Deception and Illusion in Tennessee Williams

Deception and Illusion in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire


Blanche DuBois succinctly summarizes herself and her vision of the world with two words: “I misrepresent.” (A Streetcar Named Desire, hereafter SND, p. 117 ). In fact, she misrepresents virtually everything about herself and her world. For Blanche DuBois, the world is composed of multiple elements in which she either deceives herself unknowingly or intentionally embraces an illusion. Blanche shows up at her sister’s home in New Orleans, having lost the family plantation in Mississippi. She holds herself blameless for this loss—a deception of personal responsibility. Symbolically, the plantation’s very name, Belle Reve, implies a beautiful dream of a life style that may never have been a reality. Blanche further deludes herself by maintaining a contradiction about the importance of her own physical appearance and constantly misrepresents her own age. She has a personal illusion about l...