Stella Kowalski Quotes

BLANCHE: Something has happened!- What is it?
STELLA [fuming away quickly]: Why, nothing has happened, Blanche.
BLANCHE: You’re lying! Something has!
[She stares fearfully at Stella, who pretends to be busy at the table. The distant piano goes into a hectic breakdown.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 7. After Stanley reveals Blanche’s promiscuous past to Stella, Blanche realizes that something has gone wrong. Stella lies to her that nothing has happened, while the blue piano goes into "a hectic breakdown." This foreshadows the disaster about to befall Blanche and mental breakdown she will have.

STELLA: You needn’t have been so cruel to someone alone as she is.
STANLEY: Delicate piece she is.
STELLA: She is. She was. You didn’t know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 8. Stella is strong in her defense of her sister and condemnation of her husband. She confronts Stanley for his cruelty after he presents Blanche a "birthday remembrance" of a one-way bus ticket back to Laurel. When Stanley mockingly dismisses Blanche as a "delicate piece," Stella provides us with an insight into the character of the younger Blanche. Her sister was once innocent and naive and trusting, she reveals, but people like Stanley abused her and forced her to change. Foreshadowed here is the conflict between Stanley and Blanche, which will culminate in him sexually abusing and raping her.

I don’t know if I did the right thing… I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley.

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 11. As Stella packs Blanche’s things for her trip to the mental hospital, she chooses the world of fantasy over reality just like her sister. Blanche has accused Stella’s husband of raping her. But Stella decides to believe her lying husband instead of her sister. She refuses to have her fantasy world with Stanley and their new baby shattered by accepting the Blanche’s word and leaving her violent and predatory husband. Yet she indicates here that she suspects Blanche may be telling the truth. Stella’s dependence on men is shown in this quote.

[She sobs with inhuman abandon. There is something luxurious in her complete surrender to crying now that her sister is gone.]

– Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 11. Stella breaks down in deep sobs as Blanche is taken away by the Doctor and the Matron to a mental hospital. The stage directions suggest Stella’s guilty feelings over her actions after her sister said she was sexually assaulted by Stanley. Rather than believe Blanche, Stella chose to stay with her lying rapist husband.
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