A Streetcar Named Desire

Quotes

Past and present

• “These are love-letters, yellowing with antiquity, all from one boy”

• “Poems a dead boy wrote. I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can't! I'm not young and vulnerable any more.”

• “She must have been fond of you. Sick people have such deep, sincere attachments.” - mitch and blanche have a past they can relate too — this also fits into tragedy as maybe blanche and mitch would've been great for each other, but maybe now (she was into his stability)

• “There was something different about the boy, a nervousness, a softness and tenderness which wasn't like a man's, although he wasn't the least bit effeminate looking--still--that thing was there....”

  • maybe this is how Williams views himself, insecurity?

  • later in text:

    “This beautiful and talented young man was a degenerate” — stella

• “He was in the quicksands and clutching at me--but I wasn't holding him out, I was slipping in with him! I didn't know that. I didn't know anything except I loved him unendurably”

• “then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this--kitchen-- candle...”

social class

• “a gentle young woman, about twenty-five, and of a background obviously quite different from her husband's”

• “Look at these feathers and furs that she come here to preen herself in! What's this here? A solid-gold dress, I believe!”

• “Where are your pearls and gold bracelets?”

• “Maybe we are a long way from being made in God's image, but Stella--my sister--there has been some progress since then! Such things as art--as poetry and music”

  • telling Stella there is a better life for her is not something Stanley wants to hear

• “The odor of cheap perfume is penetrating.”

• “Remember what Huey Long said--"Every Man is a King!" And I am the king around here, so don't forget it!”

• “When we first met, me and you, you thought I was common. How right you was, baby. I was common as dirt. You showed me the snapshot of the place with the columns. I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it”

tragedy

• “The blind are leading the blind!”

• “This game is seven-card stud.”

• “Her future is mapped out for her.”

• “you never know what is coming”

• “Oh! So you want some rough-house! All right, let's have some rough-house! Tiger--tiger! Drop the bottle top! Drop it! We've had this date with each other from the beginning!”

masculinity, sexuality and power dynamics — expectations of toxic masculinity

STANLEY

• “roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes. Stanley carries his bowling jacket and a red-stained package from a butcher's”

• “Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes”

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

• They speak quietly and lovingly to him

• “What such a man has to offer is animal force”

• “There's something downright--bestial--about him!”

• “Don't ever talk that way to me! "Pig--Polack--disgusting--vulgar--greasy!"--them kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister's too much around here! What do you two think you are? A pair of queens?”

MITCH

• “You all are married. But I'll be alone when she goes.”

• “You are light as a feather.”

femininity

• “I want you to look at my figure!”

• “Blanche comes out of the bathroom in a red satin robe”

• “When people are soft […] they've got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings”

  • was the butterfly, became the moth

  • butterflies — quick to die, spend their whole lives trying to become this beautiful thing that is only temporary

• “You're not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.”

• soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown and a pair of scuffed silver slippers

• “Physical beauty is passing. […] But beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart--and I have all of those things--aren't taken away, but grow!”

• “She has a tragic radiance in her red satin robe”

STELLA

• Her face is serene in the early morning sunlight. One hand rests on her belly, rounding slightly with new maternity.

• narcotized tranquility — addicted to the high of the make up after the low of the violence

desire

• Blanche looks after him with a certain interest — mitch

• “What you are talking about is brutal desire--just--Desire!”

  • STELLA: “Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?”

  • BLANCHE: “It brought me here.--Where I'm not wanted and where I'm ashamed to be....”

• “Can I--uh--kiss you-goodnight?”

  • she’s driven by desire + passion. He doesn’t know her and cannot fulfil her desires because she is presenting herself differently

• “perhaps in some perverse kind of way he — No!”

  • not naive, understands the sexual tension between them

• [fumbling to embrace her] “What I been missing all summer”

• “Come to think of it--maybe you wouldn't be bad to--interfere with....”

loyalty and betrayal

• “I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley”

• “Oh, God, what have I done to my sister?”

violence and building conflict

• “when you walked in here last night, I said to myself--"My sister has married a man!"“

• “What's in the back of that little boy's mind of yours?”

• Stanley gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh.

• “Drunk--drunk--animal thing, you!”

• There is the sound of a blow

• [The bottle cap pops off and a geyser of foam shoots up. Stanley laughs happily, holding up the bottle over his head.]

light, reality, and fantasy and illusion

• “how pretty the sky is! I ought to go there on a rocket that never comes down”

• “You're standing in the light, Blanche!”

• “I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action”

• “I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me”

• “I don't think I ever seen you in the light.”

• [He tears the paper lantern off the light bulb]

• “I don’t want realism. I want magic!”

• “There isn't a goddam thing but imagination! […] And lies and conceit and tricks!” - stanley

• “when I die, I'm going to die on the sea […]

  I shall die of eating an unwashed grape […]

  with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ship's doctor […]

  "Poor lady," they'll say, "That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven." [The cathedral chimes are heard] And I'll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard--at noon--in the blaze of summer--and into an ocean as blue as [Chimes again] my first lover's eyes!”

secrecy (lies and deception)

• “I'm not accustomed to having more than one drink”

• “I want to deceive him enough to make him--want me...” — blanche about mitch

• “I like you to be exactly the way that you are” (Mitch)

  [Blanche looks at him gravely; then she bursts into laughter and then claps a hand to her mouth.]

• “I guess it is just that I have--old-fashioned ideals!”

  [She rolls her eyes, knowing he cannot see her face]

• “She pulled the wool over your eyes as much as Mitch's!”

• MITCH: “Lies, lies, inside and out, all lies.”

