She refers to Stanley as “Common,” and this implies that she is a bit of a snob. Blanche is also very vain, consistently powdering her face and never wishing to stand under naked light.
.
It is evident that Blanche behaves towards Stella the same way that she did in childhood, appearing to play the role of stereotypical older sister, ordering Stella about and calling her “messy.” However, beneath this domineering outer shell it is plain that Blanche is currently vulnerable and has come to Stella to be taken care of and looked after:
Blanche (to Stella): “Do me a favour. Run to the drugstore and get me a lemon-coke with plenty of chipped ice…..” – scene 2
Stella, on the other hand genuinely plays the role of caring little sister, she looks after Blanche, and does what she is told:
Blanche: “You hear me? I said stand up!” (Stella complies reluctantly) – scene 1
Stella is also very quiet around Blanche:
Stella (to Blanche): “You never did give me a chance to say much, Blanche. So I just got into the habit of being quiet around you.” – scene 1
This suggests that she is nervous around Blanche, and wants her approval.
In the play script Stella is described as: “A gentle young woman, about 25, and of a background obviously quite different from her husband’s.” This also states that Stella has had an upbringing different to that of Stanley’s. Although her upbringing was the same as Blanche’s, she has obviously successfully adapted to her current situation in New Orleans, Blanche is less adaptable, and yearns for her old life, which is one reason why she is unable to acclimatize to her new surroundings.
Stella loves Stanley, but in a way that she wants, and desires him rather than she feels affection and passionate love for him:
Stella (to Blanche): “There are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark – that sort of make everything else seem unimportant. (Pause.)
Blanche: “What you are talking about is brutal desire – just – Desire!
Stanley is a perfect example of an alpha male. He is confident in the way he moves and the way he acts, a man in the prime of his life. This is how he is described in the stage directions: “He is of medium height, about five feet eight or nine, and strongly, compactly built. Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes.” – scene 1.
It then goes on to say about how Stanley’s main pleasure in life has been women:
Stage direction: “He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them.” – scene 1
Despite this, I believe that Stanley really does love Stella, and means it when he says he is sorry after he hits her, and believes he will never do it again.
I think that the arrival of Blanche is what mainly builds up tension in Stanley:
Blanche (to Stanley): “My, but you have an impressive judicial air!”
Stage direction: “She sprays herself with her atomizer; then playfully sprays him with it. He seizes the atomizer and slams it down on the dresser. She throws her head back and laughs.” – scene 2
Blanche makes fun of Stanley when he tries to be serious with her, and he takes this with offence, he is giving her a chance to explain herself, and she throws it back in his face.
I think that much of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and the characters in it are based on Tennessee Williams’ own background. Stanley is a reflection of his own father; he enjoys drink and travels a lot. His mother was separated from her aristocratic upbringing when she married his father much like Stella and both his mother and his sister, Rose ended up in mental homes, like Blanche does at the end of the play.
In scene 3 Stanley holds a poker night with his friends, and the women come home before it has finished. Stanley is drunk and violent and ends up hitting Stella. Blanche takes Stella to the apartment above them, where she will be safe, but Stanley immediately comes looking for her, and appears very sorry and ashamed of himself. In the end she goes back to Stanley. Also, in this scene Blanche meets Stanley’s friend, Mitch, of whom she takes a liking too. He comforts her when she is worried about Stella going home.
In scene 4 it is the following morning and Blanche is distraught, worrying about Stella, only to find that she is perfectly happy. Blanche is positive that she and her sister have to leave, for their own safety, but Stella insists that she is absolutely fine where she is. Blanche is incredulous, and is unable to withhold her true feelings about Stanley any longer. She speaks plainly to Stella, describing him as an animal, among other things. Stanley overhears the entire conversation, and the scene finishes with him grinning menacingly at Blanche.
The majority of scene 3 is connected to Stanley’s poker night. On page 31 the stage directions are used to set the scene, Tennessee Williams uses the word “vivid” on several occasions, relating to the boldness of the colours in the room. He describes the men seated round the poker table as “At the peak of their physical manhood, as course and direct and powerful as the primary colours.” Williams is adamant that there are no wishy washy colours in the room, this sets a suitable scene for the sense of tension building. The strong colours represent the strong characters, and with strong characters in such close proximity, surrounded by bold colour someone is bound to explode.
In the scene before, set earlier that day, Stanley has an argument with Blanche, so it is predictable that when she and Stella arrive home he is not overly pleased to see them, and their coming back before he expected aggravates him. He even suggests that they go upstairs with Eunice, in attempt to get rid of them. Perhaps he knows that if they stay it is only going to build up tension within him, because as Mitch later says: “Poker shouldn’t be played in a house with women.” And of course, dramatic tension does build up, and concludes with Stanley hitting Stella.
In scene 3 Blanche meets Mitch, a poker-playing friend of Stanley’s:
Blanche (about Mitch): “That one seems – superior to the others.
Stella: “Yes, he is.”
Blanche: “I though he had a sort of sensitive look.” – scene 3
Blanche feels connected to Mitch because he tells her that his girlfriend died, and Blanche’s husband died, so it gives them something in common. Blanche does not get on with Stanley, or any of his other friends particularly because they have such different backgrounds. Blanche sees Mitch as superior because he looks sensitive, and this is because his mother is sick. Mitch is the only man of his crowd that is not married, so he feels loneliness in the same way Blanche does. His sensitivity also probably makes him stick out slightly in his crowd of “coarse” men, he doesn’t belong in the way that the others do, and this gives him another thing in common with Blanche. Together they share a conversation on death and loneliness:
Mitch: “ The girl’s dead now.
Blanche: (In a tone of sympathy) “Oh!”
Mitch: “She knew she was dying when she gave me this. A very strange girl, very sweet – very!
Blanche: “She must have been very fond of you. Sick people have such deep, sincere attachments.” – scene 3
This helps to build dramatic tension because Mitch is sharing his guarded thoughts with Blanche, but, in a case of dramatic irony, the audience knows that she is lying to him; lying about her age, her purpose in visiting Stella and she has deceptively told him that Stella is the older sister. It also builds tension because Mitch is holding up the game, talking to Blanche, and in the state Stanley is in, he probably believes that Blanche is purposefully distracting Mitch in order to delay the poker game.
In this scene Stanley is particularly cruel to Mitch, making fun of his caring attitude towards his mother:
Mitch: She says to go out, so I go out, but I don’t enjoy it. All the while I keep wondering how she is.”
Stanley: “Aw, for God’s sake, go home then!” – scene 3
You can tell that Stanley is the leader of the group, because he can say what he likes to any of them, and they don’t argue back, for example, when he tells Mitch to “shut up” nobody stands up for him. Stanley is a bully, not just towards women, but towards his friends as well, he thrives on the power that he has over them. Stella says to Blanche “Stanley’s the only one of is crowd likely to get anywhere.” This may be because no one ever dares to oppose him. Mitch in particular irritates Stanley, because of his sensitivity and his concerned attitude towards his mother, Stanley does not understand this unmanly behaviour, and so it annoys him. Because Stanley is drunk little things like this will infuriate him twice as much as normal, and so he continuously confronts Mitch, but gets little response:
Stanley: “Hurry back and we’ll fix you a sugar-tit.”
Mitch: “Aw, lay off.”
Language is used to build tension in this scene, because all of the speech around the poker table is short and fast, attention grabbing from the audiences point of view:
Stanley: “How many?”
Steve: “ Give me three.”
Stanley: “One.”
Mitch: “I’m out again. I oughta go home pretty soon.”
Stanley: “Shut up.” – scene 3
The speed is used to resemble the speed at which they are playing the game. The fast pace is used so that the players can be snappy or tetchy with each other without much attention being drawn to it, because the speech has already moved on.
The joke, told by Steve as he deals the cards is a tension-building device, as it implicates both racism (the term “nigger”) and sexism, referring to hens. This is also useful in the script as it makes the audience distinctly dislike the poker players, with their open uses of vulgar terms. The term “Hen” is referred to several times in the speech, once by Steve, as he tells a joke, just before the women return. Stanley, however, uses the word when he is directly speaking to Blanche and Stella:
Stanley: “You hens cut out that conversation in there!” – scene 3
This emphasizes the fact that he has no respect for women. He believes that men are superior, and women should do what they’re told.
