Insanity is defined as a person being
in a severe mentally ill state of mind along with exhibiting irrational
thoughts or behaviors, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary. They
classify Insanity as a specific type of disorder for someone not being able to
act civil within the law due to their mental capacity. The definition of
insanity lacks the understanding of what may cause someone to be deemed as
insane and how long the person exhibits unrationed symptoms to be determined to
have this disorder.
In the
screenplay “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, the main character
Blanche is portrayed as a helpless desperate woman that compulsively lies to
protect her image of an exceptional female figure during her time. Blanche
expresses some behaviors that would be considered not normal in the present
society. One example of her behavior displayed within the play is her fabrication
of having a boyfriend, Shep Huntleigh, which she believed to be true. In scene
four, Blanche developed a full story of how she and Shep engaged in a romantic
fairytale yet later it is found that she had fabricated the entire story. This
shows her desperation for wanting to suppress the fact that she is alone and
without love. Another example of her behavior is the fact that in the play she
lies about having a leave of absence from her job when she was fired from her
job due to her inappropriateness towards young boys at the school. Her behavior
when interacting with young boys is an example of how overly sexualized she
portrayed herself as a way of seeming extremely feminine.
Due to the
events that occurred in Blanche’s life, her response to the world seems to be unreasonable
within her actions yet her reactions to society are understandable. She has
experienced a lot of trauma that could have influenced her behaviors such as
finding out that her ex-husband was gay as a young girl in love or the fact that
he committed suicide making her feel like it was her fault for exposing his
sexuality.
Blanche may seem crazy for the ways
that she tries to cope with the tragic experiences that have occurred in her
life and due to her delusions caused by those events I do believe that she is
insane but also confused. Although she seems to be stuck in the past, she shows
rational behaviors in her understanding of Stella and Stanley’s relationship
yet her own life is what she cannot seem to clearer grasp. The term “insanity”
seems to be overly harsh when it comes to Blanche’s state of mind. However, her
fabrications and attempts to salvage the memories of her past do show that her
complete state of mind is not fully intact. The trauma of her past life has
influenced her decisions on trying to make everything seem perfect when, in actuality,
her life has crumbled tremendously.
Acknowledging that the social norms
within society expects woman to act in a feminine nature, Blanche over emphasizes
her sexuality and femininity which makes her seem to have crazy tendencies. She
is so worried about the way the outside world sees her that, she fabricates
stories to hide her reality from people. Her lies are the only thing that keeps
her smiling.
Word Count: 546
Your post clearly expresses the definition of insanity and Blanche's downfall and how the two relate. Your points were clear and you had good textual evidence to back up your ideas. You could have included more on cultural ideas of sanity as stated in the question. But besides that, your post provides detail and good analysis of the definition of insanity and how it relates to Blanche in this play.
ReplyDeleteI love how your first paragraph defines and evaluates the definition and the fallacies of using that specific definition of insanity. It is very short and easy to digest what you are going to discuss further down in the post. The body paragraphs were clear in discussing how Blanche was viewed as insane and the length at which she exhibited strange behaviors. This wrapped up the blog post well as hit refers back to the thesis sentence.
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