When Blanche arrives at New Orleans to officially visit her sister and brother-in-law she never met before, sisterly love is not the only reason. As the reader learns soon, she’s pretty much broke. So money seems indeed the appropriate solution to get her out of her misfortune. But during the play it becomes clear that she did gamble away her opportunities to earn her living on several occasions. So what would make her change suddenly this attitude provided she gets a bucket full of money? To my opinion her misery is not coming from the absence of money but rather other difficulties.
But let’s take point by point about what’s going wrong:
- Her marriage: According to the social model at the time Blanche (and Stella alike) was raised, a marriage would be the source of supply for a woman. Blanche embraces entirely that model. But by her (understandable and forgivable) choice of a 16 year old girl for an instant heartthrob and her (not excusable) own behaviour she loses this save harbour.
- The plantation and mansion: She was neither brought up nor trained to take up the challenge of leading an agricultural exploitation and, as I suspect, she was also not willing to assume this task. The moment Blanche has to take over responsibilities, the farm is already declining, and Blanche is certainly not the person who provides the strong hand needed to bring it back onto the right track in those changing times.
Nevertheless, the exploitation would have been an occasion to make one’s living. So yes, she could have made a living from this opportunity but she was the wrong person in the wrong place. - Her job: Blanche had to give up her job as teacher in consequence of inappropriate behaviour towards a student. There are several aspects to take into account: a) As she was earning at that point her own money this relationship is not at all supposed to become a source of supply (a pupil would neither be able to). Blanche is in quest for recognition and additionally these not-anymore-boy-but-not-yet-man teenagers correspond certainly also to her wistful and romantic idea about beauty. It’s worth a thought how much the need for recognition also applies when it comes to the soldiers getting in and out of Blanche’s house on a later stage. b) But recognition is not the only point. Getting close with a pupil always involves power and abuse of power. We do not know exactly what happened at that time, but the “pull/ push game” with the paperboy seems to provide the pattern or at least another example how Blanche introduces power in relations. To my opinion there is even more to it: Such a conduct does not express desire for a man, but is a defiant and stubborn statement “I can get what I want”. Having money would never ever change that behaviour.
- Mitch: Marrying Mitch would solve her sourcing problem, at least officially. Her irritating behaviour towards him and her past, about which Mitch learns from Stanley, convince Mitch that she would not be the kind of person he would like to live with. Blanche can not change her past, but what makes her behave that awkwardly? To my opinion Blanche is denying a number of realities: The ‘southern society’ in which she grew up is gone and charming a gentlemen follows now different rules (1st, change of time and place). Although Mitch is certainly sensitive and delighted for a moment to be treated like a gentlemen from the old times (notwithstanding the fact that a woman is interested in him), he would soon be the old himself: a working class man with his down to earth character, who does not appreciate to be manipulated (2nd, disregard of the other person’s background and character). Last but not least Blanche tries to conquer Mitch and make him marrying her by bending reality to her advantage. Again she projects an image, which corresponds more to what she wishes to be instead to who she is (3rd, lying to herself). To put it in a nutshell: Blanche sees the changes in the world around her but is not able to adapt her behaviour to it.
YES, money would solve her problem to have a basis for living, but is this her real problem? So NO, money wouldn’t solve her problem of not being apt to live in the world as it is.
Maren
PS: Hope it is not too disturbing to have a personal comment added as a post - it was just too long for a comment and therefore technically not accepted...
Brava, Miss Maren!
ReplyDeleteMy reading selection lodged in your sensitive intelligence, like a grain of sand in an oyster, and brought forth a pearl. This is a book-chooser’s dream!
Now my response:
You’re absolutely right that Blanche’s practical problem is her inability to live in the world as it is. (We might say her spiritual problem, her guilt at condemning her husband, is the “felix culpa” that may end by enlightening and transforming her—but that’s another story.)
My proposition is that a little money would allow her to change her own little corner of the world to make it livable on her own terms.
Tennessee Williams once said that he believed Blanche would end up being discharged from the asylum, staying in New Orleans, and running an antique store. I could see something like that, given a not-impossible windfall (inheritance? generous admirer?).
Imagine Blanche surrounded by beautiful things, chatting charmingly with buyers and telling little fairytales about the provenance of her objets. Every now and then, if a beautiful young man should wander in, she might put up the “closed” sign. The beautiful young man might move in to her apartment upstairs for a while, if he were impoverished. If he left, she would have a few nights weeping into her Southern Comfort at her favorite bar, surrounded by sympathetic New Orleans characters—she’d be a recognized character in the Quarter herself by this time—then go back and repeat. Her appetites and pretences, which were so inappropriate and offensive in a high school teacher and an uninvited guest, would be completely acceptable in a self-supporting New Orleans eccentric. Once she was able to “come out of the closet” about her own preferences, she might become not only less censorious about other people, but less self-absorbed, perhaps even generous.
So—not just money—although even back home money would have made people look at her more tolerantly—but a more suitable atmosphere as well could make Blanche as close to happy and to good as was in her to be.
Wishing all of us the same,
Phoebe