Blanche's Illusions In A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams is well-known for being good at delineating women's complex psychology in an exquisite and minute way. Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire is arguably the most impressive female character he has created. Everything about Blanche, including her illusions, has aroused great interest in critics and scholars at home and abroad, but no one has undertaken research on Blanche's illusions with deep thought. Motivated by this, the author has decided to perform this research.The body of this thesis consists of three chapters:The first chapter explores the manifestations of Blanche's illusions from three aspects. Firstly, no matter how her suitors are different from Allan and from each other, Blanche defines all those Allan-like men as her ideal lover. Secondly, Blanche blindly treats her destroyers as her saviors. She does not have the ability to read their minds and has not learned to be the master of her own destiny. Thirdly, Blanche views her destitution as being superior. Though penniless and homeless, Blanche loses no chance to mock other characters' inferiority and poverty and show off her self-deceived superiority and nobility.The second chapter focuses on analyzing the causes of Blanche's illusions. There are mainly three subjective causes of Blanche's illusions: her passionate love for Allan, her lack of the complexity of mind, and her inferiority. Firstly, Blanche can't accept a lover differentiates much from Allan because of her strong feelings for him. With a passionate love for Allan and a strong desire for settlement, Blanche makes wrong judgments about her suitors. Secondly, Blanche doesn't have the ability to read the minds of other people for her lack of the complexity of mind, which directly causes her illusions of treating her destroyers as saviors. Thirdly, Blanche compensates for her inferiority by means of pretending to be superior. This false superiority leads to her self-illusions of superiority. Objectively, a more complex living environment blocks the fragile Blanche, who lacks the complexity of mind to make accurate judgments about people in it; the cultural environment of the South causes Blanche's illusions of her superiority by providing a confirmation of Blanche's false superiority.The third chapter is mainly about the two functions of Blanche's illusions. Firstly, Blanche's illusions perform the function of backing her confidence. Life is hard for the fragile Blanche who is overburdened with the loss of love and home and a promiscuous past. Through a particular way, Blanche draws confidence from her illusions to live through difficulties and problems in stressful situations. Secondly, Blanche's illusions serve the function of reducing her mental pressure. Blanche fulfills her desires in illusions. Illusions compensate for her psychological imbalance, and then reduce her mental pressure.Blanche's retreating into illusions can not be explained as a negative attitude towards life, but an acceptable alternative to survive. Blanche's strong desire for survival suggests that A Streetcar Named Desire is not purely a play of tragedy, and it is also a play that praises life. The conclusion ends with a suggestion that mutual compassion and understanding is the best way to cope with stressful situations, not only for Blanche and other characters in A Streetcar Named Desire, but also for human beings in modern society.