A Streetcar Named Desire Masculinity Quotes

STELLA: You lay your hands on me and I’ll – .
[She backs out of sight. He advances and disappears. There is the sound of a blow. Stella cries out. Blanche screams and runs into the kitchen. The men rush forward and there is grappling and cursing. Something is overturned with a crash.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 3. Stanley is a violent and aggressive man who embodies toxic masculinity. Disregarding Stella’s warning him not to lay hands on her, he strikes his wife so that the other men are forced to intervene, restrain him and force him into the bedroom.

[Stanley comes out of the bathroom dripping water and still in his clinging wet polka dot drawers.] STANLEY: Stella! [There is a pause] My baby doll’s left me! [He breaks into sobs. Then he goes to the phone and dials, still shuddering with sobs.] Eunice? I want my baby. [He waits a moment; then he hangs up and dials again] Eunice! I’ll keep on ringin’ until I talk with my baby!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 3. While Blanche takes baths to escape from reality, Stanley’s shower sobers him up and snaps him back to the real world. After his pregnant Stella takes refuge upstairs with Eunice following Stanley’s brutality, he sobs and screams out his wife’s name over and over from the foot of the stairs. He phones Eunice and pleads for his wife to return to him. Stanley the wife-beater is now become the vulnerable and pathetic male without his Stella.

[Stanley stumbles half dressed out to the porch and down the wooden steps to the pavement before the building. There he throws back his head like a baying hound and bellows his wife’s name: "Stella! Stella, sweetheart! Stella!"]
STANLEY: Stellahhhhh!… I want my baby down here. Stella, Stella!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 3. Stanley realizes that Stella has left him and fled to Eunice’s room after he abused her. Now sobered up he is filled with remorse over hitting his wife. He is on the sidewalk wet and half dressed and screaming up to Eunice’s apartment window. His cries are like that of an injured animal howling for his mate. A fitting animal simile compares him to a "baying hound." In contrast to his previous aggressive and dominant behavior, Stanley is presented here as a vulnerable and pathetic male. At the thought of losing the woman he can’t live without, the raging and abusive drunk turns into a tender and loving husband.

STANLEY [with heaven-splitting violence]: STELLLAHHHHH!
[The low-tone clarinet moans. The door upstairs opens again. Stella slips down the rickety stairs in her robe. Her eyes are glistening with tears and her hair loose about her throat and shoulders. They stare at each other. Then they come together with low, animal moans. He falls to his knees on the steps and presses his face to her belly, curving a little with maternity. Her eyes go blind with tenderness as she catches his head and raises him level with her. He snatches the screen door open and lifts her off her feet and bears her into the dark flat.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 3. After Stanley hits Stella their reunion is described in animalistic terms as they "come together with low, animal moans." The personification of the clarinet music so that it also "moans" highlights the very strong sexual bond that exists between Stella and Stanley. Stanley’s cry "STELLLAHHHHH" and his falling to his knees to press his face to her pregnant belly does show a less dominant masculinity and more tender side to him. But even through his display of vulnerability he is showing his power over Stella. Wife beater he may be, but Stanley wants Stella back and Stanley won’t be denied.

He didn’t know what he was doing… He was as good as a lamb when I came back and he’s really very, very ashamed of himself.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 4. Stella shows that she too can sometimes find it hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Blinded by lust for Stanley, she excuses his violence towards her by saying he didn’t know what he was doing and is very remorseful. She uses an animal simile to compare him to a lamb, suggesting a Stanley that is innocent and child-like. This contrasts with the insensitive, bullish and aggressively masculine image he generally evokes.

Oh, well, it’s his pleasure, like mine is movies and bridge. People have got to tolerate each other’s habits, I guess.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 4. As Stella mops up the mess from her husband’s poker parties and heavy drinking, she shares her philosophy for a successful marriage. She tells Blanche that tolerance is the key, and compares Stanley’s abusive habits with her own harmless pastimes. We see here clearly defined stereotypical gender roles: the hard-drinking and playing men and the women who clean up after them.

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.

MITCH: You are light as a feather.
BLANCHE: Ha-ha!
[He lowers her but keeps his hands on her waist. Blanche speaks with an affectation of demureness]
You may release me now… [giddly] I said unhand me, sir.
[He fumblingly embraces her. Her voice sounds gently reproving]
Now, Mitch. Just because Stanley and Stella aren’t at home is no reason why you shouldn’t behave like a gentleman.
MITCH: Just give me a slap whenever I step out of bounds.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 6. Mitch and Blanche share a moment of awkward closeness when he asks what she weighs. She invites him to guess and he lifts her up, using a simile to compare her lightness to that of a feather. She lets him know the kind of man she wants, reminding him he must behave like a gallant gentleman. But Blanche’s air of the coy and virtuous Southern Belle is very much a role that she plays. Her display of feminine demureness is an "affectation," a pretense. Blanche likes to wear the mask of illusion and make-believe, so that she can bear the ugly reality of her own troubled life.

You’re a natural gentleman, one of the very few that are left in the world. I don’t want you to think that I am severe and old maid school-teacherish or anything like that. It’s just – well – … I guess it is just that I have – old-fashioned ideals!
[She rolls her eyes, knowing he cannot see her face.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 6. Blanche pretends to be old-fashioned when it comes to romance and virtue, asking Mitch to "unhand me" when he embraces her. Her reluctance to allow Mitch to touch or kiss her is to create the illusion of purity so that Mitch will marry her. She makes much of Mitch’s good manners and high moral quality as a natural gentleman. But Blanche’s feigned modesty is contradicted by her behavior in the previous scene when she passionately kissed a newspaper boy on the mouth.

