1. Scenes 4 & 5

2. Summary

3. It is early the following morning
It is early the following morning. There is a confusion of street cries like a choral chant. Stella is lying down in the bedroom. Her face is serene in the early morning sunlight. One hand rests on her belly, rounding slightly with new maternity. From the other dangles a book of colored comics. Her eyes and lips have that almost narcotized tranquility that is the faces of Eastern idols. The table is sloppy with remains of breakfast and the debris of the preceding night, and Stanley's gaudy pyjamas lie across the threshold of the bathroom. The outside door is slightly ajar on a sky of summer brilliance. Blanche appears at this door. She has spent a sleepless night and her appearance entirely contrasts with Stella's. She presses her knuckles nervously to her lips as she looks through the door, before entering.
Stage Directions
‘The opening stage directions contrast Stella’s sleepy sensuality with Blanche’s hysteria’. (Hana Sambrook, 2015)
How does Williams do this? Look at the dialogue which follows to help you answer. Which are our key quotations?

4. ‘What you are talking about is brutal desire – just – Desire
‘What you are talking about is brutal desire – just – Desire! – the name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another…It brought me here – where I’m not wanted and where I’m ashamed to be…’
The streetcar is literally the streetcar that brought Blanche to Desire (a real district of New Orleans) but it is also a metaphor for the sexual desire that has ruined Blanche’s life and made her rely on her sister’s charity. What else might the streetcar symbolise?
Blanche says she has transferred from a streetcar named Desire to one called ‘cemeteries’. What did we say this suggested about the relationship between desire and death? Have we developed our ideas?
Symbol: The Streetcar

5. A Streetcar Named Desire
‘But the only way to live with such a man is to--go to bed with him! And that's your job--not mine!’
‘Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?’
‘A man like that is someone to go out with--once--twice--three times when the devil is in you. But live with? Have a child by?’
A Streetcar Named Desire
[Under cover of the train's noise Stanley enters from outside]
[Stella has embraced him--with both arms, fiercely, and full in the view of Blanche. He laughs and clasps her head to him. Over her head he grins through the curtains at Blanche.]

6. Dramatic Structure This short scene achieves a lot, dramatically.
It illuminates the sisters’ attitudes towards desire and passion, showing the differences between them, regardless of their common upbringing and the social values on which they were raised.
When Stanley overhears Blanche condemn him as an ‘ape man’, his reasons for disliking her are strengthened. His triumphant grin at the end of the scene bodes ill for Blanche.
Blanche’s hysteria (e.g. trying to phone her old admirer Shep) casts doubt on her sanity.
Dramatic Structure

7. Summary

8. Threats and foreboding
[A disturbance is heard upstairs at the Hubbells' apartment.]
BLANCHE:
Virgo is the Virgin.
STANLEY [contemptuously]:
Bah!
Threats and foreboding
Well, this somebody named Shaw is under the impression he met you in Laurel, but I figure he must have got you mixed up with some other party because this other party is someone he met at a hotel called the Flamingo.
[Blanche closes her eyes as if faint.]

9. Threats and foreboding
I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. When people are soft--soft people have got to court the favor of hard ones, Stella. Have got to be seductive--put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and glow--make a little temporary magic just in order to pay for--one night’s shelter! […] And so the soft people have got to--shimmer and glow-- put a--paper lantern over the light… But I’m scared now… I don't know how much longer I can turn the trick. It isn't enough to be soft. You've got to be soft and attractive. And I--I'm fading now!
Threats and foreboding
What does this speech remind us of?
What does it foreshadow?

10. […]
‘I’ve run for protection, Stella, from under one leaky roof to another leaky roof– because it was storm, all storm, and I was– caught in the center… People don’t see you—men don’t—don’t even admit your existence unless they are making love to you. And you’ve got to have your existence admitted by someone if you’re going to have someone’s protection.’
Key Quotation
What does the metaphor of the ‘leaky roof’ tell us?
(Think about what Stanley has just revealed and what Blanche may be trying to tell Stella.) How does Stella react? Why?

11. Threats and foreboding
‘Right on my pretty white skirt!’
What does the Coca-Cola stain on Blanche’s skirt symbolise?
Threats and foreboding
STELLA:
Oh... Use my hanky. Blot gently.
BLANCHE [slowly recovering]:
I know--gently--gently...
Did it stain?
BLANCHE:
Not a bit. Ha-ha! Isn't that lucky?

12. Threats and foreboding
‘We become aware of the inevitability of disaster because Blanche’s past suggests that she will always go astray, propelled by sexual desire as well as by an instinctive rejection of the dull security she professes to need.’ (Hana Sambrook, 2015)
Threats and foreboding
How does Blanche’s flirtation with the young newspaper man reinforce this idea?

13. Blanche’s Self-Destructive Nature
‘You make my mouth water.’
‘I want to kiss you’
‘It would be nice to keep you, but I've got to be good--and keep my hands off children.’
[In the ensuing pause, the "blue piano" is heard. It continues through the rest of this scene and the opening of the next.]
Blanche’s Self-Destructive Nature
[Then Mitch appears around the corner with a bunch of roses.]

14. Blanche’s Self-Destructive Nature
‘How do you interpret the brief episode with the young man? Certainly, Williams uses it to show the contradictions in Blanche’s character. She is desperate to marry Mitch, yet she is ready to risk her future in this flirtatious moment. Is it an urge to self-destruct? Does she really find this young man so irresistible? Or is it that she has no real desire for the safety of married life because in her heart she cannot commit herself to a permanent relationship with one man – like a moth that will flutter but not settle down?’ (Hana Sambrook, 2015)
Blanche’s Self-Destructive Nature

15. Blanche explains her reliance on magic, illusion and fantasy in this scene – explore it here and analyse how it has been portrayed so far in the play.  Do you think other characters rely on illusions or ‘a little magic’ like Blanche does?
 Explore the way Williams uses the techniques of repetition, broken utterances and fragmentation to characterise Blanche.
 Look at Blanche’s speech beginning ‘I was never hard or self-sufficient enough.’ Explore the use of imagery and references to light, weather and the skies in the play so far. Why do you think Williams associates the semantic field of light with Blanche?
Homework