An Exploration of the Heroine Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire解读《欲望号街车》中的女主人公布兰琪.doc

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1、题 目： 解读欲望号街车中 的女主人公布兰琪 姓 名： 学 号： 201103030075 系 别： 外国语学院 专 业： 英语 年级班级： 2011级专升本3班 指导教师： 2013年 5 月 An Exploration of the Heroine Blanche in A Streetcar Named DesireSubmitted by Zhang XiaohongStudent ID number 201103030075Supervised by Yuan Rongge and Hou XiaA paper submitted in fulfillment of the req

2、uirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts The College of Foreign LanguagesZhoukou Normal UniversityMay, 2013毕业论文（设计）作者声明本人郑重声明：所呈交的毕业论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。本人完全了解有关保障、使用毕业论文的规定，同意学校保留并向有关毕业论文管理机构送交论文的复印件和电子版。同意省级优秀毕业论文评选机构将本毕业论文通过影印、缩印、扫描等方式进行保存、摘编或

3、汇编；同意本论文被编入有关数据库进行检索和查阅。本毕业论文内容不涉及国家机密。论文题目: 解读欲望号街车中的女主人公布兰琪作者单位：周口师范学院外国语学院2011级专升本3班作者签名： 2013 年 5月 Contents 摘 要.iAbstract.iiIntroduction.1II. The Analysis of Streetcar and Its Heroine Blanche3 2.1 Literature review.32.1.1 Criticism of Streetcar as A Social Drama.32.1.2 Criticism of Streetcar as

4、A Psychological Drama.4 2.2 Social Contextual Analysis of Streetcar and Its Heroine Blanche.52.2.1 Social Contextual Analysis of Streetcar.52.2.2 Social Contextual Analysis of Blanches Life Background and Her Character.62.2.3 Social Contextual Analysis of Blanches Tragic Life.7III. The Analysis of C

5、ultural Differences and Their Influence on Blanche in Streetcar.9 3.1 The Cultural Differences between Old South and Modern Industrialism93.1.1 The Cultural Traits of South Culture.93.1.2 The Cultural Traits of Modern Industrialism.113.1.3 Brief Summary12 3.2 The Influence of Cultural Differences on

6、 Blanche12IV. Conclusion.16Bibliography.17Acknowledgements.18摘 要田纳西威廉斯所著的欲望号街车(以下简称为街车)获得了1947年的普利策奖，该剧对女主人公布兰琪悲惨命运的描述引发了后人对布兰琪心理的分析及对现代社会个人精神生存困境的探索和关注。本文分析了学术界对街车的文学评论，并用引用、分析和归纳的方法从社会语境下分析街车及其女主人公布兰琪，而后又分析了南方文化和现代工业文化的特征及两者之间的差异对街车中女主人公布兰琪的影响，从而找出布兰琪悲惨命运的根源，并揭示她悲惨命运背后的社会意义。最后，本文得出结论：布兰琪是特定历史阶段的不幸

7、产物。关键词： 布兰琪；文化影响；悲惨命运; 社会语境AbstractAs the winner of Pulitzer Prize in 1947, Tennessee Williams created the play A Streetcar Named Desire (henceforth referred to as “Streetcar”). The heroine Blanches traumatic presence in the play set by Tennessee has attracted extensive attention and triggered a ser

8、ies of psychoanalysis of Blanche, which then leads to the exploration of modern individuals living dilemma. This paper reviews some important literature on Streetcar in academic circles, such as social contextual analyses of Streetcar and Blanche with quotation method, analysis method and induction

9、method being used, and then analyzes the traits of south culture and modern industrialism as well as the influence of the cultural differences on Blanche in Streetcar. Thus, we can find the causes for Blanches lunacy, and find out the social significance of her tragedy. At last, we come to the concl

10、usion that Blanche is just an unfortunate result of a particular historical stage.Key words: Blanche; cultural influence; tragic fate; social contextualAn Exploration of the Heroine Blanche inA Streetcar Named DesireI. IntroductionThomas Lanier Williams III(19111983)，better known as Tennessee Willia

11、ms，is one of the most important 20th-century American dramatists. For his twenty-five full-length plays, Williams was twice awarded the prestigious “Pulitzer Prize” and numerous other honors in his thirty years of dramatic career. His work truly reflects his inner self. To understand Williams and hi

