70 pages • 2 hours read
Tennessee WilliamsA Streetcar Named Desire
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Scenes 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 4 Summary
The next morning, Stella lies lazily in bed as the summer sun shines intensely. Blanche walks in the apartment and calls to her. She hasn’t slept all night, having been worried about Stella re-entering the apartment. She reprimands her sister, but Stella brushes aside the remarks: “He didn’t know what he was doing” (72). Stanley has a history of breaking things and of becoming severely violent. As their conversation continues, it becomes increasingly clear that Stella is unbothered by the previous night’s event and by the conditions of her life that Blanche find so abhorrent.
Blanche mentions an old beau, Shep Huntleigh, that she linked up with during her Christmas holiday in Miami. He has a Cadillac and oil wells, and “Texas is literally spouting gold in his pockets” (76). Blanche begins drafting a wire to him, asking him for money for herself and Stella.
Blanche becomes increasingly agitated over her sister’s marriage to Stanley until Stella reveals that “there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark—that sort of make everything else seem—unimportant” (81). This is not a sufficient answer for Blanche, who reminds her sister of their Belle Reve upbringing.
The sound of a passing train conceals Stanley’s footsteps on the porch as he returns home. Blanche stops holding back and begins a didactic against Stanley. She sees him as less than human and essentially as animalistic in a world where “such kinds of new light have come into the world since” (83)the arrival of humankind, such as poetry and music. She urges her sister to pursue a new direction in life and leave behind the uncouthness of Elysian Fields.
As another train passes, Stanley decides to enter the apartment. Stella approaches him and aggressively embraces him. Stanley is amused by this grand show of affection, and “grins through the curtains at Blanche” (84) as blue piano music fills the air.
Scene 5 Summary
Blanche writes a letter to Shep as Stella dresses. She tells him that she will, perhaps, make a trip down to Dallas. Upstairs Eunice and Steve argue about an alleged affair Steve has had at the Four Deuces. There is a clash, a hush, and Eunice rushes outside to call the police. She goes to get a drink and Steve follows along.
In the flat, Blanche asks Stanley about his astronomical sign. He’s an Aries. Blanche shares that she is a Virgo and that “Virgo is the virgin” (89). Stanley begins questioning her, asking if she knows a man named Shaw because this man says he knows Blanche from the Flamingo hotel. Blanche nervously declines this claim and tries to change the subject, but Stanley promises to follow up with the informer.
Order is restored as Steven and Eunice round the corner, holding each other, crying, and whispering. Stanley invites Stella to the bar. Once he leaves, Blanche asks Stella, again, if Stella has heard any gossip about her. Blanche explains how she was not so good after losing Belle Reve. She couldn’t rely on herself, especially once she found her beauty fading.
Stella’s only response is that she won’t “listen to [Blanche] when [she is] being morbid” (92). Stella brings Blanche a Coke, and Blanche suddenly embraces her, telling Stella that she’s been a good caretaker.
The soda spills on Blanche’s white skirt and she screams, much to Stella’s surprise. Blanche passes it off as being nervous about Mitch’s arrival later than evening. She wants to be with him, as he thinks she’s “prim and proper” (95). Stella is sure that it will happen soon enough, and she leaves for the Four Deuces.
Soon after, a Young Man rings the bell. He’s come to collect for the Evening Star. Blanche flirts with him, despite his telling her repeatedly that he must leave. She coaxes him inside and kisses him before he leaves. Mitch arrives just moments later with a bunch of roses and she then kisses him.
Scene 6 Summary
Much later that evening, Blanche and Mitch return to the flat, both seeming depressed. Mitch worries that she hasn’t had an enjoyable evening, and she explains that she is simply not in the mood for fun and had a hard time pretending. He asks her if he can kiss her goodnight.
