Tennessee Williams: "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Earlier in today's class, we discussed who we felt more sympathy for: Blanche or Stanley? In this post, I'm going to focus on Blanche's character and specifically why I have more sympathy for Blanche and not Stanley. 

Stanley's actions cannot be justified. He is a controlling, abusive, anger-filled "man" who doesn't deserve to be treated as well as Stella does or by any woman. Just because he was in the war or because he didn't grow up in a stable or wealthy family like Blanche and Stella doesn't give him the freedom to control or hit his wife. Saying that Stanley's abusive actions toward Stella and Blanche is justified because he's filled with anger due to his past is just like saying the serial killers you see today are let go because they're "unstable" because they were abused or neglected as a child. Any justification for his actions is invalid. We don't feel sorry for those serial killers, but some feel sorry for Stanley? Stanley had the choice of bettering his life when he was old enough. He had the choice of growing as a person and not being an abusive ass. (I'm not targeting anyone in the class, just making a point.) I mean, did he really have to throw the entire radio out the WINDOW? For real? He simply could have walked in the room and asked the girls to turn it down. But no. He had to go psycho-bitch on them and throw it out the window. There are other ways of handling your anger. "Stanley feels really bad about the radio so he's fixing it." He shouldn't have thrown it out in the first place! Just saying. 

Blanche may have been a little unstable and bitchy herself, but like I mentioned in class I know what it's like to lose your best friend because of a guy and unhealthy relationship. It's one of the worst, most heart-breaking experiences someone could ever go through. And I've been through it four times, and counting. Blanche tried to tell Stella that she needed to get out of her marriage with Stanley because he's bad news. But Stella denied that anything was wrong with her marriage and chose Stanley over her sister. And doing what Blanche does best, she pushed Stanley's buttons to get Stella to see what kind of man Stanley was: a controlling, anger-filled, testosterone-raging caveman. Women don't have to get physical with someone to make a point. Words have a way of cutting deep like a knife. 

I watched two of my best friends be controlled for months until one day they dropped me like a hot potato. Now I know it wasn't their faults, obviously it was the relationship. I tried to tell them, and unfortunately I lost them. My best friend is currently getting back into the relationship that made her lose me in the first place, and I have to bite my tongue because I know the more I push her and tell her that he's bad news, she'll get angry and chose him over me. She's done it twice. I'm giving her the time she wants with him because she's believed that he's "grown" in the four months they've been apart. But like Blanche, I can see through his nice-guy act. But I'm not one to get between their relationship and prove that he's a bad guy. 

Before the movie clip we watched in class, I had already created my perception of Stanley and his relationship with Stella. So anything in that movie or the rest of the play couldn't redeem him.