Liar, Liar, Streetcar Named Desire on Fire: An Analysis of Lies in "A Streetcar Named Desire"
Because who hasn't told a fib here and there!
Hello! So, this is different than what I normally write about, but I thought it would be cool to share with you some of my essays from highschool most of which are from my English and history classes, which are also what I am going into for college. This essay is from my junior year of highschool for my honors English class. After reading Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play, A Streetcar Named Desire, (side note: I love Streetcar and think the story is insanely interesting; it felt like my mind was cracking in half while reading it, in a good way.) we were all assigned a paper and I chose a prompt in which you tracked lies that various characters tell throughout the story and explore the degree to which they lie— big lie or small lie and what constitutes a “big” lie versus a “small” lie— while also keeping in mind how one character’s lies affect another character. For the record, I got a 25 / 25 on this paper, but above all else, I just hope you enjoy it.
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire every character tells lies to themselves and each other in order to justify their behavior and to survive. Stella lies to herself and others about being happy in her marriage with Stanley, she also lies to herself by accepting and making excuses for Stanley’s abusive behavior. Stella does this because she is dependent on Stanley, with no real choice to leave him so she has to make the best of things. Stanley lies to himself and others by promising to change his behavior and also by convincing himself that his abusive behavior is acceptable. Mitch lies by putting on the persona of a “gentleman”, and respecting women, but not actually doing it. Finally, Blanche lies to herself and others about her romantic past, age, and chastity. Blanche lies about these things because of her own ideal of what a woman ought to be, which has been taught to her by Southern societal standards. Blanche cannot live up to these standards and therefore lies about them. Blanche’s lies affect Mitch because he learns that she is a lot different than what she has put on and Mitch’s lies affect Blanche as he is a lot different from his persona. Blanche’s lies also affect Stanley because he is determined to expose Blanche as a liar and hurt her. This in turn affects the marriage between Stella and Stanley because Stanley goes onto lie about sexually assaulting Blanche, in order to preserve his own self image and desires. Meanwhile, Stella must continue to cling to the lie she has always adhered to, except now instead of claiming Stanley doesn’t hurt her, she must also convince herself that he would not hurt her sister, when in reality she knows he is fully capable of hurting Blanche and would. All the lies that each character tells themselves and others come back to haunt and hurt them during the course of the play.
Stella is Blanche’s sister and Stanley’s wife. Stella and Blanche both grew up in Laurel, Mississippi on their family’s wealthy plantation, Belle Reve. When Stella was a teenager she decided to leave home and travel to New Orleans. At some point after her arrival she met Stanley Kowalski and would go on to marry him. Stanley comes from a very different background then Stella or Blanche. Stanley was a soldier and in present time during the play works as some kind of salesman. Stanley is a very loud and boisterous person and this along with his physical appearance sparks an initial attraction between him and Stella. They also both find each other attractive because they have come from very different backgrounds. Stella ran away and rejected the “gentlemen” back home and Stanley is very different from them, while Stanley finds it attractive that Stella, a woman from a wealthy family wants to be with him when he is lower class. Stella and Stanley have a very fraught relationship and Stanley abuses Stella frequently. Stanley yells at her, hits her, attacks her, and causes a lot of emotional suffering for her as well. Despite this Stella continues her marriage to him. Stella lies to herself and others by justifying Stanley’s behavior. An example of this is the morning after the poker night, where Stanley lashed out and attacked her, but afterwards decided to spend the night with him anyway. Blanche comes back to the apartment panicked about the incident from the previous night and Stella’s well-being, but Stella is incredibly calm. Blanche questions Stella on how and why she went back with Stanley after his attack. Stella insists that Blanche is making too big of a deal out of the situation, “I know how it must have seemed to you and I’m awful sorry it had to happen, but it wasn’t anything as serious as you seem to take it. In the first place, when men are drinking and playing poker anything can happen. It’s always a powder-keg. He didn’t know what he was doing….He was as good as a lamb when I came back and he’s really very, very ashamed of himself,” (72). Stella excuses Stanley’s behavior by saying that he was drunk, he wasn’t in control of himself, and that the atmosphere of men playing poker creates rowdiness. Blanche questions if these stipulations make it alright for someone to behave that way and Stella replies, “No, it isn’t all right for anybody to make such a terrible row, but— people do sometimes. Stanley’s always smashed things. Why, on our wedding night—soon as we came in here—he snatched off one of my slippers and rushed about the place smashing the light-bulbs with it,” (72). Stella lies to herself and Blanche that Stanley’s behavior is acceptable because it’s just in his nature to be that way. Blanche is repulsed by Stella’s wedding night tale, but Stella finds it humorous and reveals she was “thrilled by it,” (73). This is another lie Stella tells herself. Stella isn’t thrilled by Stanley’s abuse, she’s terrified by it. Stella finds Stanley thrilling because he’s loud, bold, and different from her not because of his brutish behavior. Blanche tells Stella that she should leave Stanley and make a better life for herself, but Stella tells yet another lie, “I’m not in anything I want to get out of,” (74). If this were really the case, then when Stanley attacked her she wouldn’t have said “I want to go away, I want to go away!” (63), screamed, cried, and ran away from Stanley. Stella lies and makes excuses for Stanley because she has no other choice, as she puts it, “People have got to tolerate each other’s habits, I guess,” (74). When Stella finds out that Stanley raped Blanche, she chooses to believe that he didn’t and to send Blanche to a psychiatric hospital. Stella does this because she has no other choice. She’s had a baby, there is no money of her own to fall back on, and she has to stay married to Stanley in order to survive.