Although she has no objection to the kiss and, in fact, wants it, she says a girl “has got to keep a firm hold on her emotions or she’ll be lost!” (103). She invites him to stay a bit longer for a drink and beckons him to take off his jacket. He is self-conscious about how much he perspires, and he worries about looking “too clumsy” (105). Blanche likes his sturdy build. They compare their respective weights; Mitch is 207 pounds. Before Blanche can disclose her weight, Mitch lifts her up. He keeps his hands around her waist and she bashfully demands he let her go. Although he seems interested in more intimate flirtation, she tells him she has “old-fashioned ideals” (108)and revealingly rolls her eyes in the dark, knowing that he can’t see.
Blanche asks Mitch if Stanley ever talks about her. She suspects he doesn’t like her because he is so rude to her. His habits of walking through the apartment in his underwear and leaving the bathroom door open seem cavalier. However, she can’t afford to stay anywhere else with her teacher’s salary and admits that the first time she saw Stanley, she thought “that man is my executioner!” (111).
The conversation continues to grow more and more personal. Mitch told his mother about Blanche. They are both people who understand what it is like to be lonely. At this point, Blanche opens up about her lover who passed away. She was drawn to him for his tenderness, those qualities of his that made him less brutish and more sensitive. She felt him slowly slipping away after their marriage, until one day, she caught him in one of their bedrooms with an older man, a longtime friend.
Blanche, her husband, and the man all ignored this and proceeded to a casino to dance. Her husband suddenly ran outside of the casino and shot himself in the head, and Blanche describes how “the searchlight which had been turned on in the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this—kitchen—candle…” (115). Mitch proposes they be together, and they embrace and kiss.
Scenes 4-6 Analysis
The concept of desire arises when Blanche and Stella discuss Stella’s marriage to Stanley: “What you are talking about is brutal desire—just—Desire!—the name of that rattle-trip street-car that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another…” (81). When Stella asks if she’s been on the street-car and Blanche responds that it was the car that took her to Elysian Fields, a sub-textual moment of agreement occurs in which the sisters both identify with the feeling of desire. When Stella grabs and embraces Stanley at the close of Scene 4, her desire is performed, as if conjured by her reminiscing about it. Although this is an act of liberation for her character, the scene of her being beat by Stanley has just barely passed.
Stanley, during the poker scene, grew from being simply hyper-masculine to being violent. So much conversation in the play revolves around him without actually involving his participation. Stella and Blanche discuss him as he waits outside the flat in the shadows. Blanche begs Mitch to know what Stanley thinks of her. No one seems to be completely candid with Blanche. Although Mitch and Stella both seem driven by an interest in protecting Blanche, the lack of forwardness seems to mythologize Stanley and only inflate his brute power. He is made an undeniable threat when Blanche prophetically exclaims “that man is my executioner!” (111).
Blanche’s backstory is given significant weight in Scene 6, during her late-night conversation with Mitch. She fully discloses the downfall and trauma that ended her marriage in a unique moment of lucidity and trust. Their soft, intimate exchanges—“You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be—you and me, Blanche?”(116)—occur in private, never in front of the rest of the Elysian Fields residents. Mitch’s use of the word “need” reminds of the word “desire,” although it communicates a more sustained emotion that has the possibility of extending a lifetime. It is founded in not only their attraction to each other, but also in their more existential conditions as individuals looking for to love and be loved.
The extremely close living quarters of the characters continues to raise the temperature of these three scenes. There is constant movement in and out of the flat as they come and go, argue and make up, embrace and yell. Stanley overhears Blanche’s insults toward him, and she narrowly escapes Mitch finding her kiss the Young Man. A third romantic relationship backdrops the Blanche-Mitch and Stella-Stanley threads: Eunice and Steve. Their argument is heard through floorboards and on the street. This consequentially simplifies what might be an otherwise complex argument. They head, each independently, to the bar and return arm-in-arm. Because of the contextualizing relationships of Elysian Fields, it is understood that appearances tend not to relay the gravity of things. Williams has put a magnifying glass on this minuscule slice of the universe, revealing the range and intensity of emotion contained within just a few human lives.
Related Titles
By Tennessee Williams
