Blanche's Arrival at Elysian Fields
Blanche DuBois's arrival at Elysian Fields is the catalytic event that sets the entire tragedy of A Streetcar Named Desire in motion. She appears around the corner of a dilapidated two-story corner building in a poor but raffishly charming section of New Orleans, carrying a valise and dressed in a dainty white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat—an outfit so incongruous to the setting that she looks as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district. Her expression is one of shocked disbelief as she consults a slip of paper, then the building, then the paper again. She is about five years older than Stella, and her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light; there is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.
The Journey and First Impressions
Blanche explains to Eunice Hubbell, the upstairs neighbor who finds her lost, that she was told to take a streetcar named Desire, then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields. The streetcar route itself becomes a metaphor for her trajectory: desire leading to death, and then to a mythical afterlife that turns out to be a shabby tenement. She is looking for her sister, Stella DuBois, whom she still calls by her maiden name, correcting herself to "Mrs. Stanley Kowalski." When Eunice confirms that this is the place, Blanche's uncomprehending question—"This—can this be—her home?"—reveals the depth of her shock. She has not been expected, and she refuses Eunice's offer to go find Stella at the bowling alley, instead entering the downstairs flat alone. The interior reveals two rooms not too clearly defined: a kitchen containing a folding bed for Blanche, and a bedroom beyond with a narrow door to a bathroom. Eunice defensively notes that it is "sort of messed up right now but when it's clean it's real sweet."
The First Private Moment
Left alone, Blanche sits very stiffly with her shoulders slightly hunched, legs pressed close together, and hands tightly clutching her purse as if she were quite cold. After a while, the blind look goes out of her eyes and she begins to look slowly around. A cat screeches, and she catches her breath with a startled gesture. Suddenly she notices a whiskey bottle in a half-opened closet, springs up, pours a half tumbler of whiskey, and tosses it down. She carefully replaces the bottle and washes out the tumbler at the sink before resuming her seat. Her faint words to herself—"I've got to keep hold of myself!"—signal the precarious mental state she is struggling to manage from the very first moment.
The Reunion with Stella
When Stella arrives, Blanche springs up and runs to her with a wild cry: "Stella, oh, Stella, Stella! Stella for Star!" She speaks with feverish vivacity, as if fearing for either of them to stop and think. She immediately demands that the light be turned off—"I won't be looked at in this merciless glare!"—and then embraces her sister again, calling her "my baby." She blurts out that she thought Stella would never come back to this horrible place, then immediately tries to take it back, saying she meant to be nice about it. She rushes to find the liquor again, shaking all over and panting for breath as she tries to laugh, the bottle nearly slipping from her grasp. She insists she has not turned into a drunkard, she is just all shaken up and hot and tired and dirty. She compares the place to something only Edgar Allan Poe could do justice to, calling it "the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir," while Stella calmly points out that those are the L&N tracks.
The Revelation of Belle Reve
The reunion quickly turns to the subject of Belle Reve, the family plantation. Blanche accuses Stella of abandoning it while she stayed and struggled, fought and bled for it, almost died for it. She reveals that the place is lost, and launches into a tirade about all the deaths she witnessed—father, mother, Margaret, old Cousin Jessie—and how the cost of all that sickness and dying paid for the loss. "Death is expensive, Miss Stella!" she cries. She contrasts the quiet of funerals with the horror of deaths, the struggle for breath and bleeding, the cries of "Don't let me go!" She ends by accusing Stella of being in bed with her "Polack" while she alone bore the burden. Stella, stung, retreats to the bathroom in tears.
The First Encounter with Stanley
When Stanley Kowalski enters with Steve and Mitch, Blanche, realizing it must be him, moves uncertainly from the bathroom door to the dressing table, looking apprehensively towards the front door. She picks up his photo, looks at it, puts it down, and then darts and hides behind the screen at the head of the bed. When he comes in, she draws involuntarily back from his stare. Their first exchange is tense and revealing: Stanley immediately notices the depletion of the whiskey bottle, comments that "some people rarely touch it, but it touches them often," and bluntly asks how long she is staying and whether she is going to "shack up here." He removes his shirt in front of her, claiming he needs to be comfortable. When he asks about her marriage, the distant polka music of the Varsouviana rises up, and Blanche, sinking back down, says, "The boy—the boy died. I'm afraid I'm—going to be sick!" Her head falls on her arms. The arrival thus ends with Blanche already overwhelmed, her past traumas triggered, and the fundamental incompatibility between her world and Stanley's established in their very first conversation.
