Blanche DuBois

Grew Up… with a silver spoon in her mouth. Blanche’s family was once prosperous, landed and wealthy, but a series of family deaths devastated the DuBoises. Now, Blanche’s inheritance is gone and her old home, “Belle Reve,” has been taken away from her.

Visiting… New Orleans. After being evicted from her home, Blanche has been forced to go stay with her sister, Stella, who lives with her husband Stanley in the city's French Quarter.

Profession… a former schoolteacher, Blanche is now unemployed. She was fired for having an affair with a 17-year-old pupil – a secret which she'd like to keep private.

Interests… booze. Blanche does her best to hide her alcoholism behind good manners and a sense of propriety, but beneath her polished exterior is an insecure woman who hides the truth of her suffering with lies. “I don’t want realism, I want magic!” she says, “Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don’t tell truths. I tell what ought to be the truth.”

Relationship Status… widowed. Blanche’s husband came to an unfortunate end, and Blanche's been trying her best to forget him ever since. Now that she’s arrived in New Orleans, she’s hoping to find a man who will be her saving grace.

Challenge… protecting herself from Stella’s brutish husband, Stanley. From the very beginning, Blanche and Stanley have found each other disagreeable. The powerful, animalistic man doesn’t have much patience for the snobby Blanche, and she returns the feeling. “He’s like an animal," Blanche complains to Stella. "He has an animal’s habits. There’s even something subhuman about him."

Personality… pretentious, flighty, and insecure. Beneath all of Blanche’s rudeness and self-importance is a woman terrified of aging and losing her looks, one teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown.