Quotations - A Streetcar Names Desire
1. They told me to take
a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six
blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!
Blanche speaks these words to Eunice and the Negro woman upon
arriving at the Kowalski apartment at the beginning of Scene One. She has just
arrived in New Orleans and is describing her means of transportation to her
sister’s apartment. The place names that Williams uses in A Streetcar
Named Desire hold obvious metaphorical value. Elysian Fields, the
Kowalskis’ street, is named
for the land of the dead in Greek mythology. The journey that Blanche
describes making from the train station to the Kowalski apartment is an allegorical version of her life
up to this point in time. Her illicit pursuit of her sexual “desires” led to her
social death and expulsion from her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi.
Landing in a seedy district that is likened to a pagan heaven, Blanche begins a
sort of afterlife, in which she learns and lives the consequences of her life’s
actions.
2. 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! . . . 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.
Blanche gives this speech to Stanley in Scene Two after he
accuses her of having swindled Stella out of her inheritance. While showing
Stanley paperwork proving that she lost Belle Reve due to foreclosure on its
mortgage, Blanche attributes her family’s decline in fortune to the debauchery of its male members
over the generations. Like Blanche, the DuBois ancestors put airs of gentility and
refinement while secretly pursuing libidinous pleasure.
Blanche’s explanation situates her as the last in a long line
of ancestors who cannot
express their sexual desire in a healthy fashion. Unfortunately, she is
forced to deal with the bankruptcy that is the result of her ancestors’
profligate ways. By running away to New Orleans and marrying Stanley, Stella removed herself from the
elite social stratum to which her family belonged, thereby abandoning
all its pretensions, codes of behavior, sexual mores, and problems. Blanche
resents Stella’s departure and subsequent happiness. In Blanche’s eyes, Stella
irresponsibly left Blanche alone to deal with their family in its time of
distress.
3. Oh, I guess he’s just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume,
but maybe he’s what we need to mix with our blood now that we’ve lost Belle
Reve.
In Scene Two, Blanche makes this comment about Stanley to
Stella. Blanche’s statement that Stanley is “not the type that goes for jasmine
perfume” is her way of saying that he lacks the refinement to appreciate fine taste as Blanche can.
She suggests that, under normal circumstances, he would be an inadequate mate for a
member of the DuBois clan because of his inability to appreciate the subtler things in life,
whether material or spiritual, jasmine perfume or poetry.
Yet the second half of Blanche’s comment acknowledges that the
DuBois clan can no longer
afford luxuries or delude themselves with ideas of social grandeur. Since
financially Blanche and Stella no longer belong to the Southern elite, Blanche
recognizes that Stella’s child unavoidably will lack the monetary and social
privilege that she and Stella enjoyed. The genteel South in which Blanche grew
up is a thing of the past, and immigrants like Stanley, whom Blanche sees as
crude, are rising in
social status. Like Stanley, Stella’s child may lack an appreciation for perfume and other
fineries, but Stanley will likely imbue him with the survival skills that
Blanche lacks. The fact that Blanche’s lack of survival skills ultimately
causes her downfall underscores the new importance such skills hold.
4. I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks.
But 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.
Blanche makes derogatory and ignorant remarks about Stanley’s
Polish ethnicity throughout the play, implying that it makes him stupid and coarse. In
Scene Eight, Stanley finally snaps and speaks these words, correcting Blanche’s
many misapprehensions and forcefully exposing her as an uninformed bigot. His declaration of being a
proud American carries great thematic weight, for Stanley does indeed represent the new American
society, which is composed of upwardly mobile immigrants. Blanche is a
relic in the new America. The Southern landed aristocracy from which she
assumes her sense of superiority no longer has a viable presence in the
American economy, so Blanche is disenfranchised monetarily and socially.
These words, which Blanche speaks to the doctor in Scene
Eleven, form Blanche’s
final statement in the play. She perceives the doctor as the gentleman rescuer for
whom she has been waiting since arriving in New Orleans. Blanche’s final
comment is ironic
for two reasons. First, the doctor is not the chivalric Shep Huntleigh type of gentleman
Blanche thinks he is. Second, Blanche’s dependence “on the kindness of strangers” rather
than on herself is the
reason why she has not fared well in life. In truth, strangers have been
kind only in exchange for sex. Otherwise, strangers like Stanley, Mitch, and
the people of Laurel have denied
Blanche the sympathy she deserves. Blanche’s final remark indicates her total detachment from
reality and her decision
to see life only as she wishes to perceive it.
