Blanche DuBois Quotes

BLANCHE: Stop it. Let go of that broom. I won’t have you cleaning up for him!
STELLA: Then who’s going to do it? Are you?
BLANCHE: I? I!
STELLA: No, I didn’t think so.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 4. A disgusted Blanche tries to persuade Stella from cleaning up after Stanley’s poker party. In the Kowalski household keeping the place clean is seen as a woman’s job. But when Stella wonders if Blanche might do it, her sister responds with an air of shocked social superiority at the very thought of it.

Do you remember Shep Huntleigh?… Of course you remember Shep Huntleigh. I went out with him at college and wore his pin for a while… I ran into him on Biscayne Boulevard, on Christmas Eve, about dusk… getting into his car – Cadillac convertible; must have been a block long!… You’ve heard of oil-wells?… He has them, all over Texas. Texas is literally spouting gold in his pockets.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 4. Blanche, speaking to Stella, claims to have ran into an old college boyfriend during her Christmas trip to Miami. Her recollection and resurrection of the oil-rich Shep Huntleigh reflects Blanche’s materialism and her need for a man to rescue and take care of her. Shep, who never appears in the play, is also a symbol of Blanche’s world of fantasy. We never know if he is a real person or an imaginary friend that Blanche has conjured up.

Darling Shep. Sister and I in desperate situation… Would you be interested in – ?

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 4. Blanche begins to write a telegram message to send to an old college beau Shep Huntleigh asking him to come to the rescue of her and Stella. Lost in her fantasy world, Blanche thinks that Shep can provide financial support for her and her sister to get away from Stanley. Huntleigh is a married millionaire who never actually appears in the play. We don’t know how much or little Blanche says about him is real, or simply created by her imagination in order to cope with reality. One of the themes addressed here is women’s dependence on men in a patriarchal society. Blanche’s frantic efforts to escape and desperate cry for help to an old flame are signs of a woman on the edge of a mental breakdown.

What such a man has to offer is animal force and he gave a wonderful exhibition of that! But the only way to live with such a man is to – go to bed with him! And that’s your job – not mine!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 4. Blanche tells Stella that the only way to live with an animal like Stanley is to keep him happy with sex. She finds Stanley’s brute force masculinity abhorrent and cannot understand her sister’s attraction to him, especially after he hit her the night before. Blanche is unknowingly foreshadowing her own rape, not realizing that Stanley will turn that animal force on her in Scene 10.

BLANCHE: 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…
STELLA: Haven’t you ever ridden on that streetcar?

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 4. Blanche uses the streetcar as a metaphor to tell Stella that sheer brutal sexual desire is no basis for a marriage. Stella continues the metaphor by asking if Blanche has never given into that same desire.

There’s something downright – bestial – about him!… He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There’s even something sub-human – something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something – ape-like about him, like one of those pictures I’ve seen in – anthropological studies. Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is – Stanley Kowalski – survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you – you here – waiting for him! Maybe he’ll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you! That is, if kisses have been discovered yet! Night falls and the other apes gather! There in the front of the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and hulking! His poker night! – you call it – this party of apes! Somebody growls – some creature snatches at something – the fight is on! God!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 4. Blanche breaks into a rant against Stanley and dehumanizes him to Stella. Using the language of metaphor and simile, she degrades him as an ape-like animal and unevolved survivor of the Stone Age. Blanche continues with insulting and condescending imagery about the primitive masculinity of Stanley and his poker party "apes." What she doesn’t realize, but the audience does, is that Stanley has entered the room and overhears every word. This an example of dramatic irony.

In some kinds of people some tenderer feelings have had some little beginning! That we have to make grow! And cling to, and hold as our flag! In this dark march toward whatever it is we’re approaching… Don’t – don’t hang back with the brutes!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 4. Blanche uses metaphorical language to depict the battle by aristocratic Southerners like Stella and herself as a "dark march" against the uncultured "brutes." She is referring to people like Stanley when she uses this animal imagery. She urges Stella to fight to save their "tenderer" way of life from the onslaught of modern America, calling on her to rally under "our flag" in another metaphor. The motif of light is used, as Blanche speaks of fighting the darkness of modernity. There is dramatic irony with Blanche not aware that Stanley is listening to her tirade against him, but the audience is. Her superior tone and references to common people like Stanley as brutes reflects the theme of social class.

STELLA: What are you laughing at, honey?
BLANCHE: Myself, myself, for being such a liar! I’m writing a letter to Shep.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Shep Huntleigh represents Blanche’s perfect man and the unattainable. He is a symbol of American success and wealth and Blanche’s refuge and means of escape from reality. Her old boyfriend in college, he is now married in Dallas and a millionaire owner of oil wells. Shep never actually appears in the play. As Blanche writes a letter to him, she admits to being a liar. Generally economical with the truth, Blanche is given to fabricating stories and the details of her life to suit her purpose – which she does in her letter. She fantasizes that he will provide her the cash to rescue her from her current situation and set her up in a shop.