Stella downplays Stanley’s savage behavior and he does too. During the poker night, when Stanley lashed out and attacked Stella, he then immediately went running after her, begging her to come back and stay the night with him. Stella does end up staying the night with him and because she downplays and goes along with Stanley’s horrid behavior it creates a power dynamic between the two where Stanley believes that the way he acts is acceptable. Stanley wants whatever he wants and in turn lies to himself that behaving violently is acceptable because he believes that he will have to behave that way to get whatever he wants. Another example of Stanley lying is how he makes false promises. Stella says to Blanche after the poker night incident “He promised this morning that he was going to quit having these poker parties, but you know how long such a promise is going to keep,” (74). And by the final scene of the play Stanley has broken his promise and is hosting poker again. Since Stanley will do anything to get what he wants, it can be inferred that he knows he won’t be able to keep these promises, but he makes them in an effort to smooth things over with Stella and get her to stay with him. Stanley also lies to Stella by denying that he raped Blanche, which again is in an effort to enforce Stella to stay married to him because it’s what he wants. Stanley doesn’t actually feel apologetic about his behavior, if he did he would change it, Stanley just becomes scared that Stella will leave him so he makes surface level efforts like sleeping with her, making false promises, getting the radio fixed, and giving her ten dollars to get her to stay with him. Stanley’s biggest self proclaimed accomplishment of the play is that he never believed any of Blanche’s lies, “I’ve been on to you from the start! Not once did you pull any wool over this boy’s eyes! You come in here and sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume and cover the light-bulb with a paper lantern, and lo and behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile! Sitting on your throne and swilling down my liquor! I say—Ha!—Ha! Do you hear me? Ha—ha—ha!” (158). Stanley claims that he knew that Blanche’s clothes and jewelry weren’t expensive and that he knew she lost Belle Reve, but this claim that she never fooled him is false, he didn’t realize Blanche’s lies until he found out information about her from others. Stanley would have never figured it out on his own. In scene two, Stella reveals the loss of Belle Reve and Stanley jumps to the conclusion that Blanche sold it to buy all of her clothes and jewelry. Stella then informs him that Blanche’s clothes are cheap and that she’s owned them for a long time and that the jewelry is costume jewelry. Stanley then makes the boastful claim, “Are you kidding? I have an acquaintance that works in a jewelry store. I’ll have him in here to make an appraisal of this. Here’s your plantation, or what was left of it, here!” (35). Stanley is told by Stella that Blanche’s belongings are cheap, he’s told by a lawyer that Belle Reve was actually lost, and he’s told by a colleague that Blanche isn’t the Southern belle she claims to be. All of this proves that Stanley’s claim that Blanche never fooled him is completely false, she did fool him, but he just can’t stand to admit it. Stanley lies to himself that he knew about Blanche’s lies because he wants the satisfaction of being able to say it.