  BLANCHE: “Never inside, I didn't lie in my heart....”

travel and belonging

• STELLA: “Then don't you think your superior attitude is a bit out of place?”

• “I’ve run for protection, Stella, from one leaky roof to another leaky roof”

• “she has been washed up like poison”

• “She was always--flighty!”

• “Everything here isn't Stan's. Some things on the premises are actually mine!”

• [A prostitute has rolled a drunkard. He pursues her along the walk, overtakes her and there is a struggle.]

  • she cannot escape, in the outside world she would have to face it all (prostitution again)

  • animalistic reality

isolation

• “I let the place go? Where were you! In bed with your--Polack!”

• “t how could I stay here with him, after last night, with, just those curtains between us?”

• [Stella has embraced him--with both arms, fiercely … Over her head he grins through the curtains at Blanche.]

• [Blanche sinks faintly back in her chair--with her drink. Eunice shrieks with laughter and runs down the steps. Steve bounds after her--with goat-like screeches and chases her around corner. Stanley and Stella twine arms as they follow, laughing.]

  • blanche surrounded by couples, and she is alone

  • she has nobody to depend on, in a position of vulnerability

  • couples and relationships portrayed animalistically

• “I'm looking for the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters”

  • looking for family / unity in other worldly things (stars)

  • stella for star — seeking comfort in other forms of sisterhood, or fate?

• “wasn't we happy together, wasn't it all okay till she showed here?”

southern belle — old south vs new south

• “There are thousands of papers, stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve as, piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications--to put it plainly!”

• “You've got to be soft and attractive. And I--I'm fading now!”

death and grief

• “funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths--not always.”

• “Flores para los muertos”

  • foreshadowing Blanche's eventual descent into mental instability and her connection to death

  • Symbolism:

    The flowers and their association with death reflect Blanche's struggle with mortality, aging, and the end of her youthful beauty and past. 

  • Connection to the Past:

    Blanche's past, particularly the loss of her husband, is a constant source of pain and anxiety for her. The phrase "flowers for the dead" is a direct reference to that loss and her inability to move on. 

  • Symbolism of Mortality:

    The entire play, with its themes of decay, loss, and the clash between old and new ways of life, explores the fragility of human existence and the inevitability of death. The phrase "flores para los muertos" is a potent reminder of this harsh reality

social expectations of gender roles, marriage, and power dynamics within them

• “when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby...”

• “In the state of Louisiana we have the Napoleonic code according to which what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband and vice versa”

• “Poker shouldn't be played in a house with women.”

• Then they come together with low, animal moans. He falls to his knees on the steps and presses his face to her belly, curving a little with maternity.

• “There's nothing to be scared of. They're crazy about each other.” — Mitch, normalising the domestic violence

• “when men are drinking and playing poker anything can happen […] he's really very, very ashamed of himself.”

• “I was--sort of--thrilled by it.”

• “That's much more practical!”

  • Stella says it’s more practical for Eunice to get a drink instead of calling the police when in an argument with Steve

mental health - insecurity and instability

• “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”

• “Turn that off! I won't be looked at in this merciless glare!”

• “I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can't be alone! Because--as you must have noticed--I'm-not very well....”

• BLANCHE: “Watch how you pour--that fizzy stuff foams over!”

  • [It foams over and spills. Blanche gives a piercing cry.]

  • nothing is in Blanche’s control, foreshadows the building of tension and climax, and loss of control and power

• “"Say, it's only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea--But it wouldn't be make-believe If you believed in me!"“

• [In the bathroom the water goes on loud; little breathless cries and peals of laughter are heard as if a child were frolicking in the tub.]

• “Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.”

• [Her throat is tightening with hysteria]

• She catches her breath and slams the mirror face down with such violence that the glass cracks

STANLEY

• STANLEY [dully]: “What's the matter; what's happened?”

• “My baby doll's left me!”

• “I want my baby down here. Stella, Stella!”

racism

• “Polak”

• “what I am is a one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don't ever call me a Polack.”

music and setting

• “the sky […] is a peculiarly tender blue, almost turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay”

• “New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races in the old part of town”

• [The music of the polka rises up, faint in the distance.]

• “The music is in her mind; she is drinking to escape it and the sense of disaster closing in on her”

• [Lurid reflections appear on the wall around Blanche. The shadows are of a grotesque and menacing form]

• [The night is filled with inhuman voices like cries in a jungle.]

sisterhood

• “Stella, oh, Stella, Stella! Stella for Star!”

• “You messy child, you”

• “look how you sit there with your little hands folded like a cherub in a choir!”

• “I don't understand you.”

• Stella is embarrassed by her show of emotion.

Dependence and vulnerability

• “I have to plan for us both, to get us both--out!.” - blanche

• “I'm not in anything I want to get out of.” - stella

• “it's his pleasure, like mine is movies and bridge. People have got to tolerate each other's habits, I guess”

  • Stella depends on Stanley, and vice versa. Domestic violence is normalised, even by victims of it.

• “Of course you remember Shep Huntleigh. I went out with him at college and wore his pin for a while” — hypocritical, no different to Stella, attracted to status.

  • their way out is through a man

• “Stanley doesn't give me a regular allowance, he likes to pay bills himself”

• “That one seems-superior to the others […] I thought he had a sort of sensitive look”

• STELLA: “Blanche, do you want him?”

  BLANCHE: “I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again!”

• “Young man! Young, young, young man!”

  [Without waiting for him to accept, she crosses quickly to him and presses her lips to his.]

• “I've got to be good--and keep my hands off children.”

• “You need somebody. And I need somebody too. Could it be--you and me, Blanche?”