The Analysis of the Mythic Dimension in ‘a Streetcar Named Desired’ Essay Example for Free

The Analysis of the fictionic Di manpowersion in a cable trammodal value Named Desired EssayThis paper tells astir(predicate) Ameri squeeze out southeastward which undecided in A aerial tram government agency Named Desire written by Tennesse Williams. The changes were take placen from the career experience of the main characters in the play, named Blanche Du Bois. Here, we try to explore about the abbreviation of the main character, Blanch Du Bois. Problem and its ScopeThis study princip e re all(prenominal)yy constitus the analyze of the myth in a play that written by Tennese William entitled A Streecar Named Desire.This study explores the mythic di handssion of one of Tennessee Williamss best-known and most enduring plays. The authors revival of ancient myths and archetypes in aerial tramway illustrates his professed belief in the collective unconscious as the source of his richly symbolic dramas. The conflict between the main characters is endowed with universal sig nifi hobocethe collide with of two rival myths vying for dominance in Williamss imagination. While Stanley Kowalski is presented as a juvenile day avatar of Dionysus, the amoral, primitive god of drink and fertility, Blanche DuBoiss descent into the underworld of Elysian Fields makes her the failed contour of the guilt-ridden, inconsolable Orpheus.A yearning for the reconciliation of opposites is ultimately revealed in the myth of the androgyn, the third substratum of Streetcar and the constitute of Williamss alchemical art. MYTHOLOGY can be defined as a body of interconnected myths, or stories, told by a specific ethnical group to explain the world consistent with a peoples experience of the world in which they live. The denomination myth comes from the ancient Greek word meaning story or plot, and was applied to stories sacred and secular, invented and true. Myths much begin as sacred stories that offer supernatural explanations for the creation of the world . . . and human ity, as substantially as for conclusion, judgment, and the afterlife (Myth 284).A mythology or belief placement often bear upons supernatural bes/powers of a culture, provides a rationale for a cultures faith and practices, and reflects how people relate to each separate in passing(a) life. Creation or line myths explain how the world came to be in its present form, and often position the cultural group telling the myth as the first people or the true people (Myth 284). Suchsacred stories, or narratives, concern where a people and the things of their world come from, why they are here, where they are going. Myths and mythology express a cultures worldview that is, a peoples ideaions and assumptions about humankinds place in nature and the universe, and the limits and workings of the natural and spiritual world.AnalysisThe phaseic definition of myth from folklore studies finds clearest delineation in William Bascoms article The Forms of Folklore Prose Narratives where myth s are defined as tales believed as true, usually sacred, set in the distant past or other worlds or parts of the world, and with extra-human, inhuman, or heroic characters. Such myths, often described as cosmogonic, or origin myths, function to provide order or cosmology, found on cosmic from the Greek kosmos meaning order (Leeming 1990, 3, 13 Bascom, 1965). Cosmologys concern with the order of the universe finds narrative, symbolic expression in myths, which thus often religious service designate important values or aspects of a cultures worldview. For m whatever people, myths remain value-laden discourse that explain much about human nature.The concept of Myth in the literature is The word myth is derived from the Greek word mythos, which means a traditional tale common to the portion of a tribe, race or nation. It usually involves the supernatural elements to explain whatever natural phenomenon in boldly imaginative basis. Today myth has become one of the most prominent ter ms in contemporary literature analysis. It was Northrop Frye, one of the most influential myth critics (others including Robert Graves, Francis Fersusson, Richard Chase, Philip Wheelwright), who discovered certain formulas in the word order. He identified these formulas as the courtly myths and metaphors which he calls archetypes. C.G. Jung was of the view the materials of the myth lie in the collective unconscious of the race.This analysis ground on the theory of semiotics that tells about the mythology. Semiotics, overly called semiotic studies or (in the Saussurean tradition) semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, the likes ofness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism,signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the content of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. Semiotics is often divided into trinity branches * Semantics Relation between signs and the things to which they refer their de nonata, or meaning * Syntactics Relations among signs in formal structures* Pragmatics Relation between signs and the effects they withdraw on the people who routine them In the nineteenth century, Charles Sanders Peirce defined what he termed semiotic (which he sometimes spelled as semeiotic) as the quasi-necessary, or formal doctrine