Is Blanche a Tragic Heroine or Not?
Fighting through depression, deaths, and lost of loves can make one have a heavy heart and go insane. Tragic heroines are kind of hard to come by in most stories but in A Streetcar Named Desire there is one who sticks out. Blanche is a perfect candidate for this role with the death of her husband, lost of Belle Reve, and Stanley taking her down even farther.
Tennessee Williams is also known as Thomas Lanier Williams. He had a brother, Walter, and a sister, Rose, whom which became the plot to his many playwrights through out his life. Tennessee’s sister and mother were in some shape or form part of the main plot in most of the plays. Majority of his screen wrights are tragic and do not have a very happy ending to them. For an example is when Blanche is sent to the asylum at the end of scene 11. Tennessee wrote The Rose Tattoo which has a surprisingly happy ending that deals with his lover Merlo, who died of lung cancer. “Upon the death of Merlo, Williams entered a ten-year depression that he would refer to as his ‘stoned age’” (Bloom, 13). He died on February 24, 1983, in New York City by chocking on a plastic bottle cap while under the influence of barbiturates (13).
Going into Tennessee Williams’ biography a lot of his wonderful ideas for his plays came from his family. For instance in The Glass Menagerie is notable for the use of his mother abandoning the family after his sister and he had grown up (11). Another place he got his ideas were from the poet Hart Crane and his poems of isolation and sexuality within them (Joanne Woolway, An overview of A Streetcar Named Desire). Tennessee displayed the traits of loneliness and sexuality through Blanche perfectly with her many flaws and problems. Tennessee’s sister, Rose, was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and placed in an asylum. The two events, his sister’s insanity and his homosexuality, could not be separated in his mind. Which lead him to write many plays about his...