morality/ethics
Quote #1
“Miserable age, where only the reward / Of doing well is the doing of it.” (1.1.31-32)
Takeaway: Bosola’s thesis on the play’s moral world: doing good has no external reward. Virtue becomes a labor with no compensation, reflecting the shift from feudal loyalty to transactional service.
Quote #2
“I would have you curse yourself now, that your bounty, / Which makes men truly noble, e'er should make / Me a villain: oh, that to avoid ingratitude / For the good deed you have done me, I must do / All the ill man can invent.” (1.1.264-68)
Takeaway: Bosola feels trapped by a corrupt idea of “gratitude” that forces him into villainy, showing how social obligations warp morality.
Quote #3
“Can this ambitious age / Have so much goodness in't as to prefer / A man merely for worth, without these shadows / Of wealth and painted honours? [...] rejoice / that some preferment in the world can yet / arise from merit.” (3.2.272-82)
Takeaway: Bosola ironically celebrates merit over status when he learns of the Duchess and Antonio’s marriage, highlighting the tension between virtue and social hierarchy.
Quote #4
“Why didst not thou pity her? What an excellent / Honest man might'st thou have been / If thou hadst borne her to some sanctuary / Or bold in a good cause, opposed thyself / With thy advanced sword above thy head / Between her innocence and my revenge!” (4.2.263-68)
Takeaway: Bosola reproaches himself and others for failing to protect the Duchess, revealing the tragic consequences of moral failure and betrayal.
Quote #5
“Your brother and yourself are worthy men, / You have a pair of hearts are hollow graves, / Rotten, and rotting others; and your vengeance, / Like to chained bullets, still goes arm in arm. / You may be brothers: for treason, like the plague, / Doth take much in a blood. I stand like one / That long hath ta’en a sweet and golden dream: / I am angry with myself now that I wake.” (4.2.308-14)
Takeaway: Bosola awakens from his illusions of loyalty, condemning the brothers’ corruption and his own complicity.
Quote #6
“[…] whilst a guilty conscience / is a black register wherein is writ / all our good deeds and bad, a perspective / that shows us hell […]” (4.2.346-49)
Takeaway: Bosola’s conscience functions as a moral ledger, making him perceive his past wrongs as eternal torment—a strong ethical reckoning.
Quote #7
“There are a many ways that conduct to seeming / Honour, and some of them very dirty ones.” (5.2.298-99)
Takeaway: Bosola cynically points out that the pursuit of honor in court often involves dishonorable acts, exposing the hypocrisy in social ethics.
Quote #8
“O penitence, let me truly taste thy cup, / That throws men down, only to raise them up.” (5.2.339-40)
Takeaway: Bosola seeks redemption through penitence and revenge, hoping moral reckoning can restore justice—though the play suggests this hope is tragic.
Quote #9
“How tedious is a guilty conscience!” (5.5.4)
Takeaway: The Cardinal ironically laments his guilty conscience. The ambiguity invites interpretation: is he truly remorseful or mocking his predicament?
Quote #10
“My sister! Oh my sister, there’s the cause on’t! / ‘Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, / Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.’” (5.5.70-72)
Takeaway: Ferdinand admits the destructive power of ambition and familial ties, implying that the downfall caused by the Duchess is intertwined with his own actions and nature.
Quote #1
BLANCHE
“They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at — Elysian Fields!” (1.16)
Um…death much? "Cemeteries" is pretty much self-explanatory, but Elysian Fields are basically like heaven in ancient Greek Mythology. In other words, "death" is written all over this scenery before we even jump into much of the play. For more on how "Desire" fits in there, see "What’s Up With the Title?"
Quote #2
BLANCHE
“I was on the verge of — lunacy, almost! So Mr. Graves—Mr. Graves is the high school superintendent — he suggested I take a leave of absence.” (1.109)
Mr. Graves, eh? Oh, Williams, we just wouldn’t put it past you. Looks like we’ve got even more death imagery, and we haven’t even left Scene One yet.
Quote #3
BLANCHE
“I, I, I took the blows in my face and body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! So big with it, it couldn’t be put in a coffin! But had to be burned like rubbish! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths—not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse, and sometimes it rattles, and sometimes they even cry out to you, ‘Don’t let me go!’” (1.185)
All this death – not only of Blanche’s family, but also of her former husband – seems to be largely responsible for her loss of sanity.
Quote #4
BLANCHE
“The four-letter word deprived us of our plantation, till finally all that was left — and Stella can verify that! — was the house itself and about twenty acres of ground, including a graveyard, to which now all but Stella and I have retreated.” (2.148)
It’s interesting that Blanche blames sex for the loss of Belle Reve, when her own "epic fornications" have cost her so dearly.
Quote #5
STELLA
“You are as fresh as a daisy.”
BLANCHE
“One that’s been picked a few days.” (3.33-4)
Wait a minute…flowers…death…sounds familiar. You’d better go check out "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory." Meanwhile, compare this line to the other mention of daisies later in the play, when Blanche references the soldiers outside her window.
Quote #6
BLANCHE
“The first time I laid eyes on [Stanley] I thought to myself, that man is my executioner! That man will destroy me.” (6.102)
Interesting choice of words, isn’t it? Notice how rape – a sexual act and therefore one that involves desire – brings about the effective "execution" of Blanche’s sanity.
Quote #7
BLANCHE
“Yes, that’s where I brought my victims. […] Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan — intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty hearty with.” (9.55)
Looks like we have one more complication to add to our understanding of death and desire in Streetcar. Desire seems to cause all this death, and yet Blanche turns to sex to comfort herself in the aftermath of death.
Quote #8
MEXICAN WOMAN
“Flores.”
BLANCHE
“Death—I used to sit here and she used to sit over there and death was as closer as you are… We didn’t even admit we had ever heard of it.”
MEXICAN WOMAN
“Flores para los muertos, flores—flores…”
BLANCHE
“The opposite is desire.” (9.68-71)
This final line is incredibly important to understanding some key elements of A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche here states that desire is the opposite of death – this explains her attempt at taking refuge from death through "intimacies with strangers," and why she relies so heavily on her looks in relating to others. For lots, lots more, read "What’s Up With the Title?"
Quote #9
BLANCHE
“You know what I shall die of? [She plucks a grape] I shall die of eating an unwashed grape one day out on the ocean. I will die—with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ship’s doctor, a very young one with a small blond mustache and a big silver watch. […] 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 my first lover’s eyes!” (11.69)
Blanche romanticizes even her death. And notice how this final image of mortality is saturated with desire and love….