of signs, which abstracts what must be the characters of all signs used byan intelligence capable of learning by experience,9 and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes.10 Charles Morris followed Peirce in using the term semiotic and in extending the discipline beyond human communication to living creature learning and use of signals.In his essentially grey play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams observes a uniquely grey phenomenon the Confederate belle. In scene seven of the play Stella Kowalski says the followe youve got to realize that Blanche and I grew up under very different circumstances than you did (Williams, 99). With this disapprobation Williams introduces a possible starting point for an analysis of the Southern belle myth. The figure of the Southern belle is founded on a canonized discourse, resting on a cultural and kind personification a description, a code, a class which legitimizes and authorizes the interpretation of culture and nature, masculinity and femininity, superiority and lowlyity, power and subordination. In other words, the Southern belle stereotype is based on a fear that women might escape the rule of the patriarchy, that the oppositions of sporty/black, master/slave, lady/whore, even priapic/female might collapse into an uncontrolled conflagration threatening to bring down the symbolic order (Roberts, xii).Additionally, this Southern woman stereotype is both a literature-generating principle, often supporting the very concept of Southern fiction, and a sociable construct, supporting the writing of Southern history and culture. In both cases it has to be read against the South that created it for different social purposes, or reinvented it at crucial moments in history (Roberts, xii) providing insight into anxieties and aspirations of the culture (Roberts, xii). Before I show how Williams approached this myth in his A Streetcar Named Desire, a fewer remarks about the appearance, development and purpose of the Southern belle stereotype are in order. First, its appearance was tied to the Southern antebellum chivalry and masculinity code origin of which can be looked for in attempts to preserve position moral standards in the U.S. South. They, based on the Victorian model of a woman as an ideal in house as well as on the small number of upper class women who were, thereby, considered custodians of culture (Bartlett and Cambor, 11), confirmed and authorized the hyperevaluation of upper class Southern women.Second, the Southern belle stereotype rested on a set of very strict cla ss, race and sex traits. Drawing on this statement, it went without saying that the belle was white and of dismal origin. She was lively, little bit vain, rather nave and had few tasks other than to be obedient, to ride, to sew, and perhaps to learn reading and writing (Seidel, 6). Since courtship, innocent romances, and, consequently, labor union were considered to be the highest aspirations of her life, the belles energies and skills were mainly directed to finding and marrying real Southern gentleman. And if she was pretty and charming and thus could participate in the process of husband-getting, so much the punter (Seidel, 6). The act of marriage gave this stereotype something natural the aura of legal commitment it consequently transformed her into a hardworking matron who was supervisor of the plantation, nurse, and mother (Seidel, 6).Third, the purpose of this Southern woman stereotype was justified upon, at least, three premises. It was, to begin with, a compensation fo r gender devaluation which began practically with the belles birth, when her mother handed her over to mammy, and act during her childhood and youth. This placed the belle in a kind of limbo just as her mother was forced to accept the cultural role which denied her come aliveual and maternal(p) identity, so too the belle had to deny her sexuality and, at the same time, perform passion without taking part in it. As one would expect, the social organisation of Southern bellehood had its racial background which was tied to sexual exploitation of AfricanAmerican women legalized by the institution of slavery and Jim Crow legislation.Their very presence paid subjection to white upper class woman as a person who legitimately preserved white superiority since her racial purity guaranteed her inaccessibility to inferior races and classes of men. Further investigation helps to reveal how the divinization process of white Southern upper class woman resulted in her identification with the U . S. South it self. The attacks on Southern way of life were thus interpreted as the attacks on the honor and integrity of its greatest ornament white Southern upper class woman. Lastly, partaking in the construction of this Southern woman stereotype was a matter of prestige. Even though Southern upper class women had many reasons for abolition of slavery sexual transgressions of their fiances, husbands, fathers and brothers, closing off on plantations, problems in managing slaves and servants, supervision of agricultural production, dealing with slave insurrections in absence of their husbands, fathers or brothers, and were, on the other hand, attributed chastity, gentleness, compassion virtues that corresponded to abolitionist rather than proslavery movement, they did