Lies Or Truth-An Interpretation Of Blanche's "Tragedy" In A Streetcar Named Desire From The Perspective Of Passing Narratives

Tennessee Williams(1911-1983)was one of the most famous dramatists after World War ?,enjoying a great fame together with his contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller.In his writing career which lasts for more than forty years,he produced many best-selling plays,the most famous two of which went to The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire(1 947)through which he won Pulitzer Prize for Drama.The widely acceptance of this play established his high position as a dramatist yet also brought him controversy.Considering Tennessee's homosexual identity and the characters in his plays,some critics called him a "morality destroyer".However,it is through his reflection on the homosexuals' identity and their living condition that he expressed his concerns for marginal groups and urgent hopes to struggle for them an equal status,which endows his works with deeper meaning.The concept of Passing originated from Nella Larsen's novella Passing referring to racial passing.Its meaning was enlarged by many scholars such as Deborah McDowell and Tina Gianoulis and it was applied in different fields like gender identity studies,culture and etc.Passing can be categorized into racial passing,gender and sexuality passing and disability passing.Therefore,this paper attempts to explore Blanche's identities in A Streetcar Named Desire from the perspective of passing,claiming that Blanche's seemingly tragic insanity is not a real tragedy since what she behaved in this play is out of her gender and sexuality passing through cross-dressing,performing neurosis and establishing heterosexual relationships.This paper contains five parts.The first chapter introduces Tennessee Williams and his A Streetcar Named Desire,its literature review at home and abroad,the applied passing perspective and the plausibility of using it to analyze Streetcar,the originality and the structure of the thesis.The second chapter is an exploration of the political,religious and personal reasons why the playwright endows Blanche with ambivalent identities with an attempt to disclose the mainstream society's oppression against the homosexual group and Tennessee's repressed homosexual desires to speak for them.The third chapter explores Blanche's real gay identity serving as a prerequisite for her passing as a woman,her gender passing through cross-dressing and performing neurosis and lastly the significance of gender passing.The forth chapter explores Blanche's sexuality passing based on her homosexuality and her tentative establishment of heterosexual relationships and clarifies lastly the significance of sexuality passing.The fifth chapter is the conclusion part.It summarizes the reasons for Blanche's ambivalent identities,and gender and sexuality passing providing with an advantageous perspective to analyze Blanche's identities in the text to disclose the motivation,way,result and significance of her passing,which shows Tennessee's reflection of the homosexuals'living condition with a hope to change it.