I saw it last night for the first time and I’m still not sure today about a few things:
In the near final scene did Stanley rape Blanche thereby sending her into complete madness? Stella says, “I can’t just believe what he said, not if I’m ever going to live with Stanley again.” Does she mean the stuff about the cruise or the violence against Blanche?
Blanche is an aristocrat so I doubt her use of the phrase ‘turn a trick’ means the same as it does today. So what are these indiscretions she describes at the Hotel Flamingo?
Stella seems distraught but she looks like she’ll stay with Stanley yet she changes her mind at the very end, why?
I’m 29 so it’s not like you’re doing my book report or anything. Thanks ahead of time for doing your part to fight ignorance.
Yes, it’s a rape. It’s much more obvious in the play; the movie is more circumspect to please the censors. I think the line was “I can’t believe what she said,” indicated Stella is in denial about what happened.
“Trick” meaning “sex act” dates back to the 1920s, so it probably meant what it does today.
Stella changes her mind and leaves Stanley in the movie because the Production Code required that transgressions (like Stanley raping Blanche) cannot be tolerated. In the original play, she cannot bring herself to leave him.
The rape. She’s telling…uh, Eunice, I think it was, that she can’t believe that of her husband, and Eunice is actually the one to “clarify” that she (Stella) can’t believe it of him and still live with him. Eunice is the one that lets the audience know that she and Stella both know the truth, but that Stella is choosing to live with the lie.
I don’t remember “turn a trick” I remember: “I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. Soft people- soft people’ve got to court the favor of the hard ones, Stella, they’ve got to shimmer and glow. I don’t know how much longer I could turn the trick.It isn’t enough to be soft, you’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I- I’m fading now!” (From memory, many years ago, so that might not be quite right.) She’s talking about attracting men - “turn the trick” of looking beautiful and attractive at her advanced age - but I don’t think it’s in a prostitution sense. Blanche isn’t “an aristocrat” so much as an aged debutante. She views her own worth solely by the quality and quantity of the men she can attract. She used to live at the Hotel Flamingo, and was thrown out for being promiscuous (as Stanley finds out when scooping for dirt on her), but there’s no sign that she was an actual prostitute. She’s a schoolteacher by trade, so she can support herself monetarily (until she’s caught sleeping with a 17 year old student), but she isn’t whole emotionally unless she has a lover, and a suave, well-educated “good catch” at that. Of course, she’s batshit insane, or at least insipid, and doesn’t keep her lovers long. It didn’t take long for a woman to earn the label of “loose” in those days. It’s certain she had a string of lovers at the Hotel Flamingo, but we really don’t know how many or if she’d be considered slutty by today’s standards. Stanley she despises as a dirty low-class Polack, while at the same time being drawn to him sexually and despising him for it.
There are two reasons in most productions. Again, this varies depending on the production, director and actor choices. First of all, Stella really does love Stanley. Secondly, she feels she has no choice, sociologically or economically. Remember she has a baby somewhere in Act II. A lot of women in that day and age stayed in horrible marriages because they couldn’t support themselves and their children, or were too frightened to. Emotionally, it’s easier to blame Blanche for being out of her senses and seducing Stanley or accusing him falsely than to hold Stanley responsible for being a rapist. Stella is Stanley’s enabler, like many battered and abused wives.
It’s not a happily-ever-after ending. We’re supposed to feel let down by Stella and disgusted by Stanley and sorry for Blanche.
*Was *an aristocrat. She had been turning tricks (or at least picking up random dudes) back home for some time, which is one reason she was visiting her sister in the first place. She’s also an alcoholic (although that is not incompatible with being upper class.) Her husband was obviously a homosexual, and we presume that she drove him to suicide.
IMO, in the movie version, what Marlon Brando so effectively conveyed as to be almost genius in acting, is Stanley’s sexual magnetism. His animalistic nature is at its worst when he rapes Blanche for both sexual and power reasons (to subdue her), but that same animalistic nature exerts a control over Stella as well: something that is “love” at its most elemental – and its most indefensible, when it comes to the choice to stay with a bad man or to leave him.
This part of Streetcar always reminds me of the book Bastard Out Of Carolina, when a woman similarly makes a disappointing choice based on emotional and sexual dependency on a man. (In BOOC, the mother of the narrator [who is a pre-pubescent girl] chooses to stay with the narrator’s stepfather, even after the stepfather has raped the narrator. It’s a tough book.)
I’m a sucker for those Southern based movies, especially the ones based on Williams’ plays. *SND *is the best, but I suggest the OP get The Long Hot Summer next. That’s another really good one (although it’s a Faulkner story, not a Williams). Next in line is Cat on a Hot Tim Roof (Williams, again).
The Long Hot Summer is a favorite of mine too – all three versions. Paul Newman, Roy Thinnes, Don Johnson – they all work just fine for me. The story has everything good drama needs.
