You Didn't Know Blanche, As A Girl! No One Was As Tender Or Trusting, As She Was! But People Like You Abused Her, And Forced Her To Change!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                                 The recent exhibit, on Tennessee Williams, at the Morgan, got me to thinking not only about Blanche, 'Streetcar', and the two women who embody the role--Jessica Tandy and Vivien  Leigh--but all the Blanches still out there, which I sometimes include myself among.

                                  So, let us discuss this.  There is not much to go on regarding Tandy's performance, except photos, and 29 minute series of excerpts to be heard on You Tube,

                                   These photos illustrate the heartbreak of Blanche.  Tandy is less attractive than Leigh, so she comes off as more faded, more damaged, as an unattractive spinster falls into the clutches of alcoholism and nymphomania--before being destroyed, in calculated fashion, by her brother-n-law.  Look at the heartbreak on Tandy's face. She is in glorious character as the broken Blanche, and her performance must have been shattering.

                                     Now, Vivien Leigh's attractiveness would draw the men Blanche craved, but in the end, she knew she was being used. She thinks she is in control, which, is why, at the close, her Blanche seems to have more strength.  By the time she walks through that room a final time, she has eyes for no one but the doctor.  Though Kazan turns his camera on the sadness of Mitch, who shares complicity in her destruction, she has no idea he exists.  And, when the camera goes around the corner, past the Four Deuces, Blanche is seen, almost resigned and accepting to what lies before her. Which makes her even more tragic than Tandy--once Blanche arrives at the mental hospital, what is there left of life for her?  Vivien's Blanche makes viewers wonder how things continued for her after the story's end.

                                   Stella is also a tragic figure.  There is no doubt in my mind that she knows Blanche is telling the truth--that Stanley raped her sister.  But she is as trapped as Blanche--and with a baby yet!!!!!!!!!!  Blanche had no place to go, but was on her own.  Stella would have faced the same, but with a baby--and consider the time of the story!!!!!!!!!!  Both sisters caught in a trap, set for both, by Stanley!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                     Am I Blanche?  I wonder.  As Vivien Leigh drives off in the car, there is a semblance of Scarlett's strength, seen in those eyes, that will enable her to deal with what she must.  Sometimes I think I have that, myself, but sometimes I am as fearful about being left alone as Blanche is, and having to face the realities of a corporatized world I simply do not approve of.  Like Blanche, I simply will not "hang back with the brutes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                                     And yes, when young, I was as tender and trusting as Blanche.  I never  lost my capacity to love, but what happened to that innocent lad who believed in the goodness of everything, until around junior high???????????   Did I become stronger?  Or weaker?

                                      I wrote, awhile back, about being Savannah Wingo in "The Prince Of Tides," a true descendant of Blanche.  Maybe it is not so much my being them, as knowing where they have come from.  I have empathy for both characters, and have experienced, in smallest similarities what they have experienced.  Similarities, to a degree, we all, more or less, share.

                                     Now Savannah, despite the suicide attempts, finds strength, just as Vivien's Blanche is seen summoning the strength to deal with what is at hand.  They are survivors.  In some ways, I feel that I am, too.  But I don't like my survivorship being tested!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                      Blanche's most heartbreaking line is in her monologue about Allen Grey, when she says "And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again, and never, for once moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this kitchen candle."  Blanche lost more than Allen; she lost her capacity to love, in one act of cruelty, which she can never forgive herself for, and has deprived her of the capacity to love.

                                       I have never lost that capacity.  My heart goes out to Blanche.  I have actually seen, someone, a childhood friend, not unlike she, disintegrate before my eyes.

                                        I pray I have the courageous Blanche in me, and not the self-destructive one!!!!!!!!!!!