Blanche
somewhat unwisely shows a general disdain for Stanley from the moment they meet. As a
working-class man, Stanley is "beneath" her, with her ideas, real or imagined, about
her gentrified origins and the beloved estate Belle Reve, from the loss of which she has had to
take refuge in New Orleans. So, this class conflict issue is at least initially the main source
of tension between them. Stanley realizes Blanche looks down on him, and this spurs him on to
express his own disdain for her pretensions and to show her up as a phony, which she
unfortunately is to a large degree.
Probably, however, this problem would not
have sustained itself if it weren't for the (at first only) latent sexual tension between them.
Blanche and Stanley could presumably have just ignored each other. A perhaps rather too
obvious interpretation of Blanche's attitude (and one that smacks of sexism) is that
she is attracted to Stanley because of his crudeness rather than in spite of it. In any event,
the encounter that eventually occurs between them is violently nonconsensual. Yet part of what
drives Blanche is her sense of guilt about the suicide of her previous boyfriend. Her own
possibility of happiness with Mitch is ruined by Stanley, but again, if Blanche had kept clear
of Stanley and bothered with him as little as possible, Stanley would probably have never
"investigated" her and revealed the "incriminating" information to Mitch.
And Stanley's motivation is not only to destroy her relationship to Mitch; he obviously desires
Blanche himself, and this culminates in rape.
The tension between Stanley and
Blanche is arguably one representing a kind of death wish on Blanche's part. The appearance of
the Mexican woman with her refrain of "flowers for the dead" is aof the catastrophe
that will be brought upon Blanche by Stanley. And her descent into "madness" and being
institutionalized is symbolic, finally, of this "death" in the tragic
conclusion.
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