12、s work, it is necessary to examine Williams world and his experience. His birthplace, Columbus is “a town in eastern Mississippi and the seat of Lowndes Country lies on the Tombigbee River” (Adler 93). Williams described his childhood in Mississippi as happy and carefree. Williams mother, Edwina, wa

13、s a beautiful belle of Southern etiquette and charm, while his father, a traveling salesman for a large shoe manufacturer, was always away from home. Since the parents marriage proved traumatic for the children, young Williams spent most of his childhood in his maternal grandparents home where he ha

14、d idyllic and peaceful life and began to learn about the world. That period of time and that place, sort of an old southern complex, had virtually been embedded in his mind, which was reflected later in many of his plays. In addition, his parents had an awkward relationship filled with rancor and of

15、ten fell into violent quarrels. In such a painful situation, even home failed to serve as a place to provide any secure sense. Later, Williams discovered writing as an escape from the tensions and conflicts of his family. Writing offered him a shelter to escape from reality. Through the events in Te

16、nnessee Williams life during the periods when his use of the names of real acquaintances in A Streetcar Named Desire, we can find that the play is the epitome of his life and reproduction, Williams himself and his family members become the real models of his characters in Streetcar.A Streetcar Named

17、 Desire (henceforth referred to as “Streetcar”) is Tennessee Williams masterpiece. The story in the play is an episode in which the final stages of the destruction of a psychologically staggering woman, Blanche Dubois, who comes to her sisters home to escape from her past, are represented both reali

18、stically and dramatically. It takes place in New Orleans, where Williams spent quite some time living in the slummy French Quarter. In the eleven scenes, which have been generally classified by critics into three parts, we witness an inevitable tragedy of a southern young lady, and a series of tensi

19、ons and difficulties that gradually drive Blanche to “final destruction and sends her to asylum” (Briksted-Breen 261).This paper will review some important literature on Streetcar from academic circles, combining psychoanalysis with history environment and social contextual analyses of Streetcar and

20、 Blanche, and then analyses cultural influence on Blanche in Streetcar. The analysis in the paper may serve as a reference to the construction of the humanity in Chinas society. II. The Analysis of Streetcar and Its Heroine BlancheSince Williams streetcar was published, it has caused great attention

21、 in academic circles, and there is a lot of controversy about the heroine Blanche. From the play, we can see Blanche struggles to survive in life, but her tragedy can not be avoided. To some extent, her tragic fate is caused by her character and some social and cultural roots. So this chapter contai

22、ns two parts with the first part being a brief summary of critical sources and schools of criticism and the second part being the analysis of Streetcar and Blanche from social contextual point of view. 2.1 Literature ReviewAs Williams is a productive playwright and his works do draw great interest i

23、n academic circles. There are many books, essays or book chapters devoted to exploring him and his works. Over the years, critics who have been fascinated by his masterpiece Streetcar can be roughly categorized into the following main schools at the risk of oversimplification.2.1.1 Criticism of Stre

24、etcar as Social DramaAlthough a considerable number of critics assume Streetcar to be “practically a social drama” (Liu Minghou 12), few have found themselves in the same accord in defining what kind of social drama Williams play most resembles. One school holds that the heroine Blanche and the hero

25、 Stanley in the play represent archetypes of cultures or species. From this point of view, Eric Bentley and Roger Boxill call Streetcar a “social-historical drama”, thus the clash between Blanche and Stanley is not one individual against another but rather species against species. Another school emp

26、hasizes Blanche and Stanley as unique individuals and not as species. Likewise, this school suggests the two characters in the play are staging a show, namely their personal war, for the audience. As Xu Xixiang and Wu Wenquan argue, Streetcar “presents the conflict between two different types of peo

27、ple in the twentieth-century America, namely, people from the south and people from the north. Southerners are reminiscent of the past, refined and good-natured; whereas, northerners are husky, violent and willful. This analysis reflects the “Cultural Shock” of weak southerners in the extraordinary

28、northern environment” (Xu Xixiang and Wu Wenquan 98)All of the above mentioned viewpoints have largely taken Streetcar as a social drama, concentrating on the clash between Blanche and Stanley，or discussing Blanche as one of Williams “fugitive kind” in a Kowalskiesque world. While some critics view

