Here are two fictional women who are the same age:
Blanche DuBois:
And Jessica Day:
Blanche, you may or may not recall, is the star of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, a play from 1947. She is a thirty-year-old schoolteacher.
Jessica, you may or may not be aware, is the star of Fox’s The New Girl, a television show from right now. She is a thirty-one-year-old schoolteacher.
Here is a little something about Blanche: “Her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district. She is about five years older than Stella [Stella is 25]. Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.”
Here is a little something about Jess: “Jessica Day, or more commonly known as Jess, is the main character of New Girl. She is a bubbly young woman who just turned 31, trying to find herself after a shocking breakup with her boyfriend, whom she caught cheating. She has been a teacher since 2006 and she loves to play the handbells. Jess enjoys crafting, but doesn’t have much time for it anymore. She also writes Nancy Drew fan-fiction. She needed a new place to live due to breaking up with her boyfriend, so she moved in with three men named Nick, Schmidt and Winston. Her best friend is a model named Cece.”
Jessica enjoys playing sports with her group of attractive, racially diverse friends and going out on the weekends. Here she is during a game of touch football.
Blanche DuBois enjoys spiraling into madness. She must move in with her younger sister because she has turned thirty. Due to her being thirty, she finds lightbulbs and the harsh glare of the noon sun painful (because being thirty is taking away her beautiful face).
Blanche DuBois is thirty years old. Here are some things people have to say about Blanche’s appearance and personality:
“Daylight never exposed so total a ruin!”
“Genuine fox fur-pieces, a half a mile long!”
“I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.”
“Oh, in my youth I excited some admiration. But look at me now! [She smiles at him radiantly] Would you think it possible that I was once considered to be–attractive?”
“I never was hard or sell-sufficient enough. When people are soft–soft people have got to shimmer and glow–they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a–paper lantern over the light…. It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I–I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick.”
“And men don’t want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand men lose interest quickly. Especially when the girl is over–thirty. They think a girl over thirty ought to–the vulgar term is–”put out”… And I–I’m not “putting out.” Of course he–he doesn’t know–I mean I haven’t informed him–of my real age!”
Jessica Day is thirty-one years old. Here are some things people have to say about Jessica’s appearance and personality.
“Pink wine makes me slutty.”
“I am throwing Cece’s surprise bachelorette party here tonight, and the only males invited are strippers, so oil up or get out, guys.”
To recap: Blanche DuBois is a thirty-year-old woman who has to move in with her sister and her sister’s husband because she has turned thirty. She married a gay guy once and this made her insane. After her boyfriend finds out she used to have other boyfriends, he leaves her forever and she goes so insane she goes to prison. This was an actual thing that happened to an actual fictional character in the 1940s, at which point the following things already existed:
- The Kinsey Report
- Superman
- Frisbees
- Penicillin
- Latex condoms
- Bikinis
- New Orleans’ first gay bar
- Tampax
Please join me in imagining the plot of A Streetcar Named Desire as set in the world of New Girl.
“Darling! Stella — please! You must understand. I’ve got to come and live with you. Can’t I please come and live with you? I’ve — you see I’ve nowhere else to go.”
“Why?”
“Stella…[whispered] I’m thirty.”
“Oh! Happy birthday. I still don’t see how th–”
“I married a gay guy once.”
“Oh.”
“So I need you to take me in.”
“So will you be getting a job, or…”
“HE WAS GAY.”
“Right. You mentioned that.”
“So beautiful, but so gay.”
“I — this was, like — and i don’t mean to demean your pain but — this was like multiple years ago, right?”
“Please! Don’t turn on the lights! I’m thirty!”
ACT II
“Mitch, I know a few things about your precious girl Blanche that might change your mind about her.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s dated other guys before.”
“What, like…a hundred or something?”
“No…I don’t think so. But definitely some.”
FIN
This has been your daily reminder that the past is different from the present.
Tags: a streetcar named desire, blanche dubois, changes, new girl, o tempora o mores, tennessee williams, the past is different
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Every time I get worried about the state of the world, I remember that things were WAY WORSE 100 years ago.
I just finished The Poisoner’s Handbook and HOLY FUCK AM I HAPPY I was born when I was.
Drive-by love for one of my favorite pieces of nonfiction ever! The way the different poisoning cases are woven together with the rise of forensics and the backdrop of Prohibition is so well done. But definitely glad I live after science has progressed a bit further.
