Minji Cho

Prof. Kyle Brebner

IERW (03)

05 October 2015

Blanche in <A Streetcar Named Desire> and Ophelia in <Hamlet>

One of the greatest American Plays <A Streetcar Named Desire> written by Tennesse Williams has born the attractive woman character, Blanche Dubois. Ophelia in <Hamlet>,  written by William Shakespeare is second to none in great woman characters in English play history. Two women characters have one common thing that they possess self-images distorted by others as well as two different features I found in various criteria.

Blanche and Ophelia are similar in that both have images misunderstood by others, especially men. In peculiar, Blanche is disgraced by Mitch, her boyfriend, because he revealed all her unclean past in Laurel, hometown of Blanche that she lived in for a long time. Mitch is a phony gentleman who has a bias toward women: one is that woman is a maternal human being like Diana, the goddess in Greek-Roman myth who represents purity, and another is that woman is a lustful being which is like Venus, the goddess in Greek-Roman myth who symbolizes human instinct for beauty and desire. In the story, Blanche is not treated as a precious and admirable woman by Mitch because Mitch looked only a slice of her life. Likewise, Ophelia, a lover of Hamlet, is easily taken advantage of her father’s dark designs to find out Hamlet’s real thoughts. She is treated badly, ignored, and even fell into contempt by Hamlet to go to nunnery. Through the lines that Hamlet curses and makes fool of Ophelia, we can read out that Hamlet’s misogynistic attitude. Ophelia is completely dissembled by Hamlet: she is not regarded as a precious lover and meaningful existence.

However the two women characters deal with this wrong cognition of men toward themselves in different ways. In Williams’ artwork, Blanche experiences this sort of emotional violence and copes with independent attitude. She shouts “Fire! Fire!”, to expel Mitch, attempting sexual harassment, and protect herself from external threats. In this manner, Miss Dubois is regarded as an active and dependent woman. On the other hand, Ophelia is described as beautiful but weak, indecisive and even dependent on man. As soon as she becomes not regarded as a precious lover, she loses the meaning and is destroyed by man’s view, being degraded as trivial by Hamlet. She becomes totally mad and gives up her own life. In this light, how to deal with man’s gaze by Ophelia drew by William Shakespeare is different from that of Blanche portraited by Tennesse Williams.

             Second, the two women characters have their own color symbolizing each personality, especially shown with the colors of clothing. Blanche has her own symbolic color, white. As we can recognize easily through her name meaning ‘white’ in French, the color white symbolizes herself. Adding to her name, when she appears in Scene One, “she is daintly dressed in a white suit with a fluffly bodies, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and a hat”. She always wears only while color clothes and this stands for purity, cleanness, and innocence. On the other hand, Ophelia wears quite colorful dresses. In particular, she puts on red, rose, wine-colored dresses, quite contrast with her inner personality. In my opinion as a high-class woman in such a Renaissance period, Ophelia’s clothes should be elegant and impressive colored like red so she has to appear to be strong enough to others. As a result, the author’s use of this color brings a great effect on readers to understand the main character efficiently.

In conclusion, even though Blanche and Ophelia are totally different characters in different literary works, they have not only a similarity in that both are reflected badly by other people, but also differences in that they solve the problem with their own way and they have individual symbolic colors.