Explore the construction of self-narratives in A Streetcar Named Desire, Othello and Mrs. Dalloway.

In all three texts, the construction of self-narratives is an instrumental part of the storytelling process. This building of one’s own narrative is shown to lead to an attribute of self-fashioning which all the lead characters possess. They tend to be unreliable in their perception of events and situations and often lead the audience to perceive them as somewhat egocentric and narcissistic. The former of these seems to be deeply rooted in the way they perceive events to be solely concerning or regarding themselves as opposed to considering the impact on anyone else. First impressions are intrinsic to how people are judged by others; in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche’s awareness of this provokes her need to craft her own self-narrative. When Blanche enters the play, she is presented as adamant to portray herself as superior to Stella who has evidently had more traditional success in life, with a house and husband of her own. We witness Blanche combat this feeling of inferiority, fashioning a façade of composure and control over her own life, exemplified immediately with Williams's depiction of her, dressed for “summer tea in the garden” with “earrings of pearl” and “white gloves”, despite her recent struggles with Belle Reve where she agonized over the ownership of her childhood home amongst an array of death in the family where she “stayed and struggled”. In this sense, as a character, she is betrayed by her creator; Williams continuously directs the audience to the truth, writing Blanche as an unreliable narrator who ‘distorts and conceals reality’. Blanche claims to be indifferent to a drink, shunning the idea of being a “drunkard”. Albeit Williams in stage directions, exposes her alcoholism: she “springs up” at the sight of a half-opened bottle and drinks, yet in Stella’s company she pretends this did not happen, asking where the whisky is, before rushing “to the closet and removing the bottle”.