In the place where Stanley and Stella live there are two rooms, but in scene three the main room is occupied by the males, playing poker and behaving in a generally stereotypical male way and the bedroom is engaged by the females. Blanche and Stella are behaving in a stereotypical female way, gossiping, listening to music and laughing together. All that separates these two rooms is a pair of drapes, but the cultural divide is much stronger. It is like two different worlds, parted by very little. This builds tension because Stanley wants the worlds to stay parted, to imagine the women aren’t there, but he can’t do that when he can hear their gossiping and music. The atmosphere explodes when the two different cultures clash, in a difference of opinion: Stella wants them to stop playing poker, to have her house back to normal, but Stanley wants to carry on.
In scene 3 most of the dramatic tension comes from Stanley. As his mood darkens, and his tension builds, so does the tension in the scene overall. He starts with throwing some watermelon rinds to the floor in frustration, then is rude to Mitch, telling him to “Shut up.” Then, when the women come home, Stanley slaps Stella’s thigh, even though he knows that she doesn’t like it, especially in front of people. The other men find this funny, and he did it more for their benefit than his or Stella’s. Throwing the radio out of the window is a sign to the audience that he is ready to snap, and by now has drunk so much that he really is completely out of control. Of course, eventually Stella trying to get rid of the poker players sends him over the edge, and the tension reaches a climax when he hits her and has to be pulled off by his friends:
Stage directions: “There is the sound of a blow. Stella cries out……….”
“………Stanley is forced, pinioned by two men, into the bedroom.” – scene 3
From this point onwards all sympathy that the audience may have been felt for Stanley, being downtrodden and made fun of by Blanche, is lost. This act of violence shows that he will never redeem himself, because if he’s hit her, then he’s probably done it before, and will do it again. Everyone knows that hitting a woman is a bad thing to do, and in a play would only be done by someone who was being portrayed as a bad character.
In the stage directions it says that the moment when Stanley strikes Stella is not supposed to be performed on stage. This would add to dramatic effect for an audience who was watching the play, rather than reading it because you wouldn’t actually see what happened. It is supposed to be a sombre moment, but occasionally when someone is hit in a performance it is done in a tacky way, which makes an audience laugh. If it is off stage, then exactly what happens, and how it happens is left to the imagination of the audience.
In scene 4 Stanley enters the building unheard, because of the train. I think that by having a train going past at the same time Stanley arrives, Tennessee Williams is comparing Stanley to the train, both are loud and strong, both are powerful and fast, unwavering in their actions – and you wouldn’t want to get in the way of either. The two women are unaware of Stanley listening to their conversation, but the audience know he is there – this is a case of dramatic irony.
Blanche tells Stella everything about her feelings against Stanley. She pours her heart out, and this adds to dramatic tension because you know that Stella hates her saying these things about her husband, but Blanche carries on regardless. In a way, by telling Stella this Blanche is getting her to choose between her sister and her husband, she is also displaying weakness and vulnerability that Stanley was oblivious to.
Now Stanley knows about Blanche’s vulnerability he is able to use it against her, as a form of power. He knows that Blanche doesn’t like him, but he doesn’t care, because that is to his advantage, it makes her easier to hurt. I think that the reason Stanley doesn’t say anything about the conversation he overheard is that this knowledge gives him a lead on Blanche. Also, he knows he has won, because when he does come in Stella goes up to him and hugs him:
Stage direction: “Stella has embraced him with both arms, fiercely, and full in the view of Blanche.” - scene 4
By doing this Stella is telling Blanche that she has picked Stanley over her, but she doesn’t know that she is also telling Stanley that he has beaten Blanche, or she probably wouldn’t have done it, because from this point the power has shifted to Stanley’s advantage.
Stage direction: “He laughs and clasps her head to him. Over her head he grins through the curtains at Blanche.” – scene 4
This action alone is a symbol of Stanley’s victory, he wouldn’t grin in such a way if he wasn’t sure he had beaten Blanche. From this point Blanche has no chance of living in harmony with Stella, let alone Stan, partly because she has forced Stella to pick, and she chose Stan, her husband, but partly because Stanley knows that he is beginning to drive her out, and all he needs to do is continue to act as she described him:
Blanche (to Stella): “He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like on, moves like one, talks like one! There’s even something sub-human – something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something – ape-like about him,” – scene 4
And it is only a matter of time before she is driven out.
