We are going to be very Bohemian. We are going to pretend that we are sitting in a little artists’ café on the Left Bank in Paris! [She lights a candle stub and put it in a bottle.] Je suis la Dame aux Comellias! Vous êtes- Armand! Understand French?
– Tennessee Williams
A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 6. Blanche invites Mitch into her fantasy world. Seemingly unable to bear the reality of them being in the small Kowalski flat, she asks him to imagine they are in the romantic setting of an artists’ cafe in Paris. In her flight of imagination, she flaunts her educated and cultured background, telling him in French, which he does not understand: "I am the Lady of the Camellias! You are – Armand!" This is an allusion to the play La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas the Younger. It tells of the tragic love story between a courtesan or prostitute to the nobility and a middle-class man named Armand. There are parallels between this classic story of love and loss and Blanche. She has a promiscuous past that Mitch is not yet aware of. Her abandonment by Mitch when he learns of this from Stanley is foreshadowed here.