“Explore the Ways Blanche’s Behaviour Breaks Moral Codes and Ignores Warnings in Scenes 1-4 of a Streetcar Named Desire�? Essay Example
Even from the first few scenes of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, we can see that Blanche DuBois is a complicated character; throughout the play she ignores warnings and breaks moral codes, and it is this that leads to her demise of character. At the beginning of the play, when we are introduced to Blanche, and our initial impression of her is that she is a judgemental person who seems to think quite highly of herself. Although Eunice is trying to help her, Blanche is rude and brief in response. She is in disbelief that her Sister would live at Elysian Fields and makes that quite obvious by having a haughty attitude, “They mustn’t have - understood - what number I wanted…”. She continues questioning whether Stella lives there “I’m looing for my sister, Stella DuBois, I mean - Mrs.Stanley Kowalski.”, “This - can this be - her home?” despite already being told that she is at the right place. She is also very abrupt when Eunice is trying to make conversation with her only answering with “yes”, even for questions. She even then says “What I meant was that I’d like to be let alone”. She continues to be offensive when she sees Stella, saying that not even in her “worst dreams” could she imagine this place that her sister is living in. “Only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar Allan Poe! - could do it justice!” Poe’s best known fiction works are gothic; his most recurring themes dealing with questions of death, decomposition and mourning, and so thinking her house of as something that only an author who writes about morbid subjects could describe, is highly offensive. Being so rude about where Stella lives is not a very sisterly thing to do, but being so impolite to Eunice, a complete stranger, is a way in which Blance breaks a moral code of politeness. From the first scene we learnt that Blanche drinks a lot, but is in denial about how often or how much she drinks. Before Stella even returns home, she has found some liqour and had a drink, and then “carefully replaces the bottle