The Mad Woman In Elysian Field

A Streetcar Named Desire is considered to be the most successful play that Tennessee Williams ever wrote and Blanche the most successful female character he ever created. It presents dramatically the war between two sexes through the materialized conflicts between the protagonists Blanche and Stanley. The fact that Blanche Vs Stanley conflict goes throughout the play in A Streetcar Named Desire leads to a popular stereotypical interpretation of Blanche's tragic fate as a result of Stanley's cruel victimization of her. This thesis, however, holds that Blanche's doom has been determined already even before she meets Stanley. From this foothold, the author proceeds to penetrate into the underneath cause responsible for Blanche's tragic downfall, both psychologically and socially. The inner conflicts within Blanche leads us to the appreciation of a soul torn between past and present, reality and illusion,;between her instinctual desires and her instilled notion of a gentlewoman and her aspiration for transcendence over brutal desire and earthly things. The inner conflicts find their root in the social conventions of the patriarchal society that Blanche lives in, therefore the suppression of women as a subordinate "other" is dealt with at length as responsible for Blanche's so-called flaws in personality. It follows that Stanley Vs Blanche conflict is by no means the fundamental cause leading to Blanche's tragedy and Stanley is no more than an activator and executioner in her downfall. Stanley doesn't come out a victor after his battle against Blanche. In beatingBlanche, he suffers losses too.The stereotyping by the dominant patriarchal culture and subsequent caricaturing of certain characteristics as masculine or feminine is another destructive polarity that Williams decries as responsible for modern (wo)man's sense of fragmentation. As a potential savior for Blanche, Mitch seems to be close to an androgynous person. However his final rejection of Blanche intimates that it is far from being the solution to get rid of the gender stereotyping in femininity and masculinity. Williams seems to indicate that the harmonious relationship between the two sexes is something still to be strived for.