It was amazing how she kept both the chemistry and the narrative afloat with all their complexity. Fantastic book!
This is even more fun if you read the lines in that play in the voice of characters from New Girl, i.e., “What, like…a hundred or something?” sounds like something Nick would say.
For a minute I had some crossed wires in my brain and thought that Blanche DuBois was the heroine of Gone With The Wind and was very confused.
Ha ha, when I first read the summary on facebook I was picturing Blanche from Golden Girls and I was super confused.
YES, ME TOO. I was sitting there saying, “Um, no way was she 30. She dated like 100 men maybe, but she’s not THIRTY.”
ME TOO! I was like, wait, does she mean Rue McLanahan in Maude?
Ha! I thought of Blanche Devereaux from the Golden Girls and thought what the what?!
They were both played by the same actress, Vivien Leigh
“I’d go to fight those Yankees, with God as my witness, but…I’m…thirty!”
You could make a similar comparison to Anne in “Persuasion”. Austen comments several times about her lost bloom, and how she has regained her bloom. Very short shelf life, those blooms.
Yeah, a lot of her protags are on the very verge of being withered husks, ancient doddering crones. You know. like, 29.
The Bloom begins at about 14, is at it’s best at 19, is fading by 25 and is GONE GONE GONE NEVER TO RETURN OH THE HORROR AND PITY OF HER LOST BEAUTY at 35.
I have based this on my reading.
Right? And Anne was only 27! I’ve got 3 years before my Bloom withers into nothingness, I guess. Unless a handsome sea captain enters my life, then all bets are off the on the Bloom’s expiration date.
I always thought that loss of her bloom was on accounta her extreme sadness and disappointment over her lost love affair. That made it nicer when she got it back because she was in love again and happy. I remember that even Captain Wentworth remarked on how changed (ugly) she was. Poor Anne!
True, though I think most of her family didn’t notice that was the cause of her longterm changes, and tended to treat her as though her loss of youth was the reason she was no longer ~lovely. They weren’t the most observant bunch when it came to things other than themselves. As readers we knew she suffered because of her lost love/disappointment over opportunities missed, but to most characters in her immediate sphere (except Wentworth! My favorite Austen man tbh) that wasn’t necessarily on their radar, was it?
Of course, it’s been a while since I’ve read Persuasion so I could be remembering wrong! It’s high time for a re-read. Anne Elliot is probably my favorite Austen heroine. Sweet Anne.
Thankfully, you don’t really start to look busted until 35, 36.
Causaubon, the oldest, most busted and dried-up human that has ever lived is five-and-forty.
Casaubon was busted in his soul, though.
Shit, I’ve only got 10 more months.
I’m 37, and I try to affect the “tragic, formerly beautiful” thing.
I don’t know if it’s working.
DAMN IT.
Zooey Deschanel’s actual age is 34. TIME IS RUNNING OUT.
We’ve come, well, a way, baby. Many rivers to cross still, though.
Is Blanche REALLY supposed to be just thirty, though? Leigh was of course considerably older than that when she played Blanche.
well, she was 38, which, as a 39 year old, I have heavy investment in judging to not be … CONSIDERABLY older
Check out the stage directions! Stella is ‘a young woman of twenty-five’ and a page later Blanche is described as being five years older than her. THIRTY. FADING, FADING THIRTY.
Never having read the stage directions, I was always under the impression that Blanche was the much older sister, like pushing 50 older, and they had glammed her up for Leigh to play her as looking 30ish. Especially since they talk about the doomed gay boyfriend like he was in the distant past. Time must have gone faster back then, if a decade (at most) was sooooo long ago.
And maybe I’m confusing another character in another play with Blanche. I thought Laurette Taylor once played Blanche, when Taylor was well into her 40s. It’s been a long time since theatre history classes in college, an actual long time, like more than one decade–
On the other hand, all of T. Williams characters were so damaged and so out of it from the start, that there was no hope for any of them, no matter what their age.
It’s really true. I got an audition to play Stella when I was about 26 and was like “but I’m way too young for that!” Then I read the play and subsequently died of old age.
I always get this weird sense when I’m reading classic literature. Like, Jane Eyre is 19. I was NOT that together at 19. And references to women being ‘quite an old maid at 28’.
I got married at 24, which I feel is very young for the modern era, but was basically leaving right to the last minute for older works.
