Streetcar: Violence

When men are drinking

and playing poker, anything can happen. It’s always a powder-keg.

Stella,

Scene 4

Since earliest manhood the centre of his life has been

pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens.

Scene 1

Ho-ho! There’s nothing to be scared of. They’re crazy about each other[…]

it’s a shame this had to happen when you just got here. But don’t take it so serious.

Mitch,

Scene 3

You’re making

too much fuss about this.

Stella,

Scene 4

Her eyes go

blind with tenderness as she catches his head and raises him level with her.

Scene 3

Stanley’s

always smashed things.

Stella,

Scene 4

Stella: She and Steve had a row. Has she got the police?

Stanley: Naw, she’s gettin’ a drink.

Stella: That’s much more practical!

Scene 5

If I were a man

and this creature had dared to invent such things in my presence—

Stella,

Scene 7

He stalks into the bedroom, and she follows him[…]He […] jerks out

an armful of dresses[…]he hurls the furs to the daybed. Then he […] pulls up a fistful of costume jewelry.

Scene 2

Since when

do you give me orders?

Stanley,

Scene 2

[He seizes her arm]

Don’t ever talk to me like that !

Stanley,

Scene 8

[He hurls a plate to the floor]

That’s how I’ll clear the table!

Stanley,

Scene 8

[Stanley gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh]

It makes me so mad when he does that in front of people.

Stella,

Scene 3

[He advances and disappears. There is the sound of a blow.

Stella cries out[…]Something is overturned with a crash.]

Scene 3

Ticket!

Back to Laurel! On the Greyhound! Tuesday!

Stanley,

Scene 8

Get OUT

of the BATHROOM!

Stanley,

Scene 7

[Stanley stalks fiercely through the portieres into the bedroom.

He crosses to the small white radio and snatches it off the table. With a shouted oath, he tosses the instrument out of the window.]

Scene 3

[He[…]seizes the paper lantern, tearing it off

the light-bulb, and extends it towards her. She cries out as if the lantern was herself.]

Scene 11

[Stanley carries…

a red stained package from a butcher’s.]

Scene 1

Stanley: Catch!

Stella: What?

Stanley: Meat!

[He heaves the package at her. She cries out in protest but manages to catch it: then she laughs breathlessly.]

Scene 1

…I saw him at his best! What such a man has to offer is animal force and he gave a wonderful exhibition of that!

But the only way to live with such a man is to— go to bed with him! And that’s your job— not mine!

Blanche,

Scene 4

But there are things

that happen between a man and a woman in the dark— that make other things seem— unimportant.

Stella,

Scene 4

[The sound of this new voice shock Blanche.

She makes a shocked gesture, forming his name with her lips.]

Scene 11

[…The unmistakable

aura of the state institution with its cynical detachment.]

Scene 11

Is it the

gentleman I was expecting from Dallas?

Blanche,

Scene 11

[Lurid reflections appear on the walls in odd,

sinuous shapes. The ‘Varsouviana’ is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle.]

Scene 11

Let’s get quick out

of here!

Steve

[They rush to the poker table and sweep up their winnings on their way out.]

Scene 3

He’s stuck the revolver

into his mouth, and fired.

Blanche,

Scene 6