Blog Post #3- Prompt 3

It is easy to point a finger at someone and call them “crazy” or claim that they are insane but it is much more difficult to analyze why a person behaves in a way that would cause others to classify their actions as such. The dictionary definitions of insanity are “a state of being seriously mentally ill” as well as “extreme folly or unreasonableness.” These definitions lack perspective, however. Unreasonableness according to whom? Who gets to decide what is reasonable and what makes an action reasonable under a given circumstance? What is seen as a lack of good sense, or foolish, by one person may be completely appropriate by another person’s standards. In Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, this very idea is challenged by the character Blanche. Blanche is a tragic figure that is often seen as a character that simply loses her grip of reality. As a reader, it is easier to dismiss Blanche’s unfortunate circumstances and label Blanche as insane, as opposed to acknowledging her misfortune and questioning what we would do ourselves if we were in her place.

Blanche is a product of the world around her. She lashes out and behaves the way she does because she is driven to do so. Blanche goes through the loss of her husband, depression, financial challenges, and experiences some traumatic events at the hands of others, such as getting raped by her own sister’s husband. Of course, Blanche is undeniably flawed. She lies, is helpless, and has a tendency to be overly sexual. But she is flawed in this way because society has driven her to be this way. Society wants women to be helpless, sexy, and overly feminine but this ultimately leads to Blanche’s ruin. Blanche begins to disconnect from reality as a way to escape it. She makes up stories about rich boyfriends and tries desperately to be something she is not through an altered persona but this is her way of coping with her troubled reality. It can be argued that towards the beginning of the play, Blanche is simply embellishing her life as a way of making it seem better than it truly is but by the end of the play she has completely lost touch with reality and can no longer separate her fantasies from the real world, to a point in which it has become hazardous. Blanche, however, is only coping with her increasingly unfortunate situation. She behaves rationally, given the circumstances, because she is acting in a way that will bring her some sort of happiness, despite the horrible situation she is in.

Perhaps in this case, delusion and insanity are necessary evils. It seems as though living in a fantasy world is the only way that Blanche can achieve some sort of happiness, which is actually a rather logical response to the cruel world around her. By the end of the play Blanche is taken to mental institution because she is seen as insane but anyone would react in the way that she did if they had to go through what she went through. When fantasy is better than reality, why wouldn’t someone choose to live in a fantasy world?