I think we should all agree it was those high mortality rates and just be thankful we have better options and longer lives. I mean, even blind Rochester is kind of a drag, right?
Our worth is now only MOSTLY about our youth, beauty and marriagability! Strides Have Been Made.
(I actually kind of approve of Jane/Rochester, mainly because it is a rare case of actual intellectual, spiritual and emotional equality in a victorian relationship)
oh, such a drag, but the whole deal with marrying some bellowing old wreck when you are fresh and 19 is that you put up with him for 15 years and then he dies and you are a young widow with an estate! You pay up front and the reward comes in time. I really feel that people who people who complain about age differences in old-timey patriarchal romances are misunderstanding what the payoff is supposed to be. I mean, if you marry another 19-year-old you could live your whole life under his thumb and never be free, that is a horror story for you.
I don’t know about that. I mean, it is nice in theory, but really if a young woman was marrying a much older man, it was probably that he had been married and widowed once or twice before. If you manage to outlive him, there may be a “reward” of having your own estate, but the big concern would be living through childbirth. (I mean, I realize that is not the case in Jane Eyre but you know.)
However, now you have the option of continuing in this habit for between one and five husbands, and sometimes they’re bellowing wrecks for fully twice the contractually expected time, resulting in both a reputation as a ghastly black widow AND envy from your peers for your quite reasonable retirement, and then also being seduced by the wreck’s eldest son, who is still four years your senior.
Speaking hypothetically.
This certainly was never an expected and condoned career path in my extended family.
*narrows eyes *
ARE YOU RELATED TO BECKY SHARP???
It was a challenge for me to sort out why Vanity Fair was filed under fiction, that’s for sure.
Not to mention that, because we now have Viagra, those bellowing wrecks still want to keep getting it loooong into their wreckage. I remember hearing about how the American forces were doling out Viagra in exchange for cooperation from Afghani tribal leaders and how miserable that was making their multiple wives who were hoping to be left alone at that stage.
I’ve also heard that sentiment reported from plain ol’ American single-wives, let alone the multiple Afghan tribal leader wives.
Anne Lister’s girlfriend, Marianne, tried this, and it didn’t work. Anne and Marianne were in love, but M didn’t have the finances to set up as an independent woman. They decided that Marianne would marry the rich old dude who’d been leching after her. He’d pop off after five years or so, then M and Anne would move in together as respectable widow and spinster.
Rich old dude not only survived Marianne, but gave her an STD which she gave to Anne, who subsequently gave it to at least one other girlfriend. Ironically, this STD was probably less harmful than the accepted early nineteenth century cure: liquid mercury drops. Which Anne took faithfully.
Argh.
I know what you mean! I am 36 and a confirmed spinster – I think tho an extent you ‘woman u[‘ and do what you have to get done, and I know I can be a grownup when the situation demands it, but I am glad I have the luxury of being able to be daft when I want to.
Not just classic literature, but even pop culture stuff like George RR Martin. In his books, Daenerys is 13 when she marries Khal Drogo, Rob Stark and Jon Snow are both 15 and leading armies/slaying white walkers. The ages are really disturbing to be and I’m so glad the TV show increases all of them.
to be fair those books are pseudo-medieval, and GRR had planned on aging them up between books, but realized it wouldn’t work, and has since expressed regret at not making them older to begin with. (read: I just imagine them as being their show ages, and my self delusion is close enough for government work)
I use that form of self-delusion too! I think GRRM has used the tv show to do a lot of things he realized that he wanted in the books after they were published.
yeah, I really feel for the guy, I think he would love the chance to go back and revise things like that, and now he’s stuck with what he published a decade ago.
I remember once reading something by a historian about some medieval campaign which went disastrously wrong, and when discussing the reasons why the campaign leaders fucked up so badly included, ‘Don’t forget that the ‘Lords’ leading the campaign had an average age of about 16′.
It is annoying me that I can’t remember more specific facts.
When I read the Pillow Book, I sometimes wonder why the entire Heian court sounds like a deranged boarding school. Then I remember that the emperor and empress were something like fourteen and seventeen, and it all makes sense. They’re acting like a bunch of rich, bored teenagers because they WERE rich, bored teenagers.
(“She ruined my snow mountain? Why, WHYYYYYYYYY?!”
“I guess she just didn’t want you to win.”)