29、Streetcar as a metaphorical story, setting two cultures against each other, others have argued that Streetcar is a study of two types of animals competing for dominance in one world. Still others have defended Blanche and Stanley as unique individuals and Streetcar as Williams display of unconscious

30、 warfare between two opposing forces. 2.1.2 Criticism of Streetcar as Psychological DramaStreetcar is also regarded as a psychological drama because of its focus on Blanches internal struggle with herself. There are also two branches of ideas: one sees the play as a study of Freudian psychoses, and

31、the other sees this play as Williams working out the dialectic of Puritan-Cavalier heritage through Blanches struggle between flesh and spirit, past and present, illusion and reality, and death and desire. ” (Zhi Xin 1)The fundamental basis is Freuds id-egosuperego division of the psyche and the pap

32、er is still invo1ved with substantial psychological analysis of the major characters and of the author as well. The development of Blanches ego is utilized as the central clue in the discussion. Also, as Steven Lynn argues, “the purpose of psychology depends on bringing to consciousness the hidden f

33、ears and desires that disturb and control our lives”(Lynn 170). According to Freud, the key to a healthy personality is a balance between the id, the ego, and the superego. Freud thinks that the id, the ego, and the superego are always in conflicts. They make perpetual interactions and conflicts wit

34、h each other, which promotes the development of the personality. In Streetcar, the maladjustment of their relationship is the origin of peoples psychogenic behavior disorder. And the reason why the heroine Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire is eventually reduced to a mentally patient is that she is

35、 unable to mediate the id, superego and the contradictions of reality world.2.2 Social Contextual Analysis of Streetcar and Its Heroine Blanche2.2.1 Social Contextual Analysis of StreetcarThe background of Streetcar is that the South was agricultural and had a large number of plantations. While, the

36、 northern had a modern industrialism. The antagonism of the two social-economic systems led to increased political conflict between the North and the South and finally to the outbreak of the Civil War.The Civil War is of great significance in American history. It destroyed the feudal slavery-plantat

37、ion system, which had been an obstacle on the path of the development of capitalism, so that American capitalism developed at a higher speed after the war. The southern plantation system went into bankrupt and capitalist economy began to develop there. It was a difficult time in the South for the wh

38、ite people. All that they had before the war went into pieces, so they could not continue their old style of life. And things were made more difficult because some Northern people went to the South, hoping to control the blacks and the state government.After the War of Independence the American nati

39、onal economy was developing rapidly. New equipment and technology were introduced from Europe, and modern industries were established. In the 1820s there came a flood of new immigrants from Europe to the United States because labor was needed with the rapid development of industry in America and mos

40、t European countries were in a very bad state. The immigrants played an important role in promoting the rapid expansion of the American capitalist economy. And maybe the great-grand fathers of the hero Stanley in Streetcar, the Polish descendent came to the United States at that time.As a result of

41、the rapid growth of capitalism, the center of the American economy had definitely shifted from the agrarian areas to the industrial centers in the North. By the mid-19th century, the North had been industrial because it had rich resources, while the South where Blanche was born and grew up had been

42、agricultural because farming was very profitable there. The swiftly growing industries in the North required the restriction of slavery as well as an expanding territory so as to provide a capitalist production with raw materials, markets and an abundant labor supply. The slave economy of the South

43、was an obstacle to industrial growth and expansion.A Streetcar Named Desire is absolutely a literary production of the social reality of the 1870s in the southern part of the United States. It captures the predicament of the southern Belles after the Civil War and it pictures the ordinary life of pe

44、ople in New Orleans.2.2.2 Social Contextual Analysis of Blanches Life Background and Her CharacterFor the character analysis, especially her/his life background and character, we should not ignore their social environment. The heroine Blanche of Streetcar has witnessed one of the most important even

45、ts in American history, the Civil War. When the story begins, Blanche is about thirty years old. So she lives about twenty years before the break-out of the Civil War and about ten or less than ten years after the war.Blanche grows up in the transitional period from the old to the new. At that time,

46、 the South America dominates the plantation economy. Since she was born and bred in a now decayed Southern plantation, Blanche clings to the Southern aristocratic pretensions desperately. In the first scene, she shows up in a white dress, the symbol of purity and innocence. She cant stand a vulgar remark or a vulgar action and retains the aura of elegance and gentility that has been her birthright. With the familys financial problems, she begins to feel the pressure of life for her, realize that life is not perfect. However, because she always