STREETCAR QUOTES

desire severing sororal intimacy

They are silent until the noise subsides… Under the cover of the train's noise, Stanley enters

primal sexuality of S&S relationship

low animal moans

blanche emotional myopia

Oh, Stella, Stella, you're crying!

stella indulging b’s desire for affirmation

Admire her dress and tell her she’s looking wonderful. That’s important with Blanche. Her little weakness!

stella’s role in protecting b from reality

you’re standing in the light, Blanche

blanche → stella patronising endearment

baby, my baby sister!

spatial articulation of shifting allegiances (stella&b)

drawing away from her

adjacency pairs not respected

• why, you must have slept with him!

• blanche, I’d forgotten how excitable you are

blanche visual dissonance, qualitative isolation

her appearance is incongruous to the setting

TW on society / individuals

one major theme of my work is the destructive power of society on a sensitive, non - conformist individual

stanley proletarian masculinity

roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes

stanley asserting authority materialism

I've got an acquaintance who deals in this sort of merchandise.

stanley self-legitimation of american identity

People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is one hundred percent American born and raised in the greatest country on Earth… so don’t ever call me a Polack

stella reluctancy to question

my head is spinning

pragmatics of cadillac convertible

• must have ben a block long!

• inconvenient in traffic

stella impossibility of reconciling b’s narrative w. her own existential needs

I couldn’t believe [Blanche’s] story and go on living with Stanley

stanley as antithesis to b’s cultivated sensibility

There's something downright - bestial - about him!

stage directions power shift

Over her head he grins through the curtains at Blanche

contrapuntal irony

Blanche is singing… which is used contrapuntally with Stanley's speech

b reluctance to acknowledge stella’s assimilation into s’s world

I'm looking for my sister, Stella DuBois. I mean - Mrs. Stanley Kowalski

stanley pride in authenticity, working class identity

I'm afraid I'll strike you as being the unrefined type

stella subtle assertion of social superiority (lingering class consciousness)

• The Kowalskis and the DuBois have different notions

• Indeed, they have, thank heavens

stella transition to s’s world S4

rounding slightly with new maternity

book of coloured comics

Stella emphatic assertion of chosen reality

[slowly and deliberately] I'm not in anything I want to get out of

generational excess, situating personal tragedy within broader historical/cultural collapse

our improvident grandfathers and fathers and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications

stella pragmatic, concessive, rationalising s’s violence

It isn't alright for anybody to make such a terrible row but - they do sometimes

unsegregated diversity in french quarter, nation’s new identity, liminal, morally fluid

New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races

blanche has always relied upon (mitch version)

Thank you for being so kind! I need kindness now

mitch suitable marriage partner

I think you have a great capacity for devotion

mitch capacity for emotional expression / refinement

superior to the others

delighted (by music on radio, dances, familiar with poetry)

stanley lexicon

bellowing; booming; yelling; bawling; stalks; seizes; slams

stanley red-blooded man, sanguine

Meat!

Red-stained package from a butcher's

stanley animalistic - language redolent of predation / dominance (dialectic between corporeal + cerebral)

Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements

Richly feathered male bird among hens

stanley proprietorial, appropriative gaze

He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them

huey long populist theory

Every man is a king

blanche idiomatic, temptress

I was fishing for a compliment, Stanley

b appealing to stanley’s masculinity

My sister has married a man!

stella self-positioning as subordinate

Can I come watch?

stanley - functions as controlling directive cloaked in interrogative structure

How about my supper, huh?

stanley possessive adjecive

Eunice? I want my baby

s&s transactional relationship (buys compliance), quasi-paternalistic

Stanley doesn't give me a regular allowance, he likes to pay bills himself, but - this morning he gave me ten dollars to smooth things over

blanche, sexual submission as sole currency stella possesses

The only way to live with such a man is to - go to bed with him!

sex as way to pacify wife , near-liturgical cadence (ritualistic following conflict)

