennessee William wrote the play “A streetcar named Desire” with characters that all have very different personalities. The character Blanche is the aging older sister of Bella. She is portrayed as a high maintenance, weak person. She plays the part of a Southern Belle effortlessly because she grew up in a ranch style house, Belle Reve, located in Laurel.
When she arrived at Bella's house after getting fired from her job she criticized everything, complaining about how small the rooms looked and how Bella had lowered herself to marry a “common” man. However regardless of how Blanche reacts to Bella Life in New Orleans she cares and loves her sister. This side of Blanche is revealed in scene 3 when Blanche goes to look for her sister the morning after Bella’s husband had beat her even though she was pregnant. Blanche went to her sister with real concern for her well-being because she believes that Bella is living with a “mad” man. To help her sister she came up with a plan to get both her and her sister away from Stanley. Blanche actions revealed her in a new light, no longer was she the sister that is self center and only cares about her self and looking young. She acted like an older sister should, she wanted to protect her little sister from her abusive alcoholic husband. As we read about what she did we her actions shed light on how much she actually cares for her sister by trying sincerely to get her away from her brute of a husband. Her actions showed that she knew how a husband was to treat his wife and being drunk does not give him an excuse to treat a pregnant woman the way he did.

Another scene where we can also infer that there is more to Blanche that we as the readers initially saw is in scene 6 and 8 where talks about her marriage to Mitch. She tells him what happened between her and the boy she married when she was only eighteen. She also tells him the truth about why she came to Elysian Fields. She was a woman in love who married the person she love only to find out that he had been lying to her. The way Blanche describes what happened makes the reader sympathize with her and in way understand why she is the way she is. After going through that pain because of love she just wants to find someone to really love her so that she will not be alone. We can also infer that the lies she told were because after losing everything she had nobody and believed that as she gets older she will not be able to find someone to settle down with so she had to do what she could to make sure that did not happen.