A Streetcar Named Desire: Stanley

Scene 1

The page numbers refer to my text, but I have left them in so that you can find the references to Stanley more easily.

115 [Elysian Fields]
116 Meat.   Bowling.
124 Stella: a different species.
125 Stella: I can hardly stand it when he is away for a night … I cry on his lap like a baby.
127 Blanche: Where were you.  In bed with your – Polak.
128 [Stanley throws the screen door of the kitchen open.  

Animal joy in his being.

the centre of his life has been pleasure with women … with the power and the pride of a richly feathered male bird

his heartiness with men … appreciation of rough humour, his love of good drink and food and games, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer.

He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images]
129 [He holds the bottle to the light to observe its depletion]

[Starts to remove his shirt]
130 Stanley: I’ll strike you as the unrefined type

 

Scene 2

 

131 Stanley: How about my supper, huh?
132 [ominously]
133 when you’re swindled under the Napoleonic code, I’m swindled too.

Open your eyes to this stuff!
134 What is this sister of yours, a deep sea diver who brings up sunken treasures?
135 The Kowalskis and the DuBois have different notions
137 Blanche: You’re simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side … to interest you a woman would have to – (Stanley:) Lay
139 The touch of your hands insults them (the letters)
141 poker party

 

Scene 3: the Poker Night

 

145 Nobody’s going to get up.

loud thwack on his thigh
147 You hens cut out that conversation in there!
148 This game is Spit in the Ocean.
154 [with heaven-splitting violence]: STELLLAHHHH

[Then they come together with low animal moans]

[he lifts her off her feet and bears her into the dark flat]
155 Mitch: There’s nothing to be scared of.  They’re crazy about each other.

 

Scene 4

 

162 Stella: there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark – that sort of make everything else seem – unimportant.

Blanche: What you are talking about is brutal desire

Stella: I love him.
163 Blanche: bestial … an animal … an animal’s habits … sub-human … ape-like … survivor of the Stone Age … Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle … maybe he’ll strike you or maybe he’ll grunt and kiss you.
164 [Over her head he grins through the curtains at Blanche.

 

Scene 7

 

186 some canary bird, huh!
187 for the last year or two she has been washed up like poison.
189 It’s not my soul I’m worried about!
191 Her future is mapped out for her.

 

Scene 8

 

194 Stanley: ‘Pig – Polak – disgusting – vulgar – greasy!’

What do you two think you are?  A pair of queens?
195 I am the king round here, so don’t forget it! [He hurls a cup and saucer to the floor.]  My place is cleared! You want me to clear your places?

Stanley stalks out
196 get the coloured lights going
197 I am not a Polak … But what I am is one hundred percent American
199 Stella: people like you abused her

 

Scene 10

 

209 [He unbuttons his shirt]
211 Here’s something I always break out on special occasions like this!  The silk pyjamas I wore on my wedding night!
212 Blanche: casting my pearls before swine.

There isn’t a goddam thing but imagination! … And lies and conceit and tricks!
213 I’ve been onto you from the start.  You are the Queen of the Nile! … swilling down my liquor

[the night is filled with inhuman voices like cries in a jungle … walls have become transparent]
214 brilliant silk pyjamas
215 [He springs towards her] … Tiger – tiger!  Drop the bottle-top! Drop it! We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning!

 

Scene 11

 

216 Eunice: Making pigs of yourselves
223 [He … seizes the paper lantern, tearing it off the light bulb, and extends it towards her.  She cries out as if the lantern was herself.]
226 [voluptuously, soothingly … his fingers find the opening of her blouse.] Now, now, love.  Now, love … [The luxurious sobbing, the sensual murmur fade away under the swelling music of the ‘blue piano’ and the muted trumpet]

 

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