Tarantula Arms

The Tarantula Arms is the hotel in Laurel, Mississippi, where Blanche DuBois lived after the loss of Belle Reve and where she engaged in a series of sexual encounters with strangers, a period that Stanley Kowalski later weaponizes to destroy her reputation and her chance at marriage with Harold Mitchell. The name itself—Tarantula Arms—conjures a predatory, venomous atmosphere, and Blanche herself uses it to describe the place where she brought her victims, a confession that collapses the distinction between predator and prey in her own narrative of desperation and loss.

Identity and Location

The Tarantula Arms is a hotel in Laurel, Mississippi, the town where Blanche taught high school English before her arrival in New Orleans. When Blanche corrects Mitch's question about whether she stayed at the Flamingo Hotel, she says, "Flamingo? No! Tarantula was the name of it! I stayed at a hotel called The Tarantula Arms!" She then elaborates, "Yes, a big spider! That's where I brought my victims." The hotel's name thus functions as a metaphor for the predatory and entrapping nature of the sexual economy in which Blanche found herself. It stands in stark contrast to the elegant, aristocratic world of Belle Reve, the plantation she lost, and to the respectable facade she tries to maintain as a schoolteacher.

Blanche's Stay and Activities

Blanche's residence at the Tarantula Arms followed the loss of Belle Reve and preceded her arrival in New Orleans. During this period, she engaged in "intimacies with strangers," as she later confesses to Mitch. She explains that after the death of her young husband, Allan Grey, "intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with." She describes her motivation as "panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection—here and there, in the most—unlikely places—even, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy." This last encounter—with a student—led to her dismissal from the high school, as Stanley later reveals: "A seventeen-year-old boy—she'd gotten mixed up with!" The boy's father contacted the school superintendent, and Blanche was forced to leave Laurel. The Tarantula Arms thus represents the nadir of Blanche's decline, a place where her need for protection and her inability to cope with her past trauma led her into a pattern of self-destructive behavior that ultimately made her a pariah in her own town.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The Tarantula Arms serves as a crucial piece of evidence in Stanley's campaign to expose what he calls Blanche's "lies and conceit and tricks." He learns about her stay there from a supply-man who travels through Laurel and who knows that "she stayed there, too"—at the Flamingo, which he describes as a "second-class hotel" used to "all kinds of goings-on." Stanley reports that even the management of the Flamingo was "impressed by Dame Blanche" and "requested her to turn in her room-key—for permanently!" Blanche's own correction—that the hotel was actually called the Tarantula Arms—does not refute the substance of the accusation but rather deepens its sordidness. The hotel becomes a symbol of the trap Blanche feels she is in: a place where she sought refuge but instead became ensnared in a cycle of exploitation and shame. It is the physical location of the past she is trying to escape, and its exposure by Stanley ensures that her attempt to build a new life with Mitch fails. The Tarantula Arms, like the streetcar named Desire, is a destination on the route that leads Blanche to her final, tragic departure from New Orleans.