Now, honey. Now, love. Now, now, love. [He kneels beside her and his fingers find the opening of her blouse] Now, now love. Now, love…

chromatic - hallucinatory intensity, foreshadows S10

lurid nocturnal brilliance, the raw colours of childhood's spectrum

amiable vs. aggressive/predatory zoomorphism

• Mitch is delighted and moves in awkward imitation like a dancing bear

• Stanley stalks fiercely through the portieres into the bedroom

allan gray at odds with himself

in the quicksands

era’s valorisation of hegemonic masculinity > sensitivity / homosexuality

She married a boy who wrote poetry […] This beautiful and talented young man was a degenerate

b leaning into traditional femininity

Ha-ha! Yes - clothes are my passion!

M positing masc. & fem. incompatible in shared domestic space

Poker should not be played in a house with women

cheating framed as transient conflict > weaponised moral failing precitipitates b’s ostracisation + downfall

I heard about you and that blonde!

s&s corporeal control violence

Stanley gives a loud wack of his hand on her thigh

stella eroticising s’s violence as mode of rationalisation

I was – sort of – thrilled by it’

mitch lexicon

awkwardly; shyly; embarrassed; uncomfortably; diffidently; fumblingly

stanley emasulating mitch

Hurry back and we'll fetch you a sugar-tit

honorific, formal address, courteous

Miss DuBois

m, operates on both moral + social registers - sexual impurity & therefore social rejection

you’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother

self-dramatising impulse (truth evasion), positions self as martyr, hyperbolic

I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it!

blanche butterfly, lexis of fragility + motif of light function on multiple registers

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

pre-emptive, syntactic manipulation, foregrounding narrative pre-interrogetion betrays b’s compulsive need to discursive control (broader strat of narrative self-curation)

You haven't asked me how I happened to get away from the school before the spring term ended

paratactic structure, deferral of self-incrimination blanche

I know that you're bound to reproach me - but before you do - take into consideration

motif of ablution

She's soaking in a hot tub to quiet her nerves. She's terribly upset

irony = acerbic, chasm between linguistic self-construction + reality of lived experience

What's Virgo?… Virgo is the virgin

metonymic - dramatises inevitable collapse of facade (intrustion of impurity)

Right on my pretty white skirt!

stanley repudiation of artifice vague demonstrative, colloquial negation

I don’t go in for that stuff

dissolution of physical boundaries, claustrophobic encroachment of / exposure by NW

(the walls of the flat) have become transparent

mask dependence on alcohol

She carefully replaces the bottle and washes out the tumbler at the sink

chromatic imagery AND motif of light - scrutiny

Over the yellow linoleum of the kitchen table hangs an electric bulb with a vivid green lamp shade

transactional nature of her existence, commodification of body, self-construction as an enchantress (reduced to prostitution)

put on soft colours, the colours of butterfly wings… make a little temporary magic just in order to pay for – one night’s shelter

darkness

The dark is comforting to me

recall’s b’s trauma, cyclical nature of love + desire

polka music sounds, in a minor key faint with distance

auditory + visual intrusion penetrating domestic space

a locomotive is heard… the headlight of the locomotive glares into the room as it thunders past

b climactic mental instability

the distant piano goes into a hectic breakdown

scene 10 on wall

lurid reflections appear on the walls

in odd sinuous shapes

of a grotesque and menacing form

dramatises cumulative psychological toll of S’s brutality on B (S5)

… jerks… slams… throws… at each noise, Blanche winces slightly

mitch sanctuary

I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again! Yes – I want Mitch… very badly!

persistence of fate / does mitch still feel desire?

Is the streetcar named desire still grinding along the tracks at this hour?

deliberate future construction

We are going to pretend that we're sitting in a little artisans' café on the Left Bank in Paris!

stanley S10 inevitability

We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning

TW symbols

Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama

night café

a picture of Van Gogh’s… billiard-parlour at night

metatheatrical commentary draws attention to TW’s own impressionistic, sensory dramaturgy.  

which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism

characters designed to fit their space

The poker players wear coloured shirts