With a character like Stanley what you see is what you get, meaning that his outward personality of confidence and aggression matches his inner personality, it really is who he is as a person. However, some characters put on an outward persona that does not always line up with their actual personality. An example of this is the character Mitch. Mitch comes off as a gentleman, in stark contrast to Stanley. Blanche is very attracted to Mitch because of his gentlemanly attitude. However, for such a gentleman who is supposed to be respectful of women Mitch is very accepting and dismissive of Stanley’s abusive behavior towards Stella, saying to Blanche after the infamous poker night, “Ho-ho! There’s nothing to be scared of. They’re crazy about each other,” (68). Later in the play, after being told by Stanley about Blanche’s lies, Mitch decides to confront Blanche. Mitch is incredibly angry about Blanche’s lies about her chastity and feels she owes him intimacy (149). Blanche refuses intimacy with him unless they would get married and Mitch refuses this citing that Blanche is, “not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother,” (150) Mitch thinks Blanche is dirty because she has had so many sexual affairs and therefore is not fit to be his wife, but because she’s had so many affairs she also owes him the right to sleep with her, which serves as another example that Mitch is not as much of a gentleman as he seems.
Similar to how Mitch puts on a persona, Blanche also puts on a persona too. While Stella had traveled to New Orleans for a new life, Blanche dealt with several family deaths, the suicide of her husband, and the ultimate loss of Belle Reve. This combined with losing her position as an English teacher and small town rumors drives Blanche to New Orleans to stay with Stella and Stanley. Blanche hopes that this trip will allow her to escape the harsh reality of her life and make something better for herself. Unfortunately, this does not end up being the case and instead Blanche and Stanley go head to head, which ultimately results in Stanley’s assault of Blanche, damaging her beyond repair and sending her to a mental institute. Blanche lies about her persona of a Southern belle. Blanche lies because she has this vision of what she should be as a woman, but she can’t live up to this ideal. Blanche feels she has to be this perfect Southern belle in order for people to respect her, but also for male validation. Blanche lies about her age telling Mitch when they first meet that she is actually younger than Stella (60), that she doesn’t drink much when in reality she clearly has a drinking problem (26), as well as lying about having few intimate relationships when really she had many affairs after her husband’s death (146). Blanche also lies about why she came to New Orleans telling Stella she needed a break from her job (14) when in reality she was fired for having an affair with a seventeen year old boy. Blanche has been through tremendous trauma in her life and she lies because she wishes it were true. Blanche tells Mitch, “I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth,” (145) and that “Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart…” (147). Blanche longs for herself to be the perfect woman, but no matter what she does she can’t be. Although Blanche lies about many things she doesn’t lie about the loss of Belle Reve. Stanley believes that Blanche may have sold the plantation and kept the money for herself, when he interrogates her Blanche tells him, “I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman’s charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth, and this is the truth: I haven’t cheated my sister or you or anyone else as long as I have lived,” (41). Blanche fought as best she could to keep Belle Reve, but in the end she lost it. It’s worth noting that the translation of Belle Reve is “beautiful dream,” and that the loss of the physical plantation also signifies the loss of Blanche’s “beautiful dream” of having the perfect Southern belle life. Blanche’s lies ultimately lead to her downfall, in the sense that once Stanley fully unearths them he hurts her beyond repair. Although her lies lead to this it doesn’t mean that Blanche is to blame for Stanley raping her, rather it is just his horrifying behavior and response to her lies that leads to the assault.
Every character in A Streetcar Named Desire lies to themselves and others. Stella lies and makes excuses for Stanley’s abusive behavior because she has no other choice, but to stay married to him. There are aspects of Stella’s relationship with Stanley that she genuinely enjoys, but Stella is too immature to admit the truth to herself that the positives of their relationship are greatly outweighed by the negative aspects of the relationship, like Stanley's constant and generally abusive behaviors. Stanley lies by convincing himself that he can do, say, and should get whatever he wants and can treat everyone horribly in the process. Mitch puts on a lie of being a gentleman while actually behaving very disrespectfully to women at times. Blanche also lies about herself by putting on this perfect Southern belle persona while in reality not being able to live up to the standard. Each of these characters' lies interweave into each other and their lies not only hurt others, but themselves as well. These characters have to lie to themselves in order to keep going through life and surviving. Through telling these lies they survive, but they can never flourish. The devastating thing is that even if each character admitted their lies they would all still feel just as miserable as they do when they lie to themselves.
*I include the cover image of the edition that I read from (which was my brother’s copy in highschool with the same English teacher) in this article because I think it’s a really cool cover design and almost jarring to look at. The eye catching red background draws you in but the contrast white and black accents almost make your eyes hurt; sort of like the story itself.