Apropos of nothing I’d like to issue a Standard Discussion of Mortality Rates: Reading that “the mortality rate was 45” does not mean that if you lived to be 45 you were INSANELY ELDERLY unless we are discussing literal cavemen. The mortality rate is calculated taking into account infant and children’s deaths, and if you consider that something like 1/5 to 1/3 to 1/2 of children (depending on time and place) didn’t live to age 5, that has an amazing impact on the mortality rate.
Generally speaking, in the past, if you lived past age 5, your odds were looking great for age 15. If you reached age 20, you would probably be just fine, on average, to reach your sixties or so.
The accepted average for women who died in childbirth in the past was 1 per 100 births (this is strictly birth complications, not taking into account puerperal fever and the like), but if you consider that most women would give birth between 5 and 12 times in their lifetime, the VERY ROUGH AVERAGE rate for women who died in childbirth was one out of every eight or so. (So, enough that most people who have known someone.) This skews the statistics a bit and brings down women’s mortality rates quite a bit.
Furthermore, while I’m being all pedantic, it is really difficult to judge “average age to marry” without a specific time and place in mind! Women in pre-industrial England, for example, did not typically marry until 19 or 20, which is not that far off today, and men not until their mid-20s (when they were established enough to support a family). So younger, but not the “early teens” young we tend to envision today. A lot of our ideas are shaped by literature, which tends to focus on upper-class people who married younger for many reasons, but was not quite as common as we tend to believe!
UGH I’LL STOP NOW but seriously I could discuss this all damn day.
I love this, and thank you, but I have to ask-do you hang out on the internet watin for people to make inaccurate generalisations about mortality rates? Becasue if not, there is at least one more of your kind x
I don’t! But I think I have had this discussion once before on the Hairpin somewhere, because it is a particular bugaboo of mine. I want to join a club of people who DO hang out doing this, though!
Oh, I would love to join this club! At the very least, I’ll eagerly await a casual invite from a work friend, so that that I can show up enthusiastically early with a plate of homemade cookies in tow.
BETWEEN FIVE AND TWELVE TIMES ARGH my uterus is attempting to crawl out of my body and scurry away like the Nopetopus.
Is our perception of young marriageable ages skewed by age of betrothal among the aristocrats, perhaps? I get the impression some royal marriages were planned before the generation involved were even born, like in the dreams of eleven-year-old best friends.
Yes, it is. It is very common to read “Prince Snafflybutt was betrothed to Princess Googlyflute upon her birth, when Snafflybutt was five years old. Their marriage took place six years later” or whatever, and history classes focus so much on what the rulers were doing that people get the sense that “oh people got married crazy young then.” When in reality, the marriages were more of a placeholder (obviously no one is expecting 12-year-olds to bone) and the children would be raised as siblings in the household, although married (which actually led to a lot of issues with bad marriages later in life), until they were old enough to begin living “as man and wife.”
So yes, basically! Royals and aristocrats would marry very young for “placeholders” to cement relationships, and that is what history classes tend to focus on, so things get a bit skewed in people’s perceptions.
why are you not pitching this to me?
PLEASE PITCH THIS.
WITH THE SNAFFLYBUTTS INTACT, PLEASE.
NICOLE I HAVE A HUGE LIST OF THINGS I WANT TO PITCH TO YOU! I’m just afraid you’ll be put off by a list of like twenty articles and be like “DUDE TOO MUCH TOO SOON” and then I’ll have to cry.
dumbass, if you knew how many actually offensive pitches I’ve turned down sweetly in my day
BRB guys trying to come up with intentionally offensive Toast pitches!!!!
I want to see that list too
Miniature horses: foul little hell beasts
Seriously though, the smaller the pony the more concentrated the evil.
That is God’s truth. My 8 hh (32 inches at the top of his back for the non-horsey) mini looks like an adorable little Steiff stuffed animal come to life -but he terrorizes the biggest horse who weighs 700 lbs. more than he does. Minis are smart and evil. I love the little bugger though.
Also just because one marries a 12-year-old does not necessarily mean one immediately starts sexing said 12-year-old.
Masterful. A nitpick, though: mortality rate is not the same as life expectancy. I just mention it because that usage seems to be taking off here in the comments.
Signed,
Not a demographer but someone who deals with statistics sometimes
I apologize–I do know the difference but illicitly writing comments while at work is proooobably not the best for fact-checking my own words!
