Desire Drives

Desire drives people to live the life in which they would like to lead. Tennessee Williams highlights the importance of desire for individuals in his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” by presenting each character with different desires. Blanche, for example, is a woman who desires to hold onto her perception that she is still a young and genteel southern belle. She holds onto this illusion and creates an imaginary world to shield herself from the harsh reality she refuses to face. Ever since the tragic death of her husband, Allan, her life spirals downwards. She loses the financial stability and moral support of a man she worshiped, and even loses the only home and most of family she has known. Thus, she resorts to having sexual relations with men in Laurel to feel as if she is loved and has some sort of support, even if on just a physical level, with a man. Through men, she ultimately seeks stability, security, and acceptance. Her scandal with having an affair with a seventeen-year-old, however, only demonstrates her inability to accept that her body ages even if her mind does not. In other words, she still refuses to let go of the idea that she is still a beautiful and desirable young woman by pursuing a young boy. Even in Laurel when she pursues Mitch, she makes an effort to avoid any harsh lighting to maintain this illusion of hers. Aware of this conscious effort, she turns to alcoholic beverages as an escape to blur the illusions, which she creates, and reality. Yet, when Blanche speaks with Stella about the streetcar that brings her to Elysian Fields as a metaphor for desire, she claims that “[i]t brought me here.—Where I’m not wanted and where I’m ashamed to be…” (1567). This reveals that, despite the illusions Blanche creates she is fully aware of her actions and the events that occur in her life. As a result, she feels that her desires may have lead her to become a woman with no other place to go. After all, if she resisted her desire to have sexual relations with that seventeen-year-old student of her, she would not have been involved in such a big scandal and be driven out of her town, becoming both homeless and unemployed. Furthermore, her very presence in Elysian Fields, rather than in Laurel, is a constant reminder of the consequences of her desires. That is a possibility that explains why she is ashamed and no longer as comfortable with sexual desires as she used to be in Laurel.

Her feelings towards sexual desires becomes more evident during the play when Mitch pursues her and makes advances on Blanche, while she acts innocent as if she is not used to such behavior. As a woman, Blanche hopes that Mitch will marry her so that he can provide her the stability she needs to continue to live in her delusions. So, she acts like a proper, respectable woman. Mitch, on the other hand, would like to marry a decent woman to comply with his mother’s wishes before she passes away. He loves his mother dearly, and definitely puts his mother before himself. This is demonstrated in the beginning of the play when Mitch, Stanley, and their friends are playing poker. Mitch leaves early to return home and attend to his sick mother. Thus, this desire to obey his mother’s wishes ultimately becomes Mitch’s drive in the play. So, out of both obligation and filial pity, Mitch desires to pursue Blanche to please his mother. After Stanley reveals the truth about Blanche to Mitch, however, Mitch no longer wants to marry because she is “not clean enough to bring in the house with my [his] mother” (1592). He pursues Blanche because of his mother, and ceases this pursuit also because of his mother. Regardless as to whether he develops feelings for her during his pursuit, he leaves Blanche because his desire to please his mother overrides any of his own personal desires.