Blanche DuBois and Amanda
Wingfield: Necessary Oblivion
by Heather Hungerford
"All of Williams' significant characters are pathetic victims--of time,
of their own passions, of immutable circumstance" (Ganz 110). This assessment
of Tennessee Williams' plays proves true when one looks closely at the
characters of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and Amanda
Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. Their lives run closely parallel
to one another in their respective dramas. They reject their present lives,
yet their methods of escape are dissimilar. Both women have lost someone
they cared for, and so seek to hold, and unintentionally suffocate, those
they have left.
A major problem that both Blanche and Amanda face is their misconception
of reality and the "New South." "The predominant theme of these plays is
Southern womanhood helpless in the grip of the new world, while its old
world of social position and financial security is a paradise lost (Gassner
78). They are victims of a society that taught them that virtue, attractiveness,
and gentility all led to happiness. When tragedy strikes, Blanche and Amanda
are unable to adjust to modem society and eventually withdraw into the
securities of the past. "For Blanche and Amanda, the South forms an image
of youth, love, purity and all of the ideals that have crumbled along with
mansions and family fortunes" (Tischier 319).
Tragedy after tragedy has struck the character of Blanche DuBois of Streetcar
until nothing is left except her tenuous grasp on sanity. Her young homosexual
husband, Allan, kills himself, leaving her racked with guilt with which
she cannot deal. It s as if the "Grim Reaper set up his tent," taking the
lives of several other of Blanche's relatives as well (Williams 27). Also,
Belle Reve, "the beautiful dream of a life of safety and gracious gentility,"
slips from her grasp, leaving her bereft of even a home (Ganz 104). This
loss and the subsequent loss of her teaching position cause her to seek
out her married sister, Stella.
When she arrives at Elysian Fields, she quickly realizes that her sister's
home is not the haven she imagined it to be, but an entire different world
that is totally unfamiliar to her. This realization, combined with the
loss of Allan, causes her to cling desperately to her sister. She even
goes so far as attempting to persuade Stella away from her husband, a plan
that backfires, leaving Blanche more alone than ever. "The suffering and
erosion of the past leave her with an incapacity for the present (Gilman
148).
Like Blanche's Belle Reve, the lost home of Amanda's youth, Blue Mountain,
is forever on her mind, with its fairy-tale existence of governor's balls
and gentlemen callers. "She floats in a mist of old recollections of gentle
grace and decorum" (Clurman Also similar to Blanche, Amanda has lost her
husband. However, Amanda's spouse does not die; he deserts her and her
two children. This event does not seem to scar her emotionally as the loss
of Allan did Blanche because, "though deeply hurt be his desertion, Amanda
considers her erstwhile husband the embodiment of romance, associating
him with the happy time of her life at Blue Mountain" (Tischier 319). The
small fatherless family now lives in the cramped apartment with only a
fire escape as an The son, Tom, works in a factory yet dreams of becoming
a poet, and the daughter, Laura, is crippled and as mentally fragile as
the small glass animals she collects. Despite their deprived lives, the
children cannot really understand what they are missing because they have
only known this way of life. "The tragic dimension of Glass Menagerie
is centered on Amanda, for she sees their starved present in the light
of a larger past" (Howell 83).
"The only defense against the restlessness and cruelty of life is the ultimately
unsatisfactory retreat into a world of illusion" (Corrigan 155). Williarns'
Blanche and Amanda escape their realities in several different ways. Blanche
does not have the happy memories of the past that Amanda does, only sorrow,
so her retreats are more physical. Her promiscuity is one way of escaping
her loneliness. She reveals later in the play, "After the death of my Allan--intimacies with strangers was all I seemed to be able to fill my empty
heart with" (Williams 118). She also turns to alcohol to find oblivion
in the midst of reality.
Amanda also seeks deliverance from the present, but she does not rely on
sexual promiscuity or alcohol to sustain her illusion as does Blanche.
"She strikes out with all her power against her fate by clinging to the
past as a shield" (Nelson 304). Amanda lives in two worlds: the pleasant
dream of the past and the demanding reality of life in the present. She
attempts to hold them together but soon realizes that they are both crumbling
beneath her fingers. "Her instability is frighteningly apparent in her
inability to sustain a relationship between her almost lucid moments of
realism and her constant fantasizing" (Davis 192). Amanda vacillates between
urging Laura to prepare for her many "gentlemen callers" and warning her
that she must get training for a professional career. Although, like Blanche,
she tries to escape reality most of the time, she also lives very positively
in the real world, aware of her family's poverty and scratching for money
by selling magazine subscriptions.
The lives of Williams' characters of Blanche and Amanda are stagnant. They
are so lost in the past, whether for security or because of guilt, that
their lives in the present are practically nonexistent. "They have built
barriers between reality and illusion through their memories of the past,
their Southern ideals, and their inability to cope with unpleasant situations"
(Gobble 5). Blanche of Streetcar is trying to escape her recollections
of a tragedy that has left her wallowing in solitude, eventually destroying
her hopes for a future as well. Amanda from Menagerie, in comparison,
is attempting to escape the present by reliving the past. Essentially,
neither woman can successfully come to grips with the harshness of reality,
and so, they submit to their illusions.
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