Oh, yes, I was sure you knew the difference, and you were talking about both–but the people who responded to you picked up on the confusion and went with it. 🙂
Thank you so much for saying this!! It drives me nuts when people go, “Oh, they were unusually old for that time, since the life expectancy was 40” or “People had to live fast, since they’d all be dead by 50” about some time in the past. When I was a kid, I volunteered as an interpreter at a living history museum, and we talked a lot about the statistics for kids and mothers dying. Also, I took an English class on Boswell and Johnson and their buddies in college, and they and all their friends were a bunch of old farts. People who weren’t doing dangerous work or living in extreme poverty weren’t all just dropping dead at age 50. You’d think that childhood vaccinations + the rate at which 30-60 year olds die of old age nowadays would clue people in.
I TURN 28 THIS YEAR AND I HAVEN’T GONE ON A DATE IN LIKE 2 AND A HALF YEARS (by choice), LET’S BUST OUT THE SPINSTER JUICE. (wine.)
“Let me see–you’re twenty-five, aren’t you, Anne? When I was a girl twenty-five was the first corner. But you look quite young. Red-headed people always do.” – Mrs. Harmon Andrews, Anne’s House of Dreams, L.M. Montgomery.
I’m a 25-year-old redhead. This quote gave me a few different Feelings.
WHO AM I KIDDING, I’M A SPINSTER
For context, this is being said to Anne the week before her wedding by a bitchy neighbour.
But, hey! If you have red hair, you’ll be able to pass a not-quite-a-spinster for the next couple of years at least.
But heaven forfend you ever wear pink.
Talk about THE PAST all you want, but when I was 25 (a mere ten years ago) my mom had a talk with me where she lured me into the car, locked the doors, and sped down corn field lined country roads (NO ESCAPE) on my birthday. What was the talk about? Why, it was all about how I’m NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER and how it was TIME TO PUT A RING ON IT because men like a younger lady and am I going to POP OUT A BABY? Because my eggs are like TIME BOMBS ABOUT TO BLOW and I needed to BE MINDFUL OF MY DECLINING FERTILITY. Again, it was the morning of my TWENTY FIFTH BIRTHDAY. ~~25~~!
I have friends RIGHT NOW in their late 20s/early 30s whose parents shake their head sadly because obviously they will NEVER marry because they are SO OLD and their ovaries have become shriveled husks releasing only dust and cobwebs.
Meanwhile, Hollywood hires women in their 40s to play the mothers of male actors in their 30s, and the roster of women actors over the age of 50 who get work is… well Pretty dang small. And one 0f them is Tilda Swinton who, I understand, has an amazing painting of herself hidden away in an attic. Also, possibly, a wand made of applewood and unicorn tears.
Wait Tilda Swinton is HOW old?
Disclaimer: The only thing I am worse at than guessing people’s ages is not having seconds of dessert.
Tilda Swinton is ageless and timeless. She is 20, and she is 100. She is Fae, existing outside of our timeline. Our years have no meaning.
Were one to chart merely her passage through our mortal years, one would peg her at 53. However, she is also a Time Lord popping in and out of our timeline. So although she has existed for a span of 53 years on our planet, that is too shallow a measurement for her existence.
OH WHAT, she was born in 1960, the same year as my mom. She’s 53. I would not have guessed.
If you say you are bad at not having seconds of dessert I assume that you frequently say no to seconds of dessert even when you want them and that makes me very sad. Come over to my house and you can have some marshmallow squares made with golden grahams cereal and ghiardelli chocolate chips. You can have all you want.
Oh no, I meant that I canNOT say no to seconds. |=) I will eat alllll the marshmallow golden grahams ghiradelli squares!
I was literally daydreaming about making that exact snack today while I was at work.
Definitely off to buy chocolate chips and marshmallows now, and hope my roommate is okay with sacrificing some of her golden grahams.
Tilda Swinton also, I believe, is in an open relationship with (or was) with a young man of indeterminate age – but certainly younger, and she was so brazen and pleased about it that it was a joy to behold.
that is the sort of thing one should absolutely be brazen and pleased about.
I believe she’s got a boyfriend and a lover, as is her right.
