From Tennessee Williams to William Faulker, most of the great literary classics have at least one strong and/or memorable female character. “A Streetcar Named Desire” has Blanche, “The Sound and the Fury” has Caddy, both unconventional southern belles with more sauce than meets the eye. However, what binds these women in literary history is not their burning desire to get by in a world run by men. The chief concept to remember is how very crucial they were in inciting change, simply by being present or not.
“In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche is a contradictive lady with very complicated character, which will be illustrated from the aspects of sexual desire, fantasy for bright future, and hypocrisy and pretention” (Tanaka).
In Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”, the initial impression given of Blanche DuBois is that of the utmost femininity. Williams uses words like “dainty”, “fluffy” and “delicate beauty” to describe her Stanley Kowalski’s nature, on the other hand, is that of pure, unadulterated masculine dominance. In the opening sequence, he tosses a slab of meat at his pregnant wife, and in the very next scene he gives his sister-in-law the unbridled third-degree the instant he feels the need to. It comes to pass that Blanche, as delicate and fragile as she may be, is the very one to butt heads with Stanley and give him a run for his money. Scholar Wei Fang asserts:
“In patriarchal society, as woman who has been subordinated to men, Blanche is brave enough to fight against fetters and challenge men’s authority in order to alter her miserable situation and thus live a happy life.” (Wei, 5)
Though Stanley is used to being king of his castle (and his wife, Stella), Blanche immediately comes in and changes the dynamic. As the story progresses, her femininity begins to lose its connotation of weakness. “She is steady, brave, idealistic, bearing the southern culture and memory in mind.” (Wei, 5). This point is made when Blanche decides Stanley’s tyranny over her sister must end.
Stanley is used to having Stella all to himself, being all she knows aside from her neighbor, Eunice. When Blanche comes along, Stella gravitates toward the sister she’s been missing, leaving Stanley green with envy. Immediately, her presence is felt as an upset.
STELLA:
“I’m taking Blanche to Galatoire’s for supper and then to a show, because it’s your poker night.”
STANLEY:
“How’s about my supper, huh? I’m not going to no Galatoire’s for supper!” (Williams, p. 32)
It is insinuated that any other night, Stella would have had a hot plate waiting for Stanley. That seems to be what he expects. However, the second night of her arrival, Blanche has changed the routine by having her sister take her out. Later in the play, Stella takes a departure from her usually docile nature to sternly scold Stanley for his treatment of Blanche.
“You have no idea how stupid and horrid you’re being!” (p. 37)
It seems that the comfort of her sister’s presence drives Stella to rebel against Stanley even further. In the third scene, Blanche and Stella insist on listening to the radio, but Stanley picks a fight with them about it, claiming it annoys him. However, it appears that he is simply sore because once more, Blanche has taken his wife from him, having just come back from spending an evening with her sister. After the ladies have defied his order to turn off the music, she proceeds to toss the radio out the window. When Stella calls him out on his drunken belligerence, a move she might not have made without the protection of the sister, Stanley hits her.
By the latter part of the novel, Stella grows comfortable with checking Stanley’s infractions. She becomes Blanche-like in her nit-picking. When she calls Stanley a pig, he rebukes her for the changes she has made since Blanche’s arrival.
“’Pig- Polack- disgusting- vulgar- greasy!” –them kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister’s too much around here!” (p. 107)
Though she has made an obvious change by the end of the play, Stella ultimately regresses and takes Stanley’s side when it counts most: the rape allegation. However, her desperate tears at the end mark the fact that she knows it’s not always right to choose her husband over everyone else, and that knowledge alone is enough to show that Blanche’s presence left a significant mark on the Kowalski household, and may shape the way the Kowalskis will interact with their new baby.
Candace “Caddy” Compson is not vastly unlike Blanche DuBois. Like Blanche, Caddy is independent and unconventional. “John T. Matthews calls Caddy’s behavioral pattern of defiance of family and community ‘audacious independence’ which, I argue, is equivalent to what Morrison calls ‘dangerously free’” (Tanaka). They share the common threads of southern, aristocratic upbringing, remarkable beauty, and rebellious promiscuity. “Traditionally, she can be considered a promiscuous woman, and also a nonconformist against the conventional social framework of marriage and motherhood” (Tanaka). However, whereas Blanche’s coming was the spark that lit the flame of change in her family, Caddy’s leaving was the wildfire itself, consuming the lives and thoughts of each of her brothers. She does the best she can as a divorced, absentee mother to Miss Quentin. In her youth, Caddy was basically Benjy’s surrogate mother. She was the pearl that Quentin most treasured, and one more Compson child that everyone liked more than Jason. Despite all she was in her presence, Caddy’s absence incubated the decay of her family.
“Faulkner’s Caddy helps to magnify the psychological, narcissistic turmoil of each of her brothers, the inner storm of their rage, grief and struggle” (Tanaka).
After her pregnancy is made known, “Caddy chooses to leave town as an outcast with the stigma of ‘a community outlaw’” (Tanaka). When she leaves Benjy, she takes all that he knows with her. Being the only member of the household who showed genuine warmth and love toward Benjy. Though she definitely babied him, Caddy treated Benjy more like a real person than any other member of her family.
“You’re not a poor baby. Are you. Are you. You’ve got your Caddy. Haven’t you got your Caddy.” (Faulkner, p. 9)
All of the other Compsons seemed to see him more as the skeleton in the Compson closet. It makes sense that she was the only one with which he bonded. In his narration, it is as though all other members of his family are props in his retelling of his memories of Caddy. When she leaves, there is nothing else for him to do but wait for her, for about seventeen years.
Though Quentin’s attachment to Caddy is not necessarily as dependent as Benjy’s, he finds himself just as lost without his sister, if not more. Benjy seems to be under the impression that Caddy will one day return. Quentin knows that Caddy is long gone, as is her precious innocence, which guarded with his life. In the scene at the brush, Quentin is ready to take Caddy’s life and his own because she is no longer a virgin. He feels that without her virtue, the Compson honor he thought his father expected him to uphold, life is meaningless.
Jason’s fixation with his sister is almost as disturbing, but on the opposite end of the spectrum. He hates Caddy. He hates her offspring. Jason blames Caddy’s dishonesty about Miss Quentin’s father for causing the perpetual rut in which he has been for the latter two decades of his life. Caddy’s husband promised him a job, but when Caddy and Herbert split, the deal was off for Jason. So, he steals money from Caddy’s daughter to make up for what he believes should have been his. However, any sensible being can tell that Jason is to blame for his own failure. He threw away the money his mother gave him to buy a share of the store. He deliberately antagonizes his hired stock experts. Still, that does not detract from the fact that Caddy’s absence gave him the license to wreak havoc on what is left of the family. Had she stayed with Miss Quentin and raised the girl herself, Jason would have no scapegoat and no money to extort, and perhaps he would be able to look in on himself and realize that his dependence on others makes him his own worst enemy.
Caddy Compson and Blanche DuBois inverted life as their families knew it simply by crossing a threshold. Blanche’s presence was constant, unavoidable and impossible to ignore the moment she set foot on Elysian Fields. The absence of Caddy is just as resonating, if not more. The feeling of loss and loneliness in the novel is unwavering. These two women are both so poignant that whole stories are created based on whether or not they are present. Caddy’s absence illuminated the flaws in her family- her brothers’ dependence upon her for lack of their mother’s significant involvement. Blanche’s arrival in the Kowalski household reshaped the dynamics, giving her sister the courage to stand up for herself against Stanley, and illuminating his flaws more than ever, bringing to light before her sister’s eyes the fact that Stanley was not always correct and therefore his word should not be law. Caddy and Blanche’s independence and willingness to overcome the boundaries of sexism in their societies as well as their familial units enables them not only to gain a greater sense of self and self-assertion, but also to highlight the weaknesses of those who hold the most adamantly sexist feelings toward them (Stanley Kowalski and Jason Compson). More importantly, these woman are the rocks in their family. Who knows where Stella would be at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire if not for Blanche’s encouragement, empowerment and support? Without Caddy, Benjy would know absolutely nothing of love and tenderness. These remarkable women are cornerstones in the foundations of their families. They are the gears that turn the works. The functionality of their families depend heavily on how they themselves function.
No comments:
Post a Comment