not rebel, they did not subvert or transgress the prescribed codes of behavior.They remained loyal to the institution of slavery and Southern social system and, as a consequence, earned the outdoor stage they wer e put on. Challenges to this viewpoint began to appear during the Civil War. It, by contrast, put emphasis on the belles determinacy, strength, and inventiveness. During the period of Reconstruction and the New South the terror of losing legal power over womens bodies created discourses of nostalgia and threat (Roberts, 104) and transformed the belles suffering into that of the U. S. South. She represented the symbol of the U. S. South and one of the most important constructs of Southern mythology. During and after the 1920s, owing to changed economic, political, and social attitude which allowed women, even in the U. S. South, to vote, work, get educated and, consequently, enjoy greater financial and personal independence, a new discursive space on the meaning of the Southern belle mythology was opened. It, for sure, rested on criticism and judgment rather than on eulogies. The Southern belle was now used to demythologize Southern myths since the virtues she should have been the e mbodiment of beauty, passivity, submissiveness, virginity, and asexuality proved to be the unstable and destructive property.Quitespecifically, it was then asserted that societys emphasis on the beauty of the belle can pose a selfishness and narcissism that cause her to ignore the development of positive aspects of her personality. Taught to see herself as a beautiful object, the belle accentuates only her appearance and is not concerned with any talents that do not contribute to the goal her society has chosen for her winning a man. () The sheltering of the belle leads to a harmful innocence she cannot adequately interpret the behavior of men who do not believe in the code of southern chivalry that respects the purity of women. Moreover, () the repression required by the ethic of purity which leads to a assortment of physical and mental disorders, including frigidity and exaggerated subservience is also condemned. (Seidel, 32)My point in citing Kathryn Lee Seidel at length here is not simply to draw attention to the subversion of the old stereotype, but to emphasize the fact that these changes did not automatically mean the inauguration of the Southern anti-belle. This was mainly possible because deeply grow prejudices concerning womens behavior were still the part of Southern culture. In sum, even though southern women might be no longer queens and saints, they were not allowed to be flesh and blood humans either (Roberts, 109). The failure to respect the prescriptive code of behavior usually implied some kind of punishment hysteria, madness, rape, losing social privileges, or remnant. As a Southerner, Williams could not resist the influence of values, myths and digits of his birth-place. He, however, tried to redefine them by negotiating them through the inflammatory potential of the Southern women/men stereotypes and the prescriptive rhetoric of Southern cultural codes they assert once they are separated from its institutional binding. His A Stree tcar Named Desire is, for sure, a perfect example of this, for at its revolve about is Blanche DuBois.Through this woman character, Williams appears to celebrate the gentility and sensitivity of the Old South as well as the Southern belle as its greatest ornament. But, as the representative of Southern Renaissance, he himself is ambivalent as well as suspicious about the possibility of the belles permanent affirmation in the modern world. As if to clarify this point, Williams portrays Blanche as the last representative of the old aristocracy who tries to survive in the modern world by escaping to alcohol, madness, promiscuity and whose memories are rancour since they are burdened by racial and sexual sins of herancestors. From the very outset of the play, Blanche is seen as affirmation and subversion, symbol and antithesis of the Southern belle stereotype. This conflict of opposing principles begins with her name which Blanche explains as follows Its a French name. It means woods and Blanche means white, so the two together mean white woods. Like an orchard in spring (Williams, 54-55). The connotative value of this naming act has an exciting importance for it puts emphasis on, at least, two aspects of the (demythologized) Southern myth.It connects, on the one hand, Blanches French, colonial and aristocratic origin, or, at least, what has remained of it, with the antebellum U. S. South and, consequently, with the idea of Southern gentility and chivalry (this particular idea was introduced by the first colonists who were either of aristocratic origin or earned this status in their community this, in turn, helped to establish the metaphor of the US as Europes noble heiress). Blanches name, on the other hand, reveals what is hidden between the lines centuries and generations of moral and physical corruption and degeneracy of both her aristocratic family and the U. S. South itself. Another interpretative possibility, which again underlines conflicting nature of B lanches identity, sets forth her name as the conflict of binaries body and mind, nature and culture.Her name, which means both white and blank and thus connotes the