I am 25 and my grandmother calls me at least once a week, worried that I am lonely and am going to regret being alone for the rest of my life. No amount of “I’m perfectly happy and have a great social life, Gran” will appease her worry.
this story is giving me the horrors
I want to further note that I had a VERY serious boyfriend who I was either about to move in with or had just moved in with him (I forget) and the main reason we hadn’t already gotten married was his dad wanted him to marry someone better than me, who was from the same country as him, spoke the same language, ignored the same religion, held the same calendar… and was also taller and thinner and from a wealthier family. We wound up eloping. His dad Forgave All when I popped out a boy child.
I would not have blamed you if you’d taken your chances in the cornfields. HORRORS.
My mom is usually pretty okay, but I remember being in my twenties and having her say to me “if you haven’t met someone by the time you are in your thirties, have you considered adoption?”
40 now. And no. (Nothing against adoption, but kids are not something I want)
Egad. My 25th birthday is tomorrow. But my mother, who met my father at age 21 and married him at age 22, has been weeping over my obvious eternal loneliness since I dumped my first boyfriend in favor of a chick at roughly sixteen. It’s only gotten worse over the last almost-decade (what), but there’s no good way to tell your mother, “Don’t worry about me, I love my job and I’m having lots of casual sex, it’s fine!”
Wasn’t there also something to do with Blanche sleeping with a teenage student? Like, I think I remember that being a thing that happened.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was a thing that happened. And wasn’t she also rill rill mean to her gay boyfriend, and he killed himself? Or am I getting the storyline crossed with “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
Also, Blanche rent crazy not because Mitch dumped her but because her brother in law Stanley RAPED her.
Right. Raped her while his wife was having a baby, and then everyone decided to not believe Blanche about it. The lost-touch-with-reality-and-got-committed-to-an-institution part came after that. The movie sort of glosses over this bit because it was the 1950s, but it’s pretty loud and clear in the play.
Is that really the plot of Streetcar? Boy I am so happy my English teachers failed me! I like this version much better.
I turn 30 this week and this article is the PERFECT statement about how I feel about turning 30. However, I wonder if my little brother will take me in and pay for all my expenses since I’m an elderly lost cause? It’s worth a try. Although, I wouldn’t flirt with my brother’s boyfriend if you paid me.
N.B. 30 doesn’t scare me, feels anti-climatic.
I am also turning 30 this week (tomorrow). Happy birthday!
I would also not flirt with my little sister’s boyfriend, he is like 35 so basically a mummy.
Happy Birthday to you, too!!
My brother’s boyfriend is 53. (My brother is 21. He might have some daddy issues.) In Tennessee Williams’ age scale, that’s like the age of an actual dinosaur or something.
Also, I took an amazing course in college on the plays of Tennessee Williams where we had a nightly film festival and watched all of the movies. For some reason, at 19, the plots seemed so much less shocking, even Suddenly, Last Summer, where one of the characters gets eaten by a gang of boys in Spain because he was gay. Cannibalism is always an acceptable plot device, right?
When you are 19, 30 still seems like THE OLDEST.
Wow – I’ve heard of Suddenly Last Summer, but how did I never hear of that? Wow.
“Suddenly, Last Summer” should get more attention than it does, because it’s BATSHIT CRAZY. And that’s saying something, since that description could really be applied to most of Tennessee Williams’ oeuvre. The movie version with Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor is also excellent. Elizabeth Taylor seemed to be particularly excellent in Tennessee Williams adaptations.
A man gets devoured (DEVOURED!) by a gang of teenage Spanish urchins! Also, I love that creepy monologue at the beginning of the play about the Galapagos turtles laying their eggs on the beach and getting devoured (DEVOURED!) by the birds.
IDK, I’m pretty sure she went insane from:
1. being raped by her brother in law
2. her gay husband shooting himself through the head, potentially as a direct result of her reaction to his gayness
3. from being fired from her job as an English teacher because of fucking a student which is also why she’s broke and why she has to live with Stella rather than because she’s old
and not just from her boyfriend leaving and/or being old.
Oh, no, of course, I will not argue that Terrible Things do not happen to Blanche, and I’m perfectly aware that like, her ex’s gayness is Part of Its Time and that his suicide was traumatic, I just think it’s amazing/hilarious that in less than a century these topics went from fodder for Very Very Very High Drama to basically the premise of Will & Grace.
That is the premise of Will & Grace, right? 30something woman moves in with family figure after her long-term relationship with another guy ends because he turns out to be gay. Those are some quick changes in the cultural moral landscape!
