I'm sure this was considered a bad thing in the 1950s... now it almost seems comical for Blanche to say that...thank God. Love this film, an incredible play, everyone...take into account the time. Damn, I am so happy things are different now.
shareSo am I.
Turning 30 didn't freak me out. The women in my mother's family don't age that quickly, starting with her own generation.
The Fabio Principle: Puffy shirts look best on men who look even better without them.
Thirty is very young today, and wasn't much different in the 1950s. The audience probably laughed then, too. But Blanche was deranged, so what she has to say about anything doesn't carry much credibility.
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Even then, being 30 wasn't a tragedy to anyone but her.
She was a widow of 30, slim, beautiful, unburdened by children, and eager to make a man happy, if she'd gotten out of Stanley's apartment and made an effort to circulate, she would have been asked out by half the men in New Orleans. But that wasn't good enough for her, her self-image was that of the young belle of the ball whose gentleman callers came to her, she just couldn't deal with the change in circumstances.
Blanche does have a severe narcissism problem.
sharePerhaps, not just narcissism. I think there was some massive guilt and depression at work, or other mental issues, keeping her lying around, drinking, and moaning about the past, instead of going out and making a new life for herself.
I mean if this woman had gotten off her ass, gone out and charmed her way into a retail job, she would have met men much higher up the social scale than Mitch! And possibly earned enough to rent a little apartment or a room in a ladies' boarding house, and maybe enjoyed a tiny bit of city life before she nailed down the next husband. And believe me, people in the fifties may have been a lot harder on 30 year old women that we are now, but Blanche was lovely, charming, a respectable widow from a good family, etc., she'd have been considered a catch for a respectable man over forty (who wasn't too curious about her past).
But no, she just lay around Stanley and Stella's apartment, doing nothing, not wanting Mitch, but making zero effort to find any other way out of her current muddle.
I concur with that. She got wrapped up in self-delusion and a kind of "illusion of social invulnerability". With all that gone, she was depressed and lost.
shareI respectfully disagree: She explains her situation to Mitch in both the scene where she talks about Alan's suicide and when he accuses her of not being straight. She fell into a depression after her husband's death, compounded by the guilt she feels about unwittingly driving him to it. And she was left responsible for the care of the parade of deaths at Belle Reve, as well as trying to support the maintenance of the estate. Stella wasn't there to help her, and she wasn't educated in estate management. She says plainly to Mitch that the relatives she had to nurse were accusatory to each other; that "death was as near as you are." She is a woman who has been left on her own with burdens both internal and external. And no one near her now understands her or knows how to help her. She is not lazy, she is dangerously depressed.
shareAttitudes may change but biologically does not.
By the time a woman reaches 30 years of age, 50% of her eggs are not viable. By the time she reaches 40, it has risen to 90%.
Most women still DO want to start a family.
Well, you are 38 now. Still not bothered?
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