Bathing and the Role of the Bathroom in A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire focuses on the mysterious and thought-provoking personality and state of mind of Blanche DuBois. Throughout the play the most prominent characteristic we learn about her is her desire to be fresh and to look young. In connection with her wish of eternal beauty comes the important symbol of the bath which appears several times during the play, to help not only Blanche to rest and find shelter from the surrounding circumstances and hide in her world of illusions but also Stanley to open up his wife’s eyes about the truth concerning Blanche’s unforeseen presence.
Right at the beginning of the play the motif of the bath appears. Following …show more content…
As the bathroom serves as an escape for Blanche, the songs she is singing there show her honest thoughts and her state of mind, which could hardly be observed at other times. Here the lyrics “captive maid” can brought into context with her feeling as a prisoner in her own mind as well as in Stanley’s home and his dominant, demanding behaviour. Also, we can observe this line as a forecast, her being taken away to a mental hospital (Bloom 105). In the last scene she talks about her death, which will be in water “as blue as my first lover’s eyes” …show more content…
Again here the other characters can use this time to talk behind Blanche’s back, discussing her uneasiness. She comes out of the bathroom radiating in a “Delia Robbia blue” robe (11.135.26.), “the blue of the robe in the old Madonna pictures”. In this scene her purification can be closely related to religious symbols, as the Madonna picture, the church bells and the grape, Christ’s cleansing blood. (Adler 46). The arrival of the doctor and his assistant does not serve as her salvation but somehow changes the atmosphere of the play and gives the readers a slight relief from all of the tension bottled up in the mind of the characters, their relationships and especially Blanche’s
Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire focuses on the mysterious and thought-provoking personality and state of mind of Blanche DuBois. Throughout the play the most prominent characteristic we learn about her is her desire to be fresh and to look young. In connection with her wish of eternal beauty comes the important symbol of the bath which appears several times during the play, to help not only Blanche to rest and find shelter from the surrounding circumstances and hide in her world of illusions but also Stanley to open up his wife’s eyes about the truth concerning Blanche’s unforeseen presence.
Right at the beginning of the play the motif of the bath appears. Following …show more content…
As the bathroom serves as an escape for Blanche, the songs she is singing there show her honest thoughts and her state of mind, which could hardly be observed at other times. Here the lyrics “captive maid” can brought into context with her feeling as a prisoner in her own mind as well as in Stanley’s home and his dominant, demanding behaviour. Also, we can observe this line as a forecast, her being taken away to a mental hospital (Bloom 105). In the last scene she talks about her death, which will be in water “as blue as my first lover’s eyes” …show more content…
Again here the other characters can use this time to talk behind Blanche’s back, discussing her uneasiness. She comes out of the bathroom radiating in a “Delia Robbia blue” robe (11.135.26.), “the blue of the robe in the old Madonna pictures”. In this scene her purification can be closely related to religious symbols, as the Madonna picture, the church bells and the grape, Christ’s cleansing blood. (Adler 46). The arrival of the doctor and his assistant does not serve as her salvation but somehow changes the atmosphere of the play and gives the readers a slight relief from all of the tension bottled up in the mind of the characters, their relationships and especially Blanche’s