"The only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy."- Susanna Kaysen

Throughout the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, there are multiple occasions where one can see Blanche’s gradual decline of her mental state. There are many incidences where Blanche is caught in lies and illusions, mostly by Stanley, and the truth slowly becomes revealed. Blanche is in denial of her past and presents herself to everyone, including herself, with a facade of someone who has traits such as youthfulness, lushness, wealth, extravagance, superiority, class, and “old-fashioned”. Her sister, Stella, is Blanche’s main enabler; Stella comes up with multitudinous explanations of why Blanche is the way she is and not only defends her, but feeds into Blanche’s illusions and fantasies. As the play progresses, it becomes evident that Stella also has her own illusions in terms of who Stanley is and her relationship with him.  In terms of psychology, it is clear that both Stella and Blanche portray many of Sigmund Freud’s theory ego-defense mechanisms such as denial, rationalization and repression.

Although Stella clearly loves her sister, Blanche, Stella values her relationship with Stanley so profoundly that she will go through any measure necessary to preserve it. She wants to keep the illusion of her happily married life with Stanley before the secrets and truths started arising. Throughout the play, Blanche constantly tries to make Stella realize that Stella and Stanley’s attraction is purely physical and their relationship solely revolves around sexuality. When Stanley drunkenly hits her while she is pregnant and Stella runs upstairs with Blanche, he calls up to Stella with enormous apologetic cries, screaming her name. Blanche pleads with Stella and is very candor towards her in telling her to leave him and his barbarity. Blanche begs Stella to run away with her and escape Stanley but Stella is too aloof, passive, and “blinded by love” to listen to Blanche. When Stella comes back down to her and Stanley’s apartment, they become very sexual and make love and all of his wrong doings disappear, giving Stanley complete power over Stella. Stanley consistently uses sex as a way to assert his dominance throughout the entire play. Later in the play, when Blanche confides in Stella and tries to tell her that Stanley had raped her, Stella immediately comes to the conclusion that Blanche is mentally ill and sends her to the mental hospital. Stella then says to her friend, Eunice, “I couldn’t go on believing her story and live with Stanley” (Williams, 1232). Stella explains to Eunice that she cannot accept and truly believe that Stanley raped Blanche and live the life she desperately wanted to have with him. If Stella is to believe Blanche, she and Stanley’s marriage and relationship would crumble and fall apart. It was inevitable that Stella would have to choose either Stanley or Blanche, and in the end she chose Stanley. When Blanche is leaving, Stella starts to cry but with a sense of surrender and luxury; she is nearly relieved that she can go back to living her illusion with Stanley and their “perfect” life. At the end of the play in scene 11, Stanley tries to calm Stella while she is sobbing and starts opening her blouse with his fingers and says, “Now, now love. Now, love…” (Williams, 1843) Stella continues to refuse to believe that Stanley is an abusive, rapist, animalistic drunkard who focuses on sex as a solution to all of their problems. All Stella wants is for everything to be the way it was—or the way she thinks it was—before Blanche’s arrival; she wants to still believe in her illusion of Stanley and what makes her “happy”. Stella realizes she simply cannot be married with a newborn and happy with a man she knows raped her sister; she couldn’t bear the truth destroying the happiness she had thought she had.

Many psychologists would use Sigmund Freud’s analysis of the psyche to determine some psychological issues Stella may have. Freud created a theory based on Ego-Defense Mechanisms. The “ego” is defined as a segment of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is gives a person as sense of identity and reality; the ego deploys sets of defense mechanisms in order to cope with life and stress. It protects us from feeling anxiety, guilt, stress, sadness, regret, etc. Although there is a lengthy list of different types of defense mechanisms, Stella seems to only suffer from a few. Some psychologists may suggest that she suffers from denial, some may suggest rationalization, and maybe even repression; but some may say she suffers from all of the aforementioned ego-defense mechanisms and possibly more. According to the article Defense Mechanisms by Saul McLeod, denial is when “[One] is blocking external events from awareness.  If some situation is just too much to handle, the person just refuses to experience it.  As you might imagine, this is a primitive and dangerous defense - no one disregards reality and gets away with it for long! It can operate by itself or, more commonly, in combination with other, more subtle mechanisms that support it.” (McLeod) This relates to Stella because she is in denial of not only Blanche’s mental instability, but she is in denial of who Stanley really is, as mentioned before, and what their relationship really entails. She is in denial that Stanley actually raped Blanche in order to preserve her illusion of their marriage. Rationalization is the “cognitive distortion of ‘the facts’ to make an event or an impulse less threatening.  We do it often enough on a fairly conscious level when we provide ourselves with excuses.  But for many people, with sensitive egos, making excuses comes so easy that they never are truly aware of it.  In other words, many of us are quite prepared to believe our lies.” (McLeod) Throughout the play, Stella makes excuses for Blanche saying she’s had a rough life and she is very sensitive. She feeds into Blanche’s lies and plays along with her illusions. Stella also makes excuses for Stanley and his actions toward Blanche; she makes excuses for how Stanley acts. Stella thinks he only hit her because he was drunk and playing poker and he was truly sorry because he called for her and made love to her. Repression is “the first defense mechanism that Freud discovered, and arguably the most important. Repression is an unconscious mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious. Thoughts that are often repressed are those that would result in feeling of guilt from the superego. For example, in the Oedipus complex aggressive thoughts about the same sex parents are repressed. This is not a very successful defense in the long term since it involves forcing disturbing wishes, ideas or memories into the unconscious, where, although hidden, they will create anxiety.” (McLeod) Stella is seen repressing conscious thought when she thinks about Stanley raping Blanche. She tries and will continue to try to keep the idea of Stanley raping Blanche out of her head; instead, she blames Blanche’s illness and sends her away. She represses the truth throughout the whole play (whether about Blanche or Stanley) and finally snaps when she realizes that if she continues to believe what Blanche says, she could not be able to live happily with Stanley. She would be forced to realize and accept that he is a rapist, abusive, dominant, perverted jerk.

Both Stella and Blanche clearly have emotional and psychological problems due to traumatic events that have led them both to the aforementioned defense mechanisms and Blanche’s decline of her mental state. Although Stella does not become mentally ill and near Schizophrenia like Blanche, she still uses illusions and fantasies as a way to cope with life and reality. She only wanted to keep the peace between Stanley and Blanche, blind to who they both really are. The main difference between Stella and Blanche is that Stella knows who she is; she creates illusions of those around her to cope with who they are to be who she wants them to be. Blanche knows who those around her are, but she makes illusions of her own self to cope with her past to be who she wants herself to be. Stella was able to make excuses for Blanche and put up with her illusions but only after her relationship with Stanley is threatened does she finally deems Blanche mentally ill and calls for doctors to come get her. By the end of the play, Stella never accepts who Stanley truly is and Blanche only seems to become more mentally unstable and unaware of whom she is, possibly nearing Schizophrenia. If Stella is ever to believe Blanche and take her side, this would jeopardize Stella’s own mental state; believing that Stanley did not rape Blanche is the only way to keep her sanity.

           

Works cited: 

McLeod, Saul. "Defense Mechanisms." SimplyPsychology. Simply Psychology, n.d. Web. 6 Mar 2014. <http://www.simplypsychology.org/defense-mechanisms.html>.