Darling Shep. I am spending the summer on the wing, making flying visits here and there. And who knows, perhaps I shall take a sudden notion to swoop down on Dallas! How would you feel about that? Ha-ha!… Most of my sister’s friends go north in the summer but some have homes on the Gulf and there has been a continued round of entertainments, teas, cocktails, and luncheons.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Blanche reads from the letter she is writing to Shep Huntleigh, an old college boyfriend, asking for financial support for her and Stella to escape Stanley. She lies about what she has been up to for the past few months. She enhances the details of her life by pretending that it has been an endless round of cocktails and meals with wealthy friends on the Gulf. This is to impress Shep so that he will be more inclined to give her money for a new start. Shep is Blanche’s knight in shining armor, who never actually comes to her rescue.

I bet you were born under Aries. Aries people are forceful and dynamic. They dote on noise! They love to bang things around! You must have had lots of banging around in the army and now that you’re out, you make up for it by treating inanimate objects with such a fury!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Blanche describes the kind of person she believes Stanley is. She gets his astrological sign wrong – he was born under Capricorn, not Aries. But she gets it right regarding his aggressive and violent personality. During the play Stanley smashes various items, strikes his wife and sexually assaults Blanche.

STANLEY: 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 laughs breathlessly as she touches the cologne-dampened handkerchief to her temples.]
BLANCHE: I’m afraid he does have me mixed up with this "other party." The Hotel Flamingo is not the sort of establishment I would dare to be seen in!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Fearing that her murky past is about to catch up with her, Blanche lies to Stanley. He begins to chip at her carefully crafted facade of innocence and proper behavior she hides her true self behind. He tells her that a friend named Shaw claims to have met her at the disreputable Hotel Flamingo in Laurel. Blanche denies any connection with such a seedy place. Stanley is the first person to see through Blanche’s show of conservatism and respectability. From her nervous appearance, he knows she is lying to him.

I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. When people are soft – soft people have got to shimmer and glow – they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a – paper lantern over the light… It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I – I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Blanche knows that her scandalous behavior over the last two years has been the subject of gossip. Using metaphors, she explains her difficulties in life to Stella as her physical looks fade through age. She had to put on a feminine facade of fantasy and illusion, her "butterfly wings", to make herself attractive to men. Her use of the double entendre "turn the trick" is interesting as she wonders how much longer she can keep up her lies and deceit. The phrase is also a reference to prostitution, with Blanche having led a less than virtuous life back in Laurel. The paper lantern over the light symbolizes how Blanche obscures the truth and conceals her real self from men and everybody else.

People don’t see you – men don’t – don’t even admit your existence unless they are making love to you. And you’re got to have your existence admitted by someone, if you’re going to have someone’s protection.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Blanche, speaking about her sexual adventures, admits that she can only find a sense of self through physical relations with men. She has sex so that she can be seen and have her existence confirmed. She is thus completely dependent on men in order to feel she has a sense of personal identity.

He hasn’t gotten a thing but a goodnight kiss, that’s all I have given him, Stella. I want his respect. And men don’t want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand men lose interest quickly. Especially when the girl is over – thirty. They think a girl over thirty ought to – the vulgar term is – "put out."

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. The stereotypical genders roles of the period are shown here as a nervous Blanche prepares for her date with Mitch. She tells Stella that she wants Mitch’s respect, revealing that she has only given him a goodnight kiss because she doesn’t want him to think her "too easy." But the flip side of that is Mitch could lose interest in her, she admits. Blanche sounds desperate and lonely.

I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again! Yes – I want Mitch… very badly! Just think! If it happens, I can leave here and not be anyone’s problem.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Asked by Stella did she want Mitch, Blanche provides this revealing response to her sister. Blanche wants to marry Mitch not out of love but for security and safety reasons. This is in contrast to the passion that underpins Stella’s marriage to Stanley. Blanche is attracted to the idea of Mitch and the escape he can provide for her.
Long rainy afternoons in New Orleans

Don’t you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour – but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands – and who knows what to do with it?

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Blanche’s romanticized description of rainy afternoons in New Orleans uses poetic language, emphasizing her educated background and social class. She is speaking here to a young man collecting money for a newspaper. In a beautiful metaphor she likens an hour to a piece of eternity dropping into your hand. The passage reflects the writer Williams’s own passion for New Orleans, which he regarded as his "spiritual home," to quote his own words.

Young man! Young, young, young man! Has anyone ever told you that you look like a young Prince out of the Arabian Nights?
[The Young Man laughs uncomfortably and stands like a bashful kid. Blanche speaks softly to him.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Blanche flirts with a young man, using a simile to compare him to a Arabian prince. The Arabian Nights is a collection of fairy tales. The aging Blanche, desperately trying to cling onto her own youth, prefers to live in the world of fantasy and illusion rather than the real world.

Honey lamb! Come here. I want to kiss you, just once, softly and sweetly on your mouth!
Without waiting for him to accept, she crosses quickly to him and presses her lips to his.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Blanche steps into the role of sexual predator as she places an uninvited kiss on the mouth of a young male stranger. Alcohol is not Blanche’s only addiction, she is also addicted to young men. Her calling him "honey lamb" suggests the innocence of the boy and is another example of the animal imagery used throughout the play.

Now run along, now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I’ve got to be good – and keep my hands off children.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 5. Blanche says this to the newspaper boy who calls to the door to collect money for The Evening Star, after touching his cheek and kissing him on the lips. Her talk about keeping her hands off children echoes Blanche’s very sexual and hidden self and her fondness for boys. Foreshadowed here is Stanley’s shocking revelation in Scene 7 as to why Blanche was fired from her teaching job in Laurel.
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