virginity of female body predetermined to buckle under to inscription (Vlasopolos, 326) in the tabula rasa manner, refers to body and nature, or the female binary, and defines her as the belle. Her family name, meaning woods and consequently referring to papers and pencils (keep in mind that Blanche is a teacher and genuinely needs these stationery in her job), i.e. intellectual activities, introduces the idea of mind and culture, or the male binary, and places her in the exclusively anti-belle context. Similar reading of Blanches name, combining connotations of the mixed-up physical virginity and the beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit (Williams, 126), offers Bert Cardullo in his paper Scene 11 of A Streetcar Named Desire, where the duality of Blanches name is explained with the help of the New Testament s ymbolism.Cardullo thus argues that her name links her not only to the purity of the Virgin Mary, but also to the reclaimed innocence of Mary Magdalene, who was of age(p) of her sexual waywardness by Jesus (just as Blanche was suddenly cured of hers when she remarked to Mitch, Sometimes there is God soquickly. (Cardullo, 96) The duality of Blanches personality, indicated by the linguistic polysemy of her name, continues by opening a discursive space on the possible existence of two Blanches the one is the passive-submissive Blanche who, as such, is the embodiment, and the symbol, of the Southern bellehood the other is the victimise Blanche who, by subverting the each and every trait of the Southern bellehood, becomes its antithesis. As one would expect, both performances are founded on a set of distinctive characteristics, features, and situations which throw new light on the existing debate. Drawing on that approach, Blanches partaking in the Southern belle performance is suppor ted by several factors.Firstly and most obviously, Blanches plantation origin marks her inescapably as the Southern aristocrat. Secondly, Blanche is brought up in the Southern tradition of idealization of womans beauty. She perceives herself as a beautiful object which has to be properly decorated in order to sell well. As such, Blanche depends heavily on exterior beauty markers dresses, hats, jewelry, perfumes, and cosmetics which are, in her brother-in-lawss discourse, magnified into solid-gold dresses, () genuine fox fur-pieces, () pearls, bracelets of solid gold, () and diamonds (Williams, 35-36). These things, even though cheap and artificial, represent Blanches only inheritance and Blanches only future restitution they remind her of the life she used to live. Thirdly, Blanche is educated. Blanches participation in education process foregrounds the idea of the time that college education presented proper youthful behavior for a young woman and a pleasant interlude on the way to growing up (Graham, 770-7719) insofar as it was percieved as an asset in the marriage market (Jabour, 40) and the final polish necessary to gentility (Jabour, 40).So judged, it is then not surprising that Blanche was somehow predestined to choose liberal arts, study English and teach high school to instill a bunch of bobby-soxers and drug-store Romeos with reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe (Williams, 56). Access to education, on the other hand, gave Blanche the opportunity to cultivate sophisticated way of speechmaking and behaving it allowed her to understand the life as numbers in Southern plantation myth manner. Further investigation helps to reveal how Blanches arrival at her babes home in New Orleans, her insisting on staying there I guess youre hoping Ill say Ill put up at a hotel, but Im not goingto put up at a hotel. I want to be conterminous you, got to be with somebody, I cant be alone (Williams, 23) announces her basic motive need for refuge and desire for human contact (Hardison Londre, 52), need for breastplate which, in the tradition of the Old South, had to be through another person, through family.In much the same way Blanche clings to the antebellum chivalry codes which obliged men to protect women in return for their contribution to cultural and social capital, their attention, love and, of course, wealth. She thus, in the tradition of the antebellum Southern belle, tries to save herself and her sister Stella from inappropriate way of life at Stanleys home by looking for protection in another man her former beau Shep Huntleigh. Blanches behavior can be understood as reflexive reversion to the Southern belles habits of thought that is, emotional dependence on a patriarchal system of male protection for the helpless female just moments after she had said, Im going to do something. Get hold of myself and make myself a new life (313) (Hardison Londre, 56). This particular pattern of Blanches behavior occurs repeatedly durin g the play and culminates in the last scene when Doctor and Matron come to take her to asylum. In order to reverse humiliation and save her dignity, she once again plays the role of the helpless but flirtatious Southern belle and treats Doctor as a gentleman who knows how to protect and transmit to a lady in distress.One final point. Blanches relationship with Stanley once again ties her to the antebellum period when the principle of noblesse oblige promoted patronize relationship between upper and lower classes and races in the U. S. South. She behaves to Stanley as the aristocrat who condescends to the plebeian when she is not actually scorning him. This is compulsive conduct on her part, because she must smell superior to her sisters husband if she is not to feel inferior in view of her helplessness (Gassner, 375). The extreme polarization of relationship between Blanche and Stanley could also be read as a critical struggle between two different ways of life (Jackson, 59) as the struggle between Blanches traditional, civilized, artistic, and spiritual self and Stanleys modern, primitive, physical, and animalistic other. Blanche, by finding additional support for her point of view in science biology, anthropology, history, even verbalizes this struggle He acts like an animal, has an animals habits Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one Theres even something sub-human something not quite to the stage of humanity yet Yes, something ape-like about him, like one of those pictures Ive seen in anthropological studiesThousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is Stanley Kowalski survivor of the stone age purpose the raw meat from the kill in the jungle And you you here hold for him Maybe hell strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you That is, if kisses have been discovered yet Night falls and the other apes gather There in front of the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and hulking His poker shado w you call it this party of apes Somebody growls some creature snatches at something the fight is on God Maybe we are a long way from being made in Gods image, but Stella my sister there has been some progress since then Such things as art as poetry and music such kinds of new light have come into the world since then In some kinds of people some tender feelings have had some little beginning That we have got to make grow And cling to, and hold as our flag In this dark march toward whatever it is were draw near Dont dont hang back with the brutes (Williams, 72)Their conflict, or, it is tempting to claim, the struggle over authority in the house, culminates in Stanleys rape of Blanche. The very act of the rape, which Stanley rationalizes by his famous line Weve had this date with each other from the beginning (Williams, 130), is also fueled by Blanches refusal to become the woman in the traveling-salesman joke, the stereotype of the nymphomaniacal upper-class girl (Vlasopo los, 333). It, once again, demonstrates convincingly the victory of primitive over civilized, physical over spiritual, male over female entirely as some aspects of Blanches personality pay homage to the concept of the Southern bellehood, so too there are other aspects of her personality that can be read against the culture which created them and reinvented them when it had found this necessary. Such reading introduces Blanche as the woman who defies to be classified as the active property shaping the social and sexual relations (Van Duyvenbode, 208) in the U. S. South and shatters the stereotypic chaste heroine/whore dichotomy to show women in their labyrinthianity (Hale, 22).It also offers a new, rather different, image of Blanche as it portraits her as a victim and a potential subversive female force in the play. To discover it one has to discuss factors, features andcharacteristics that promoted this shift in Blanches character. The ground from which we need to begin is to inve stigate the origin, or perhaps the reason, of Blanches victimization. A possible starting point for this investigation can be found in Joseph N. Riddels paper, A Streetcar Named Desire Nietzsche Descending. Riddel thus argues that Blanches life could be seen as a reflection of living function of two warring principles, desire and decorum, and she is the victim of civilizations attempt to reconcile the two in a morality (Riddel, 17). In other words, Blanches past, as well as her present, is a mixture of sin and romanticism, reality and illusion, personal excessiveness and social discipline. These are all elements that would apologize a comment of Blanche as hypersensitive, tragic woman who is, because of her uniqueness, forced to create her own world on principles of exclusion, isolation, and imagination.She is the sensitive, misunderstood exile, () fugitive kind, who () is too fragile to face a cancerous reality and must have a special world in which () she can take shelter (Ga nz, 101-102). As a result of Blanches equilibrize between desire to act as she wants to act and a compulsive need to behave according to prescribed standards, norms and codes, many compulsive, obsessive and, to some extent, subversive reactions illusions, alcoholism and promiscuity appear in her behavior. They, for much of the play, represent Blanches attempts to stand up to harassment and stereotyping she is exposed to. Illusions, or, to quote Blanche, magic (), misrepresenting things (), telling what ought to be right (Williams, 117), are found as a continuous thread woven into the fabric of A Streetcar Named Desire. Consequently, a number of interesting points arise from Blanches definition of it. Magic is, to begin with, throughout the play confronted with the authority of reality which, even though manipulative, tangible, and limited, is the inseparable part of human experience and has to be authentic as the dominant mode of living.As such, it is brought into being by Blan ches brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Stanley, by using sources whose existence we are forced to acknowledge in our terrestrial life the power of authority, physical force, intimidation, economic domination, manages to overpower Blanches magic. In his quest Stanley additionally profits from staying within the parameters set for him by his sex and class (Vlasopolos, 337). He is, thereby, seen as normal (read real) his pleasures are normalpleasures poker, sex, drinking, bowling he is a good provider and a loyal member of community and society. Except for his rape of Blanche, which has actually no witnesses and thus creates a reasonable doubt in its occurrence, nothing Stanley does threaten the social fabric (Vlasopolos, 337). Blanche, on the contrary, builds up her magic on her failure to conform and her deviance of her class and sex. She, one realizes, although () maintains the trappings of the aristocrat in her expensive and elegant tastes, has allowed the rest to slip, like Bell e Reve, away from her. In seeking emotional fulfillment, she has disregarded the barriers of normal female sexuality and of class.Her actions subvert the social order she remains loyal to the memory of her human husband, she fulfills the desires of young soldiers outside of very walls of her ancestral mansion, she is oblivious to class in her promiscuity, and she seduces one of her seventeen-year-old student. (Vlasopolos, 337) When in New Orleans, she attempts to split up the Kowalskis even after she learns that Stella is meaning(a) and makes plans to take Stella away from Stanley. Being aware of this, Stanley enters the battle for weak and indecisive Stella, who functions as the prize between warring parts Blanche and Stanley. He ruthlessly engages in exposing Blanche as a fraud, a prostitute, and an alcoholic, mercilessly destroys veils of magic Blanche wrapped herself in, makes her look old and cheap in the light of the bare electric bulb, and, by opulent his reality in the fo rm of the rape on her, eventually wins. Not only does Blanches system of illusions prove to be her response to the reality of the everyday life, but it also seems to possess a redeeming merit.To understand it, one realizes, attention should first be drawn to the fact that Blanche, confronted with the disappearance of the old South and its codes and myths expressed by the selling of her plantation because of epic fornications (Williams, 43) of her ancestors and deaths that followed them, tries to preserve the past by marrying the urbane and civilized, the light and culture of the South in the form of Allan colour (Bigsby, 64) which thus presents a logical extension of her desire to aestheticise experience, her preference for style over function (Bigsby, 43). His poetic delicacy and refinement, however, turns out to be the cover for his homosexuality. surprise and disgusted by this discovery, Blanche publicly exposes her husband and makes him commit suicide. In other words,she disco vers the corruption, or, at the very least, the profound deceit which lies behind the veneer of that side of the Southern past (Bigsby, 64). Seen in this light, Blanches cruel exposure of her husband becomes the origin of guilt which has to be expiated and redeemed by her own system of illusions. She had to turn from the death in Belle Reve to the life of casual _amours_, () she had to turn away from the misery of reality to her romantic evasions (Kernan, 11).In the end, or rather from the very beginning of the play, Blanches system of illusions proves to be a not well-chosen reaction since reality, in the character of Stanley Kowalski, forcefully imposes on her, leaving her only one exit that of asylum as a sea resort. Blanche homeless, ravished, and abandoned gets confined inside the boundaries of her own illusive fiction (asylum as sea resort, Doctor as Southern gentleman) which makes her invulnerable to supercharge assaults but, nevertheless, destroys her humanity. Blanches challenges to the Southern belle stereotype are also pointed up by her excessive alcohol consummation and innumerous love affairs. Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche has a drink in her hands which is quite unusual for the Southern belle she is supposed to represent. This unusual spectacle occurs repeatedly in scene 1 when Blanche, waiting for Stella, tosses a half tumbler of whiskey down (Williams, 18), lookss again around for some liquor () which then buzzes right through her and feels so good (Williams, 19-21) when talking with Stella.Although Blanche rarely touches it (Williams, 30) and is not accustomed to having more than one drink (Williams, 54), she, nevertheless, falls under alcoholic spell again and again and again in particular in the scenes 5, 6, 9, 10 and 11. For instance, she cannot imagine her coke without a shot in it (Williams, 79) or a date with Mitch without a drink or two she needs a bottleful of liquor (Williams, 113) not only to stop the Varsouviana tu ne in her head but also to get over Mitchs betrayal It is striking in all these instances that Blanche actually uses alcohol to extirpate moral contradictions (Riddel, 18) that stand between her and the concept of the idealized white Southern bellehood whose principles