You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be – you and me, Blanche?
[She stares at him vacantly for a moment. Then with a soft cry huddles in his embrace. She makes a sobbing effort to speak but the words won’t come. He kisses her forehead and her eyes and finally her lips. The polka tune fades out. Her breath is drawn and released in long, grateful sobs.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 6. Showing a softer and more sensitive side than his hard-edged friend Stanley, Mitch opens up Blanche about his loneliness and their need for companionship. He suggests that they could become a couple, and they share a tender moment as they embrace and kiss. The polka music that Blanche hears is a reminder of the suicide of her husband. It "fades out" to indicate her hope of the memory of the past being healed by the prospect of new love.

[He seizes her arm]
Don’t you ever talk that way to me. "Pig – Polack – disgusting – vulgar – greasy!" – them kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister’s too much around here. What do you think you are, a pair of queens? Remember what Huey Long said – "Every man’s a King!" And I am the king around here, so don’t forget it!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 8. Seizing Stella by the arm, Stanley tells her that he is the metaphorical "king" of the household. This is after she complains that he is making a pig of himself and his face and fingers are disgustingly greasy. It is the evening of Blanche’s birthday party, Mitch hasn’t turned up, and Stanley feels that his wife and sister Blanche are metaphorical "queens" who have no respect for him. He’s right of course. The theme of social class is shown here as Stanley feels the sisters are treating him as an inferior.

[Blanche goes to the dresser and leans forward on it. After a moment, Mitch rises and follows her purposefully. The polka music fades away. He places his hands on her waist and tries to turn her about.]
BLANCHE: What do you want?
MITCH [fumbling to embrace her]:
What I been missing all summer.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. Mitch asserts his male power and uses his physicality to force himself on Blanche, in a carbon copy of how Stanley would behave. Seizing Blanche and attempting to have sex with her, Mitch demands what he has "been missing all summer," while the music of the polka fades away.

BLANCHE: Marry me, Mitch.
MITCH: I don’t think I want to marry you any more… You’re not clean enough to bring into the house with my mother.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. For Blanche marriage is a way out of her loneliness and the trap she finds herself in. When Mitch asks to have sex with her, she proposes marriage. But Mitch rejects her proposal, for in his eyes she is tarnished since he learned of her scandalous and promiscuous past in Laurel. As he speaks these words to her he drops his hands from Blanche’s waist. Mitch’s cruel behavior and dismissal of Blanche as unclean and not fit to marry display a certain misogyny and toxic masculinity, not unlike his friend Stanley’s. It is also ironic, for moments before Mitch had his hands on Blanche looking to have sex with her.

[The bathroom door is thrown open and Stanley comes out in the brilliant silk pajamas. He grins at her as he knots the tasseled sash about his waist… he stares at her again, his mouth slowly curving into a grin, as he weaves between Blanche and the outer door… The barely audible "blue piano" begins to drum up louder. The sound of it turns into the roar of an approaching locomotive. Blanche crouches, pressing her fists to her ears.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 10. These stage directions describe the menacing sexual predator Stanley and a frightened Blanche, just before he rapes her, which is foreshadowed here. His brutish masculinity and evil intent are suggested in the description of him grinning at Blanche in his silk pajamas while he steps between her and the door. The build up of tension is seen in the metaphor of the quiet piano music turning into the roar of an approaching train engine.

[She moans. The bottle top falls. She sinks to her knees. He picks up her inert figure and carries her to the bed. The hot trumpet and drums from the Four Deuces sound loudly.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 10. The stage directions describe Stanley carrying Blanche’s unmoving body to the bed, with loud music coming from the neighborhood bar which Stanley frequents. This indicates that he rapes her. Blanche is resigned to how powerless she is against the brute force and toxic masculinity of the dominant Stanley. Mirrored here is how he carried Stella to the bed in Scene 3.

[Mitch has started toward the bedroom. Stanley crosses to block him. Stanley pushes him aside. Mitch lunges and strikes at Stanley. Stanley pushes Mitch back. Mitch collapses at the table, sobbing.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 11. With Blanche about to be removed to the mental hospital, a guilt-ridden Mitch attempts to go to the bedroom where she is. But he is too late to rescue her. Stanley blocks his way, there is a fight between them, with Mitch proving no match for the dominant alpha male and collapsing at the table in tears.

STANLEY [voluptuously, soothingly]: Now, honey. Now, love. Now, now, love. [He kneels beside her and his fingers find the opening of her blouse] Now, now, love. Now, love.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 11. Stella is in a distressed state after seeing Blanche being taken away to a mental asylum. But Stanley is just fixated on one thing – satisfying his animalistic and sexual desires. We see Stella at her most vulnerable, but when love is needed from her husband, Stanley can only provide lust. Whispering words of endearment, he opens Stella’s clothing to show his true intent and exert his masculine dominance and virility.

[The luxurious sobbing, the sensual murmur fade away under the swelling music of the "blue piano" and the muted trumpet.]
STEVE: This game is seven-card stud.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 11. As she is being taken away to a mental institution Blanche’s sobbing is drowned out by the music of the blue piano and trumpet. The muted trumped echoes the pathos of the situation, while the swelling piano music symbolizes Stanley’s triumphant victory over Blanche. The play’s last line is spoken by Steve, a minor character, and it highlights the power of masculinity, an important theme throughout the play. The males return to their poker game, an activity that remains the preserve of the men in the play.
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