Even better, actually! 30-something woman moves in with her gay best friend (who was also very briefly her boyfriend) after she leaves her current long-time boyfriend at the altar, whilst gay best friend is still recovering from the breakup of his long-term relationship. Lotsa interesting things said about modern relationships.
Well, there was incest and alcoholism in Will and Grace, but no rape or teacher-student abuse or suicide.
I mean, if you have to erase most of the story to draw the comparison, it’s not the best comparison.
And it’s not like there aren’t loads of actually silly, unwatchably sexist dramas from the 40s or 50s to use here like, idk, The Wasp Woman.
There was incest in Will & Grace?
It was between Tim Curry’s character and John Cleese’s character!
Wait, Tim Curry and John Cleese have incestuous sex and I’m only finding out about this now?
Tragedy / comedy – waddaya gonna do? Thanks for pointing out the finer points.
YES. I just posted a comment defending Blanche’s right to be insane.
Christ, I turn 35 this year. In Tennessee-WIlliams land I’ve been dead/and or in an asylum for *years* already.
TBF modern face creams are much better and we know about sunscreen now.
Which is that play where, the heroine, who must be oh God, easily 27, after finally realising she will never win the love of the hero due to being too fluttery-high-campily-Southern-Belle-fragile, shrugs, thinks “Oh well,” goes downtown, runs into a sailor who seems REALLY NICE and does not tell her she’s too weird and hysterical, and waltzes off stage with him, clearly for a little friendly casual sex (and presumable defloration) to take her mind off it.
And this marks her final tragedy.
I thought it was the best idea she’d had in the whole play.
Summer and Smoke! Poor Alma. My high school put it on my freshman year. And my 14-year-old best friend played the fluttery heroine, which is kind of hilarious in retrospect.
Ah, yes! I knew it was one of those “S…Summer” plays but I could only think of Suddenly Last Summer and that’s the one with the cannibalism.
Other things that weird me out about that play is the prologue with Kid!Alma who doesn’t flutter and gossamerise, and hence seems to have nothing even slightly in common with her adult self.
(I hope it is not horrible of me that T.W’s heroines remind me of transphobic Little Britain sketches, but sometimes an entirely cis-male voice going “I’m a lady! I do lady things!” is all I can hear in their dialogue.)
Now everything I know about Streetcar isn’t just from that one Simpsons episode!
You can always depend on the kindness of strangers/To pluck up your spirits, and shield you from dangers/Now here’s a tip from Blanche you won’t regret/A stranger’s just a friend you haven’t met!/ You haven’t met!
STREETCAR!
I am just a simple paper boy/no romance do I seek/I just wanted 40 cents for my deliveries last week
Will this bewitching floozy/seduce this humble lose-y?
Oh what’s a simple paper boy to doooooooooooooooo?
If you want to go to Hell, you should take a trip
To the Sodom and Gomorra on the Mississip.
New Or-le-ans!
Can’t you hear me yell~a, you’re puttin’ me through hell~a, Stel~la.. STELLAAAAA
We taught Dimples to say “Stellaaaaaa” like that. Best parenting decish ever.
I turned 30 more than a year ago and I am INDIGNANT that no relatives are taking me into their homes to fade into nothingness. People keep saying I have to HOLD A JOB and CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY. Don’t they understand how delicate I am? Like the gossamer wings of something with gossamer wings? Heathens.
My sister did end her previous tenant’s lease when I was 30 because I’d just had a hideous breakup and needed to move into her rented-out flat – does that count? She does make me pay rent though. Sadly I think anyone who has ever met me would die of laughter if I tried to describe myself as gossamer anything.
I read a very interesting and in-depth bio of Tennessee Williams many moons ago and between his mother’s depression and mania (driven in part by being maritally raped on a constant basis by an alcoholic and abusive husband), his family’s homophobia and his much loved sister being committed to the local insane asylum for mental health issues that centred on her sexuality (the hospital staff were always dismayed at sister’s regular attempts of masturbating in public), Tennessee Williams had LOTS of fodder for his literary works.
This pretty accurately sums up my feelings about 30 being considered ancient:
I am turning 40 next week. Am I the oldest Toaster? Avert your eyes, young ones, for fear of gazing upon a crone! I guess in Blanche’s world I should never leave the basement. I do use a lot of filters on Instagram and there is no sun hat big enough for me.
I’m actually feeling pretty good about 40. I’ve been eying a lot of leopard print. 30 is not the end, young ones, it’s just the beginning!!!!
Nope, 46 and counting!
All right! 40s representing!!
Whoot, whoot! Proceeds to dance awkwardly around cyberspace living room (and right into the bathroom because of 40+ bladder issues).
Another 46! *highfives*
43. But 40 is the new 30, right?
This is what I’ve heard and I choose to believe it. 🙂
No, you’re not the oldest. I’m at the age where I don’t say how old I am anymore. And my only superpower–shocking people with how much older I am than how I looked–is gone now. So, I’m avoiding lightbulbs and trying to keep my grabby hands off “the young men, the very, very young men.” So unseemly.
I told my husband that if anything ever happened to us, it’s full on Cougartown up in here.
Turned 40 literally on the last day of 2013. Feeling pretty good so far. Of course I was ahead of myself and bought two leopard print sweaters (pink and red!) in 2012.
I hope you wear them with pride!
I turned 30 this year right after having a second kid and am totally starting to feel like Blanche. The fluorescent lighting in the bathroom first thing in the morning after being up multiple times with an infant. I would take to the sea but it seems like a lot of work.
Yes, keeping an infant alive seems to be right up there with a heroin/meth/crack habit in its ability to promote ageing. I swear I aged 10 visual years in just one actual year.
Your username!
LET US BE FRIENDS AND WATCH ALL OF EDDIE IZZARD.
/Devil’s advocate alert/
No doubt the attitude shift Mallory points out between these two characters represents progress–single thirtysomething women don’t have to be shut up in basements, yay! But that doesn’t mean Jess from New Girl or everyone on Girls or basically any of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl-type characters are healthy perceptions of young women either. Of course women in their twenties and thirties don’t necessarily have their shit together, but it should NOT be aspirational for a woman in her thirties to be totally clueless and helpless and navel-gazing–it’s disempowering and infantilizing and classist. Is it supposed to be charming for a 31-year-old woman to say “pink wine makes me slutty”? Please.
In short, Team Blerta.
Oh I LOVE this comment! Yes, this, everything.
Not having one’s shit together is OK. But “not having your shit together” should not be an aspiration. Do not intentionally try to make yourself less capable.
Oh, sure! That’s not devil’s-advocate-y at all, I would never claim that Jessica Day represents the zenith of modern thirty-one-year-old womanhood. Just that the past and the present are different.
Ugh I almost hate myself for making this comment because I watch New Girl while exercising, since the fluff distracts from the pain of squats, and am not actually invested in it, but — Jess has a job/career path that she’s good at, friends, interests, etc. The character is a kind of a glittery pom-pom of a person, but she has her shit together. There isn’t anything wrong with being a glittery pom-pom, inherently.
(but I agree with you 1000000% on Girls.)
No, you’re right, I’m not being fair to Jess, and that’s on me. It’s because the whole twee “adorkable” thing drives me up a wall, so I’m reading it as immaturity.
Why is nothing else in the tag “the past is different”?
You don’t even have to go that far into the past to see how things have changed. My Best Friend’s Wedding starring Julia Roberts is about how two crazy kids once made a pact that if they were STILL single at the ripe old age of 28, they’d marry each other.
28. TWENTY-EIGHT. If you’re not married at 28, you’d better get good and married because that is your LAST CHANCE.
EXCUSE ME
Blanche is crazy because she married a gay guy, walked in on him fucking his older friend (who, it is implied, was a mentor figure), and when she told him she knew HE RAN OUTSIDE AND SHOT HIMSELF IN THE HEAD.
okay?
GIVE THE LADY A BREAK
of course, then she developed a habit of hitting on young, effeminate guys in an attempt at re-creating that relationship.
i love Blanche so much.
bitch be so cray.
Don Draper is roughly my age in Mad Men, and in one episode he has a physical wherein the doctor indicates he’s middle-aged. Meanwhile, guys these days between 35-40 are playing video games for hours at a time.
Don’s body is in his thirties, but his liver is about 70.
But, Jess DEFINITELY ‘puts out’. So maybe that’s the secret to staying sane in a post 30’s life? (Or at least according to the media and marketing and what not and whosit and thingabopper powers that be).
Right. Raped her while his wife was having a baby, and then everyone decided to not believe Blanche about it. The lost-touch-with-reality-and-got-committed-to-an-institution part came after that. The movie sort of glosses over this bit because it was the 1950s, but it's pretty loud and clear in the play.