No Straw MenEnlightened discourse proscribes arguments that are weak or imaginary, like straw, set up only to be confuted summarily.

On Shakespeare’s Overdetermination

Shakespeare refuses reduction to any single explanation. If, for instance, one believes that Oedipal jealousy motivates Hamlet, then one presupposes that the playwright endowed this character with unqualified motivations. But, as Hamilton College English professor Nathaniel Strout has observed, with Shakespeare, there are always “on the other hands”; that is, the extraordinarily well-roundedness of the characters impedes pigeonholing them. Three such characters in particular, Hamlet, Falstaff and Shylock, embody this fluid versatility.

The most fascinating and controversial character in The Merchant of Venice is Shylock, the Jew. At first blush, Shylock may appear as a comic butt. Yet he is not wholly comic. For despite often appearing ridiculous, he poses too much of a threat to be dismissed lightly. Perhaps, then, Shylock, a shyster-usurer, deserves the forced conversion—maybe even the summary expulsion. His peers unquestionably think so. Early in the play, noting Shylock’s interest-free loan to Bassanio, Antonio remarks, “The Hebrew will soon turn Christian; he grows kind” (1.3.191).[1] Surely the vociferous Graziano delights in Shylock’s vanquishment. Even Shylock’s servant, Lancelot, who proclaims “the Jew . . . the very devil incarnation” (2.2.26-27), eagerly leaves his service given the chance. And, of course, as one critic notes, neither the duke, who opens the court case “by declaring Shylock an ‘inhuman wretch’ (4.1.3), nor the disguised Portia, are impartial judges.”[2]

To the audience, Shylock may also be a pariah, in both appearance and action. Against the play’s general felicity, says the same critic, stridency and materialism characterize his rhetoric, which burns with rancor.[3] Further, fervently blind to everything other than the strictest terms of his bond—“I’ll have my bond. Speak not against my bond” he exclaims (3.3.5)—he refuses even to summon a doctor for the pound of Antonio’s flesh he’s impatient to hack off. In short, in seeking, in effect, to murder Antonio, Shylock is tremendously callous and monomaniacal; he, therefore, undercuts our empathy.

And yet reading Shylock as bloodthirsty falls short. Although the play’s antagonist, he is too ineffectual to be a villain the likes of Iago. Whereas Iago revels in his evil and knows himself to be such, Shylock sees himself as a scapegoat. Indeed, even in his villainy, Shylock is a victim, the grotesque product of ostracism. In the words of one critic, he is “a creation of circumstance,” that is, he harbors motivations for his malice, which however malevolent, at least make it intelligible.[4] For instance, Antonio, the good Christian of the play, manifests his piety by berating and spitting at Shylock (1.3.135-138). And Antonio typifies all Christian Venice, which presumably has oppressed the Jews for centuries. As the play progresses, Shylock explicitly refers to this mercilessness. “If a Jew wrong a Christian, what should his sufferance be by example? Why, revenge” (3.1.68-70). Such context thus elucidates the Jew’s livid logic: “Thou call’dst me a dog before thou hadst a cause, / But since I am a dog, beware my fangs” (3.3.7-8).

Further, by the play’s end, Shylock has lost his servant, daughter, a treasured ring given to him by his dead wife, and now the court case. Exacerbating his moritification, Portia maintains that because Shylock, an alien, has threatened the life of a Venetian, he must forfeit his estate to his archenemy and to the state. Thus hemmed in not only by gentiles but also the law, Shylock cannot maintain his integrity and so he breaks. He may be legally right, but like Malvolio of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, being right matters not in a world suffused with anti–Semitism or revelry. Both characters are punished more for their differences than for any real offense.