she was supposed to have internalized as her own. possibly it would also be correct to say that alcohol, in these specific fictional instances, operates as the means of encouragement against the humiliation of being an unwanted intruder and a fallen role model in her ownfamily who forgot, although they live in New Orleans, the basic codes of Southern hospitality.Relatedly, Blanches frequent love affairs justify their rendering as Blanches physical redemption for the responsibility and guilt she has felt since she confronted her husband with his homosexuality I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with. I think it was pani c, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection here and there, in the most unlikely places even, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy (Williams, 118), In finding it perverse, she could neither live with the idea of Allans homosexuality nor could she help him. The neither-nor situation in which Blanche found herself caused Allans death and, consequently, made her guilt and pain-ridden. This pain, which is almost literally tearing her apart, is thus the pain of the woman violated and abused by the men-dominated culture, which cannot necessarily be heterosexually oriented. In order to live with it, she had to neutralize it with desire a succession of sexual encounters with even younger and younger men.To Blanche, desire was the antithesis of death and her relationship with young men a defense against the destructive processes of time (Bigsby, 60). Blanche, for her part, was attracted by their innocence and purity the features she, as the Southern bel le, was supposed to possess or she saw in them the reincarnation of her dead husband and, consequently, a chance to redeem her own conduct and start a new marriage based on understanding, compassion, and gentleness or maybe she, as Tennessee Williams argued, in her mind has become Allan. She acts out her fantasy of how Allan would have approached a young boy (Hardison Londre, 58) subverting and travestying in that way, the Southern belle myth that promoted clear cut borderlines between genders and sexes, races and classes.In the end, there is only a hope that this paper, which attempted to wee-wee an insight into the historically (de)constructed myth of the Southern belle and its literary affirmation and/or subversion in the character of Blanche DuBois in Williamss A Streetcar Named Desire, has been favored enough to explain the complex and, at the moments, perplexing development of Williamss (anti)belle concept. Given this fact, the paper, beginning with a description of the Sout hern belle stereotype, pointed out that this very stereotype was (de)constructed along class, race and gender lines.In thesecond subdivision, I discussed aspects of Blanches identity which were tied to the historical construction of the passive-submissive Southern bellehood. The third major section focused on Blanches victimization and her, more or less, subversive reactions to it. Blanche, for her part, is, most obviously, capable to shake and, occasionally, break the Southern bellehood myth there are, at the moments, greater or littler rebellions and transgressions she is tempted to perform. But, sometimes, just as it is courageous to deconstruct the pedestal, so too it is safer to find shelter in the well-known patterns of behavior, it is safer to be center than margin, we than otherConclusionIn the analysis of the American play Streetcar Named Desire that written by Tennesse William. The myth in the end, there is only a hope that this paper, which attempted to give an insight i nto the historically (de)constructed myth of the Southern belle and its literary affirmation and/or subversion in the character of Blanche DuBois in Williamss A Streetcar Named Desire, has been successful enough to explain the complex and, at the moments, perplexing development of Williamss (anti)belle concept. Given this fact, the paper, beginning with a description of the Southern belle stereotype, pointed out that this very stereotype was (de)constructed along class, race and gender lines.In the second section, I discussed aspects of Blanches identity which were tied to the historical construction of the passive-submissive Southern bellehood. The third major section focused on Blanches victimization and her, more or less, subversive reactions to it. Blanche, for her part, is, most obviously, capable to shake and, occasionally, break the Southern bellehood myth there are, at the moments, greater or smaller rebellions and transgressions she is tempted to perform.But, sometimes, jus t as it is courageous to deconstruct the pedestal, so too it is safer to find shelter in the well-known patterns of behavior, it is safer to be center than margin, we than other. Based on the theory of Semiotics in this play Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or (in the Saussurean tradition) semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure andmeaning of language more specifically.Refference* Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York Signet Books, 1974.* Elengton, Terry. Teori Sastra. 2006. Yogyakarta Pecetakan Jalasutra* http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_mythologyThe Analysis of Main Character Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire