Fable

          Blanche DuBois arrives at her sister’s Stella’s house from a streetcar named desire.  She looks out of place by her dainty demeanor and the way she is dressed.  She finds Stella’s neighbor in their building and she leads her inside.  Stella’s neighbor tells her that Stella should be coming home soon.  Blanche learns from the neighbor her sister’s current situation, and is a little bit surprised by it; she expected her to be better off.  She finds a liquor bottle in the house and pours herself a drink.  Finally, Stella arrives at her house, and is surprised to find her sister there, who she hasn’t seen or heard from in a while.  Blanche openly tells her that she kind of disapproves of the way she is living, she thinks she married below her and should be better off since they were “high class”.  As they are catching up on things, Blanche tells Stella that she lost Belle Reve, their plantation home, because of their ancestor’s debaucheries and that she has come to visit her because she was giving a short leave of absence from the school she works at. 

          Stanley Kowalski, Stella’s husband, comes home from bowling in the middle of all this, and is not very happy to find Blanche there.  Stanley doesn’t believe Blanche’s story of how she lost their plantation home, he thinks that she is trying to swindle her sister and him.  Stanley dislikes Blanche immediately and throughout the play because of her pretentious manner, and Blanche also dislikes his brutish and “primitive” self. 

Blanche’s affairs with men are revealed throughout the play, and Stanley finds out through gossip that she was actually kicked out of the school she worked in for having an affair with a student.  Blanche’s instability seemed to have precipitated after her husband’s suicide, which she feels guilty of.  Right before he had committed suicide, she told him that he was disgusting because she had found out that he had an affair with another man. 

Throughout the play, Blanche’s delusions of grandeur become apparent as her true self is exposed by Stanley cruelly, to the extent of raping her and then of sending her off to a mental hospital.  He wanted her to get out of their house because she was in the way of Stella’s and his’ unhealthy relationship, of him beating Stella to keep control and keep Stella submissive.