Moreover, the Duke promises Shylock “[t]hat thou shalt see the difference of our spirit” (4.1.384), but offers the Jew the Christianly “merciful” poison pill between a pauper’s survival and a Christian’s existence. In converting, of course, Shylock “must abandon his religion for one that forbids him from practicing the trade by which he earns his livelihood.”[5] My lasting impression, then, is compassion for Shylock. For even though, with the Jew at last removed, Shakespeare can bring us to Belmont for a comedy conclusion, he cannot exorcise Shylock’s spirit, which still hovers about in my mind, leaving me as curious as I am disturbed.

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According to the literary critic Harold Bloom, “We can sooner see Falstaff as a monk than Shylock as a Christian.”[6] Sir John, indeed, is a coward, braggart, glutton and rogue. At the same time, he is also that new-found bosom buddy you’d put your arm around and walk with to the pub, whereupon you’d endearingly buy him drink after drink as he regaled you with yarn after yarn. Either way, Falstaff is Shakespeare’s most provocative, if not most popular, personage.

On one hand, pretending to be the king, Hal rebukes him as “[t]hat villainous, abominable misleader of youth . . . that old white-bearded Satan” (2.4.479-480).[7] Yet while too ineffective to be a villain, doubtless embodies sin; he inhabits the hedonist’s world of eating and drinking. Ever-ready to cheat, lie and steal with reckless abandon, he thus excludes himself from the knight-hero’s world of robustness and chivalry.

For instance, Falstaff robs for the money and fun of it. On the battlefield, he fakes his death to avoid fighting. To Falstaff, the concept of honor is insidious. As he soliloquizes: “Can honor set-to a leg? No. . . . Or take away the grief of a wound? No. . . . What is honor? A word. What is in that word ‘honor’. . . . Air. A trim reckoning. . . . Honor is a mere scutcheon” (5.2.132–141). To wit, honor spurs men such as Blunt, ever-loyal to the king, to die for their country. But what good is honor six feet under? “Doth he feel it? No. Does he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible then” (5.2.137-139). In short, honor is not for the living, and, with pranks to be played here and now, it is not for the decadent Sir John.

On the other hand, although we may loathe his sins, we don’t loathe the sinner; just as Falstaff grows on his peers, he grows on us. For instance, according to the hostess, who with Pistol, Bardolph and Nim mourns Falstaff’s demise, Falstaff dies because “[t]he King has killed his heart” (2.1.86).[8] Indeed, Falstaff retains our affection because of his appetite for life. He is jocular amid the gravitas of history and politics, which he scorns in favor of carpe diem.

Specifically, we enjoy his uniquely brilliant and quick wit, which, as he says, he also engenders in others. For instance, with his fancy for self-aggrandizement, he boasts to Hal how he fought off a dozen robbers. When the Prince confronts Falstaff with the truth—that only two men attacked Falstaff and his friends, and those two were, in fact, the Prince and Poins in disguise—Falstaff promptly reverses his story. In fact, he says, I knew the truth all along, and only fled lest I injure the heir to the throne. Falstaff’s oyster is limited by only his wit.

In the end, whether we laugh with Falstaff or at him, whether his convivial exuberance is something most of us privately crave and admire him for getting away with—whether he is fat or, as he prefers, “portly” (2.4.435)—depends on what preconceived beliefs we bring to the play. Hence, Falstaff’s famous lines begging Harry to banish the other scoundrels: “[B]ut for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff . . . banish not him. . . . Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world” (2.5.492-498).

*                      *                      *

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is another indelible character. He is as ambivalent and divided as one can be while remaining coherent. Of his many paradoxes, the greatest is this: does he feign madness, does he slip into madness at certain times, or does he actually become mad? On one hand, as early as his first confrontation with his dead father’s ghost—whom he neither fears nor doubts—Hamlet shows signs that he is losing his sanity. Further, although he announces his temporary insanity, even for a philosopher as brilliant as Hamlet, slipping into that role is surely burdensome and harrowing.

As the play progresses, Hamlet treads this fine line between sanity and insanity, reality and fantasy. But if sane, why does he ruminate incessantly about murder, and then kill Polonius impulsively? Why does he persist in such self-destructive behavior toward Ophelia, which, as one critic observes, crosses all rational bounds?[9] And why does he proclaim that life is so miserable, no one would willingly bear it (3.1.58)? Indeed, this sentiment parallels the thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche, who eventually collapsed and suffered a nervous breakdown. Moreover, when Hamlet declares, “I am but mad north-north west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw” (2.2.402-03), perhaps he is simply expressing denial, just as the economist John Nash initially refused to question his fantastical world of spying. We may even discern in Hamlet the OJ Simpson syndrome, whereby one can so convince oneself of something that one comes to believe it; Hamlet plays a madman for so long that he becomes mad.

And yet, we might argue that in becoming insane, instead of gradually degenerating, Hamlet’s transformation is expedient. In this way, Hamlet fulfills his pretense to deceive his family—maybe even the audience—while remaining true to himself. We might also note 3.2, in which Hamlet appropriately oscillates between erratic behavior, as when he asks Horatio to monitor Claudius during the play within the play, and focus, as when Claudius and Gertrude enter. And should we not take Hamlet at his word when he says, “I am but mad north-north west” (2.2.402)?

Moreover, rather than crazy, Hamlet might simply be distraught, fraught with emotions. After all, his father recently died—Hamlet suspects murder—his mother has just incestuously remarried Hamlet’s uncle, and a ghost is enjoining him to murder the king of his country. Thus trapped and vulnerable before the play begins, Hamlet’s later actions only exacerbate his depression, not his sanity. Ultimately, I believe that Hamlet knowingly makes himself insane; but the enormity of the consequences increasingly overwhelms his intense, fragile mind. We cannot, however, ascertain at what point Hamlet—and, by extension, man—stops pretending. Indeed, via Hamlet, Shakespeare induces us to question the standards by which we know ourselves to be sane.

In Hamlet’s “What piece of work is a man” speech, he begins by extolling man with Renaissance virtues—“[H]ow noble in reason, how infinite in faculties” (2.2.327-328)—and concludes with the biblical allusion that man is but a “quintessence of dust” (2.2.332). In this way, we cannot commit the prince wholly to any attitude, because every observation must admit its opposite. Yet Hamlet is no exception, for what makes Shakespeare’s characters Shakespeare’s characters are their passionate paradoxes, which it seems the Bard viewed as fundamentally shaping human nature. As Emerson observed, “[C]onsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. . . . With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”

[1] William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Westine (New Folger: New York, 1992). All subsequent citations regarding Shylock refer to this text, unless otherwise indicated.

[2] Ross Douthat, SparkNote on The Merchant of Venice, April 12, 2003.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York: Riverhead, 1998) p. 191.

[7] William Shakespeare, The History of Henry 4, Part 1. Eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Westine (New Folger: New York, 1994). All subsequent citations regarding Falstaff refer to this text, unless otherwise indicated.

[8] William Shakespeare, The History of Henry V. Eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Westine (New Folger: New York, 1995).

[9] Brian Phillips, SparkNote on Hamlet, April 8, 2003.

The Double-Ended Noose of Kurtz’s Power

Of Mr. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the novelist Joyce Carol Oates writes that what “releases his . . . self is simply distance from home, the freedom of a white man’s power over those whom he considers his racial ‘inferiors,’ whose influence over him is subliminal (2). Yet while distance, “freedom,” and the subliminal influence of the Congolese all conspire to bring about Kurtz’s logical fall from “grace,” Kurtz is not entirely helpless or blameless. For by the nature of his second-handed character, he invites certain self-disintegration. In Ayn Rand’s definition, a “second-hander” derives his sense of self from others. For others constitute the second-hander’s motive power; others are the primary object of his wishes, efforts, and ambitions. Thus, the second-hander, in his basest form the power-luster, is eager to accept the so-called white man’s burden to “civilize” primitive nonwhites.

Kurtz, in both his life and befitting death, typifies such megalomania: having arrived in Africa in the late 19th century to civilize the natives, Kurtz is instead converted by them to savagery. While from his company he receives impassioned accolades and the showiest perquisites, he lives a contradiction: by coveting the souls of others, he fatally and inevitably abandons his own.

The estrangement Oates writes of refers to the crucible that is Africa, which “had found [Kurtz] out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance” (Conrad, 98). Like the airtightness of Communism in Ayn Rand’s We the Living, the jungles of the Belgian Congo in Heart of Darkness foster a milieu conducive only to devastation and death. In particular, the pomp and circumstances castrate Kurtz psychologically and render him physically ill. And once madness of this magnitude takes holds, it becomes a beast that will stop at nothing short of its own demise.

To wit, as Marlow describes the effect of the jungle upon Kurtz: “The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like . . . an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and ­lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh and sealed his soul to its own by . . . some devilish initiation” (Conrad, 81). Thus situated, Kurtz’s actions reflect his new world. Here, profligacy has replaced self-control as the norm, and so the quest for ivory, having developed into an irresistible urge, is now a force Kurtz cannot resist.

Yet those who, like the district manager, undertake this expedition into the heart of darkness without moral reflection and only to sack ivory from the Congolese, manage to subsist. Similarly, Marlow, who is aloof though he does acknowledge the horrific reality of these expeditions, survives to relate the narrative. But those, like Kurtz, who confront the hypocrisy of imperialism and fail consequently to change, are themselves swallowed up by the darkness they had hoped to penetrate. Such introspection simply overwhelms Kurtz, who, unable to bear its weight, self-destructs.

Hence we see the link between madness and power. Kurtz’s follies reflect his raging hegemony; his swelling need to gratify his lusts propels his actions. Everything—despite its rationality and morality—which he wants, Kurtz pursues. And once Kurtz samples the fruit of power, there is no going back. In this way, having “kicked himself loose of the earth” (Conrad, 112), the beast that Kurtz becomes would rather die than be caged (amid civilized folk in Europe).

Of course, while Kurtz still retains “power” over the Congolese, instead of his enlightening them, they enlighten him: he takes “a high seat amongst the devils of the land” (Conrad, 82). As Lord Acton affirmed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The consequence, Conrad writes, is “that there was something wanting in him—some small [sic] matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence” (Conrad, 97-98). In other words, Kurtz sells his soul for a bloody pseudo-freedom, on which he draws to destroy everyone round him, including himself. While he does hold a leash round the Congolese, he inevitably learns, as does Gail Wynand in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, that “a leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.”

Kurtz is considered to be a “universal genius” (Conrad, 122) and an “emissary of pity, and science, and progress” (Conrad, 41): he was a politician, writer, artist, orator, poet, ivory producer, musician, and chief agent of his company’s Inner Station. Yet, as Marlow affirms, “The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own” (Conrad, 82). For Kurtz scatters his self everywhere and nowhere: he is “hollow at the core” (Conrad, 98), a being without integrity and even identity—a true second-hander. Indeed, a man accomplishes nothing if he attains power and prominence at the expense of pandering to others. “It is not he that triumphs, it is not his ideas and standards,” Ayn Rand observed. “It is only his physical frame” (71). Such is the effect of the subliminal influence Oates cites.

Moreover, Kurtz’s rapacious struggle isn’t even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion—a stamp of approval, not his own. He can find joy neither in the struggle nor in its completion. This final realization of the consequences of his life finds expression, as it must, in Kurtz’s dying wailing—“The horror! The horror!” (Conrad, 108).

Bibliography

Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer (New York: Signet, 1997).

Oates, Joyce Carol, Introduction, in Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer (New York: Signet, 1997).

Heathcliff As an Anti-Hero in Wuthering Heights

Should Joe average people our highest works of art, or should art be an Olympus in which we probe the souls of heroes? Aristotle argued for the latter: art should reflect life, not necessarily as it is, but as it might be and ought be. On this view, a novel’s characters—namely, its heroes—determine its aesthetic worth.

But what is a hero? Since a hero’s moral stature is unquestionably his most fundamental characteristic, a hero must above all be a moral giant. He must exhibit an uncompromising devotion to the good, that is, to life-promoting values. Failing this devotion, a character is a nonhero or an anti-hero. An anti-hero, like Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, surrenders his life to life-destroying values. Indeed, Wuthering Heights, which promotes themes such as necrophilia, angst, heinousness, vindictiveness, saturninity, and desperation, stresses the dominance of the evil. Accordingly, as one early reviewer wrote, “[T]he reader is shocked, disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity, and the most diabolical hate and vengeance.”[1] Another scholar concurs: the novel’s “most memorable scenes are . . . scenes of violence, and . . . its most memorable character is the” demonic Heathcliff.[2]

To be sure, Heathcliff, the sociopathic protagonist, defies rational empathy; as Nelly affirms, “It is preferable to be hated than loved by him” (180). And yet we expect him, at last, to possess some sort of dormant virtue, since the text presents him, as the protagonist, with at least the trappings of a hero. But to his death Heathcliff remains mulishly immoral. In fact, on several occasions, he confesses to Nelly that he is hell-bent on revenge toward those who have wronged him—even at the expense of wronging those who have never wronged him: his wife Isabella, his son Linton, his niece Cathy, and Cathy’s cousin Hareton. Indeed, his very features—dark, brooding, and menacing—bespeak a pathology that lies beneath.

In the end, Heathcliff himself realizes that his engrossing hostility has set the terms for his existence; he tells young Cathy that she “must learn to avoid putting [him] in a passion, or [he] shall really murder [her], some time!” (321). Thus, the text allows this gratuitous nihilism to drive the story all the along. Vengeance gradually erodes love as the novel’s central theme and so grants the evil crucial metaphysical power. And, of all characters, a villain dominates the text, thereby manifesting Brontë’s malevolent weltanschauung and rendering Wuthering Heights anti-heroic.

Of course, the text tempts us with the possibility that Heathcliff acts nobly—even heroically—out of an undying love for Catherine, his deceased soul mate. Accordingly, Heathcliff’s abnormalities merely express his obvious affliction with a bond he views as once and future; the consecration with which he exacts his revenge reveals, deep down, the heart of a hopeless romantic. But how many times must Heathcliff’s rancor shock us—kidnapping his future daughter-in-law and her maid until Catherine consents to marry Linton; nearly beating Hindley to death—“dashin[ing] his head repeatedly against the flags” [stones] (177); calling his wife a “wicked slut” to his son (208)—before we realize that his are the machinations of a sadist?

As evidence, consider the circumstances of Heathcliff’s death. His eerie behavior—rambling incoherently, shunning sustenance, beholding ghosts—seems conjoined to his mad obsession with Catherine, and his ever-increasing inability to function rationally in a world without her corporeal presence. But if it “sounds as if [he] had been laboring the whole time, only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity” (323), Heathcliff assures us that he has only “lost the faculty of enjoying [people’s] destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing” (323).

Indeed, that love obliges Heathcliff to suicide suggests that so entrenched in emotionalism was the first-love relationship of this foundling, that instead of experiencing it properly—on the basis of self-esteem—he sought in it escape and refuge from an inexplicable, increasingly tough-and-rough world. Fueled then by acute envy and jealousy, namely, toward the Lintons, Heathcliff perceived Edgar, who dared to encroach on his Catherine—his possession—as a sworn enemy. To Heathcliff, life lacking Catherine meant war, a war waged in the name of supernatural consummation (which, interestingly, contradicts Heathcliff’s lack of religion, as when he refuses to have a priest Christianize his death).

And yet—supposing Heathcliff’s means were to justify this Shakespearean end—what of Heathcliff’s happiness (here and now)? In short, Heathcliff leads a wretched life—“I take so little interest in my . . . life” he confesses to Nelly (323)—which causes him to find (supernatural) happiness in the renunciation of his (worldly) happiness. On those rare occasions when a modicum of joy escapes him, the epiphany mystifies his peers (326). Indeed, his countenance shortly after his death forms a sneer.

Thus, Wuthering Heights leaves one to conclude that a freak—not a hero—represents mankind. But why are the problems of a madman, like Heathcliff, of greater universal significance than the problems of a genius? Surely, man needs a vision of himself at his highest and best—to uplift and inspire him that he can—and should—do the same in his own life. “The sight of an achievement,” Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged, “is the greatest gift that a human being could offer to others.” Thus, if an artist’s vision upholds the triumph of the good, then its necessary literary form is a hero’s story.

Yet by regarding Heathcliff as worthy of primary artistic composition, Brontë neglects the fundamental artistic principle to enhance heroism, that is, to raise the culture by portraying its supreme inhabitants as, say, working toward a goal, fighting to succeed, and enjoying the victory. Instead, Bronte frames her plot around an antagonist who revolts against the very concept of heroism, a villain who never proffers a pretext or evinces any remorse for his depravity. This—for an artist to apply beauty’s celebratory power via a vile protagonist—degrades man and therefore marks the essence of anti-heroism.

Merciless and methodical in executing his spiteful plan—as his ultimate revenge, he compels a blameless Hareton to suffer as Hareton’s father made Heathcliff suffer—Heathcliff exceeds what is rational in his love for Catherine. In fact, no love on terms such as those between Catherine and Heathcliff—“I am Heathcliff” Catherine tells Nelly (82)—can sustain itself; it predictably burns too wild. Indeed, for all his violence, hatred, and vindictiveness, Heathcliff never even spiritually attains his goals, let alone practical triumph. He succeeds only in bringing Hindley to financial ruin, capturing Edgar Linton’s fortune, and creating in young Hareton an ignorant, petulant brute. For one cannot attain happiness by way of emotional, immoral whims. Rather, happiness—the happiness of a hero—as Rand puts it, is “a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not . . . work for your own destruction.”

[1] [Unsigned], [Title?], Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper, January 15, 1848, 77, in Miriam Allott (ed.), The Brontës: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1974), p. 228.

[2] Patsy Stoneman, “Introduction,” in Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (Great Britain: Oxford, 1998), p. vii.

Traditionalism vs. Defiance in a Streetcar Named Desire

The themes of Tennessee Williams’s Streetcar Named Desire follow Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind: the emotional struggle for supremacy between two characters who symbolize historical forces, between fantasy and reality, between the Old South and a New South, between civilized restraint and primitive desire, between traditionalism and defiance. If Blanche DuBois represents defunct Southern values, then Stanley Kowalski represents the new, urban modernity, and pays little heed to the past. If Stanley cannot inherit the DuBois’s plantation, he is no longer interested in it. Williams’s stage directions indicate that Stanley’s virile, aggressive brand of masculinity is to be admired. His cruel intolerance of Blanche is a justifiable response to her lies, hypocrisy, and mockery, but his nasty streak of violence against his wife appalls even his friends. His rape of Blanche is a horrifying and destructive act, as well as a cruel betrayal of Stella. Ultimately, however, this survivor disposes of the “paper moon” (99) Blanche, and, as we see in the closing lines of the play, he is able to comfort, with crude tumescence, Stella’s weeping, as the neighborhood returns to normality.

Blanche and Stella are the last in a line of landed Southern gentry. Years of “epic fornications” (43), as Blanche puts it, swallowed up the material resources of the family; all that remain are the manners and pretensions. Yet Blanche, with all her possessions in a valise, clings to her gilded, gaudy garb and imagines a world in which the values of the Old Guard, e.g., charm, wit, chivalry, and appearance—indeed, she—are still relevant. Stanley, in sharp contrast, is born of Polish immigrants; a sweat-shirted bowler and lothario, he is, as one critic has remarked, “a new breed, without breeding”—and “not the type that goes for jasmine perfume” (44). Stella, meanwhile, has renounced the worn dictates of class propriety to marry this uncouth sweetheart; she plays the placating intermediary between the poles of her husband and sister.

Since her husband, understandably, shot himself many years ago, Blanche has been avoiding reality in one way or another. In New Orleans, reality catches up to her in Stanley, who greets her brusquely. When he mentions her dead husband, Blanche becomes first confused and shaken, then ill. Later, while Blanche, as is her wont, is bathing, Stanley, imagining himself cheated of the Belle Reve plantation property, tears open Blanche’s trunk looking for sale papers. Blanche demonstrates a bewildering variety of moods in this scene (two), first flirting with Stanley, then discussing the legal transactions with calm irony, and finally becoming abruptly hysterical when Stanley picks up old love letters written by her dead husband.

As the play proceeds, Blanche copes by dissimulating the problem-full Elysian Fields for “a moonlight swim at the old rock quarry” (122). Her feelings against Stanley galvanize when she sees him strike his pregnant wife in a fit of drunken rage; Stanley’s feelings for her similarly harden when he overhears her belittle him as Neolithic and brutish. Blanche’s imposition, her airs, and her distortions of reality infuriate Stanley, and he begins to chip away at her veneer of armor.

Williams, who was an overt homosexual in a time unreceptive to such concepts, implies that Blanche, like himself, is society’s scapegoat; yet despite her neuroses, she is not a “bad person”—perhaps “no crazier than the average asshole out walkin’ around on the streets,” as McMurphy of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest proclaims. Alas, her doomed, dandy personality is no match for the destructive, dissolute Stanley, who represents the raw animal, the victorious dog in a dog-eat-dog world.

As Blanche admits to Stanley and later to her fiancé Mitch, “a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion” (41), and this woman has “old-fashioned ideals” (91): she doesn’t “tell the truth, [she] tell[s] what ought to be truth” (117), and prefers fantasy and shadows to the light of reality. Stanley, as her foil, is a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase kind of guy; he expects persons to “[l]ay . . . [their] cards on the table” (40), as if life itself was a game of seven-card stud. He is unamused by “Hollywood glamour stuff” (41), that is, the genteel lawn culture of French chitchat, social compliments, and humoring a fool and fraud like Blanche.

Thus, in one sense Blanche and her brother-in-law are trying to do outdo each other in competing for Stella; each would like to pull her beyond the reach of the other. But there is something more elemental in their opposition. They are incompatible forces, and harmony is no more than an evanescent regard for family. And yet there is a precarious sexual tension—they sleep separated by but portieres—and the mutual comprehension of the other’s weakness: just as Stanley recognizes the dependence (“on the kindness of strangers” [142]) in Blanche, Blanche “ha[s] an idea [Stella] doesn’t understand you [Stanley] as well as I [Blanche] do.” Thus culminates, amid “hot trumpets and drums,” the “date” (130) (rape) to which Blanche’s pomp and circumstance ineluctably give rise.

Indeed, in both origin and occupation, Stanley is new blood to Blanche and Stella’s blue blood. He stands on no ceremony; it is nothing for him to crush the outmoded sense of entitlement and superiority that Blanche personifies. That Williams has him trounce a lonely and widowed gadfly-gadabout, illustrates the new rules of ruthlessness and perhaps soullessness.

And yet Blanche, having watched her family estate slip through her fingers, fails to see the decadence of her patrician Belle Reve existence; Social Darwinism has replaced gentility, and this “old maid schoolteacher” (55) is really an alcoholic, nymphomaniac, parasitical casualty of the changeover. She puts on the airs of a belle who has never known indignity, but Stanley sees through her. As Eunice says, “Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep on going” (133).