A Streetcar Named Desire Mitch Quotes

The girl’s dead now… She knew she was dying when she gave me this. A very strange girl, very sweet – very!

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 3. In his first conversation with Blanche, Mitch speaks about the silver cigarette case she has admired, giving to him by a dying girl. It has the inscription from a Browning poem, "And if God choose, I shall but love thee better – after – death!" Already Mitch and Blanche have a connection, both have suffered the pain of loving a loved one.

[She turns the knobs on the radio and it begins to play "Wien, Wien, nur du allein." Blanche waltzes to the music with romantic gestures. Mitch is delighted and moves in awkward imitation like a dancing bear.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 3. These stage directions highlight the contrast between the cultured Blanche with her graceful waltz moves and Mitch’s clumsy working class effort. As they dance to the radio music, it is a sweet and intimate moment between the two. But an animal simile comparing Mitch to a bear emphasizes their unequal relationship and difference in social class.

Poker shouldn’t be played in a house with women.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 3. Mitch believes that women being the gentler sex shouldn’t be subjected to the rough game of poker and all that it entails. His comment comes after Stanley’s outburst of violence following a drink-fuelled all-male poker party. Stanley struck his wife Stella and had to be restrained by the other men. Curiously Mitch doesn’t blame wife beater Stanley for the assault, but the game of poker. This shows how domestic violence was not taken seriously at the time and the perpetrator made face the consequences of his actions. There is a certain amount of detachment from reality and engaging in delusional thinking here.

I like you to be exactly the way that you are, because in all my – experience – I have never known anyone like you.
[Blanche looks at him gravely; then she bursts into laughter and then claps a hand to her mouth.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 6. Back at the flat after their date night, Mitch is in awe of Blanche, as he candidly expresses feelings of admiration for her. He declares that he just wants her to be herself, which is ironic, because the person he has fallen for is not the real Blanche, but an illusion. A naive Mitch has been fooled by the mask of deceit she hides behind, her lies and false appearances. But Blanche’s mask slips momentarily when she bursts out laughing and then has to quickly stop herself.

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 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.

BLANCHE: That – music again…
MITCH: What music?
BLANCHE: The "Varasouviana"! The polka tune they were playing when Allan – Wait! [A distant revolver shot is heard. Blanche seems relieved.] There now, the shot! It always stops after that. [The polka music dies out again.] Yes, now it’s stopped.
MITCH: Are you boxed out of your mind?

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. Blanche’s auditory hallucinations intensify, as she hears the polka music that was playing when her husband Allan shot himself. Mitch begins to realize that she is losing her mind.

MITCH: It’s dark in here.
BLANCHE: I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me.
MITCH: I don’t think I ever seen you in the light.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. Mitch tells Blanche that he has never seen her in a lighted room. She won’t go out on dates in the afternoon, but only after six and to dimply lit places, he complains. Light is a important motif in the play. Blanche finds comfort in the absence of light. She tries to hide the truth about her age and fading beauty from Mitch, and from herself. She cannot bear to have the fantasy of her youth and beauty shattered by the cruel light of reality. Appearances are very important to Blanche.

MITCH: What it means is I’ve never had a real good look at you, Blanche. Let’s turn the light on here.
BLANCHE [fearfully]: Light? Which light? What for?
MITCH: This one with the paper thing on it.
[He tears the paper lantern off the light bulb. She utters a frightened gasp.]
BLANCHE: What did you do that for?
MITCH: So I can take a look at you good and plain!
BLANCHE: Of course you don’t really mean to be insulting!
MITCH: No, just realistic.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. Mitch’s action in tearing off the Chinese paper lantern covering the light bulb is one of the play’s significant moments. He wants to see the real Blanche in the light. She has been trying to hide her aging beauty from him and the light reveals she has been deceptive about her age. Mitch’s action is also about ripping at the illusions and fantasies Blanche has constructed around and about herself.

I don’t mind you being older than what I thought. But all the rest of it – Christ! That pitch about your ideals being so old-fashioned and all the malarkey that you’ve dished out all summer. Oh, I knew you weren’t sixteen any more. But I was a fool enough to believe you was straight.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. Mitch has had enough of Blanche’s deceit and trickery. He is not upset by her deception about her age. But he is angry that she lied and fooled him into thinking she was old-fashioned and innocent.

MITCH: You lied to me, Blanche.
BLANCHE: Don’t say I lied to you.
MITCH: Lies, lies, inside and out, all lies.
BLANCHE: Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 9. After learning of her sordid past, Mitch strips away Blanche’s pretensions of being a refined schoolteacher. He accuses her of lying to him about her murky past. But Blanche believes that her lying is acceptable because she says she didn’t lie in her heart. This is part of world of illusions she inhabits, where people live lives of fantasies, and this is completely excusable so long as what they feel inside is true. Blanche, who believes her own lies and has fully retreated into the real of fantasy, begins her descent into madness.

[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.

[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.
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