Belle Reve Quotes

She showed me a picture of your home-place, the plantation… A great big place with white columns.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Eunice, speaking to Stella, appears fascinated with the grandness of Belle Reve. This is after Blanche shows her a picture of the family’s plantation. Belle Reve comes from the French and means "beautiful dream." But it is an illusion that hides an ugly truth, the dream is beautiful only to those who owned the plantation. Belle Reve is a fantasy version of the Old South, symbolizing privilege and wealth that was built on the cruelty of the slave trade.

But you are the one that abandoned Belle Reve, not I! I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche struggles with the loss of her ancestral home Belle Reve. She is jealous and resentful of Stella’s life with Stanley, despite thinking of herself as a class above him. She admonishes her sister for having abandoned her and the family home. Moments before this Blanche criticized Stella for taking off to New Orleans to look out for herself, while Blanche had to remain at Belle Reve to try to hold it all together.

BLANCHE [slowly]: The loss – the loss…
STELLA: Belle Reve? Lost, is it? No!
BLANCHE: Yes, Stella.
[They stare at each other across the yellow-checked linoleum of the table. Blanche slowly nods her head and Stella looks slowly down at her hands folded on the table. The music of the "blue piano" grows louder. Blanche touches her handkerchief to her forehead.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Stella learns from Blanche that their ancestral home Belle Reve is lost to the family. The great plantation is a major part of the sisters’ past and there is an intense sense of shock and sadness at the family’s loss. The "blue piano" music reflects this mood.

Yes, accuse me! Sit there and stare at me, thinking I let the place go! I let the place go? Where were you! In bed with your – Polack!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 1. Blanche feels that Stella is accusing her with her eyes of letting Belle Reve go. So she turns the blame around to Stella, saying that her sister prioritized sleeping with Stanley over saving the family home. Full of the notion that she is high-class, Blanche uses the derogatory term Polack when belittling Stanley and referring to his background.

In the state of Louisiana we have the Napoleonic code according to which what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband and vice versa.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 2. Stanley is upset over the loss of the Belle Reve plantation and the possibility that Blanche has deceived Stella about it. Asserting his male dominance, he explains to Stella about the Napoleonic Code, whereby any property belonging to her belongs to him. He thinks that Blanche may have swindled Stella out of her inheritance.

It looks to me like you have been swindled, baby, and when you’re swindled under the Napoleonic code I’m swindled too. And I don’t like to be swindled.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 2. Stanley tells Stella that Blanche has "swindled" her out of her Belle Reve inheritance, which Blanche claims has been lost to the family. Stanley questions the fact that Blanche has produced no documents or deed of sale to show a sale or transfer of the family plantation. If Blanche has swindled Stella, then she has cheated him too, he reasons as he claims his rights to any property owned by his wife.

I got an acquaintance who deals in this sort of merchandise. I’ll have him in here to appraise it. I’m willing to bet you there’s thousands of dollars invested in this stuff here!… Here’s your plantation, or what’s left of it, here!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 2. A suspicious Stanley unpacks all the furs and jewelry Blanche has brought with her and demands to know how she could afford to buy these on a teacher’s modest salary. Stella explains that it is all inexpensive stuff. But Stanley is convinced she bought all with the proceeds of the sale of Belle Reve and so stole their inheritance.

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.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 2. When Stanley accuses Blanche of swindling Stella out of her inheritance, Blanche blames the loss of Belle Reve on the debauchery of her male ancestors. She creates the illusion that it was destroyed by the out of control sexual behavior of the men in the family. But it is later revealed that Blanche herself has been guilty of the same "epic fornications" she complains about in others. We see the theme of death here with the reference to the plantation being reduced to a few acres of land, including a graveyard.

This is after the home-place had slipped through her lily-white fingers! She moved to the Flamingo! A second class hotel which has the advantage of not interfering in the private social life of the personalities there! The Flamingo is used to all kinds of goings-on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame Blanche! In fact they were so impressed by Dame Blanche that they requested her to turn in her room-key – for permanently! This happened a couple of weeks before she showed here.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 7. Stanley reveals that after the loss of Belle Reve, Blanche moved into the seedy Flamingo Hotel where she acquired a notorious reputation. Her behavior became so wild even for this low-class establishment that they asked her to move out. Stanley takes great delight in exposing Blanche to Stella, mocking her faux-genteel pretensions by calling her "Dame Blanche."

When we first met, me and you, you thought I was common. How right you was, baby. I was common as dirt. You showed me the snapshot of the place with the columns. I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it, having them colored lights going! And wasn’t we happy together, wasn’t it all okay till she showed here? And wasn’t we happy together? Wasn’t it all okay till she showed here, hoity-toity, describing me like a ape?

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 8. Stanley reminds Stella of the happy life they had before Blanche came and disrupted it with her "hoity-toity" ways. When he and Stella first met, she was just like Blanche till he pulled her down from her high-class notions. "Columns" is a reference to the Belle Reve plantation and Stella’s upper class background. Stanley uses the metaphor of "them colored lights" for the passionate love life he and Stella enjoyed before Blanche came. He is using his sexuality to seduce Stella to his side in the power struggle between him and Blanche.

Not far from Belle Reve, before we had lost Belle Reve, was a camp where they trained young soldiers. On Saturday nights they would go in town to get drunk… and on the way back they would stagger onto my lawn and call – "Blanche! Blanche!" – The deaf old lady remaining suspected nothing. But sometimes I slipped outside to answer their calls… Later the paddy-wagon would gather them up like daisies… the long way home.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. As he talks to Mitch, Blanche simultaneously lives in the present and past, showing her deteriorating mental stage. She reminisces about a camp of soldiers stationed near the Belle Reve family plantation. She speaks about how she found comfort pleasuring the soldiers. As one might expect from an English teacher, Blanche frequently uses figurative language. In a simile she talks of the paddy-wagon picking up the drunken soldiers "like daisies."
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