Scene Ten

Question 1

Key quotes from scene 10

Answer 1

• “Blanche has been drinking fairly steadily since Mitch left”
• “Somewhat soiled white satin”
• “Rhinestone tiara”
• “Mr Shep Huntleigh. I wore his ATO pin my last year at college”
• “The bottle cap pops off and a geyser of foam shoots up”
• “The silk pyjamas I wore on my wedding night”
• “When the telephone rings and they say, ‘You’ve got a son’ I’ll tear this off and wave it like a flag”
• “But I have been foolish - casting my pearls before swine”
• “Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable”
• “improvising feverishly”
• “There isn’t a god damn thing but imagination… and lies and conceit and tricks”
• “Take a look at yourself in that worn-out mardi gras outfit”
• “What queen do you think you are”
• “I’ve been onto you from the start! Not once did you pull the wool over this boys eyes”
• “Lo and behold this place has turned into Egypt and you are the queen of the Nile”
• “Lurid reflections appear on the walls behind Blanche”
• “The night is filled with inhuman voices like cries in a jungle”
• “The bathroom door is thrown open and Stanley comes out in the brilliant silk pyjamas”
• “The barely audible blue piano begins to drum up”
• “The sound of it (blue piano) turns into the roar of an approaching locomotive”
• “Tiger - tiger! Drop the bottle-top! Drop it! We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning”

Question 2

Plot of scene 10

Answer 2

When Stanley returns home, drunk, he finds a dressed-up Blanche proclaiming she’s been invited to join Shep Huntleigh on a cruise. Stanley offers Blanche a drink in celebration of Stella giving birth and Blanche’s supposed reunion with her suitor, but Stella declines, instead continuing to talk about Shep and her experience with Mitch, which Stanley knows she is lying about. Blanche, increasingly nervous and feeling unsafe, tries to get away, but Stanley prevents her from leaving the apartment, and it is implied that he rapes her.

Question 3

What does John McCrae have to say about scene 10?

Answer 3

• Climatic scene with the rape and the baby
• Fantasising about a moonlight swim - delusional self becoming her real self
• Past and future colliding
• Fantasy story about going on a Caribbean cruise with Shep Huntleigh
• Symbolic removal of Stanley’s shirt, audience aware something will happen
• High self image, beauty of the mind. The belle she imagined she would be
• Lie about Mitch forgiving her, audience giving up hope for her
• Audience doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for Stanley but his awareness to Blanche shows intelligence.
• Phone is used as a means of escape
• Prostitute being arrested, highlights the tragedy of every woman. Foreshadows Blanche’s downfall.
• Rape scene the climax of the battle between them. She does not succumb willingly, links to primitive male and submissive female. Collision of Venus and Mars, does masculinity beat femineity? Mystery of the scene being unseen by the audience.

Question 4

Contextual notes on scene 10

Answer 4

• She’s dressed in a tattered evening gown and wearing a rhinestone tiara, trying to maintain the fantasy of being a Southern belle.
• Scene 10 is the symbolic moment when the “Old South” is not just challenged, but violently destroyed.
• Her descent into madness and Stanley’s brutal treatment of her represent the collapse of that social class and the myth of its honour and nobility.
• Blanche’s deteriorating mental health would have been seen more as a moral failing or hysteria than a psychological condition.
• Scene 10’s depiction of her breakdown plays into these fears—the idea of a woman losing touch with reality was both tragic and terrifying to mid-century audiences.
• The rape in Scene 10 was a shocking moment for 1947 audiences (when the play debuted), even though it’s only implied.
• At the time, sexual violence—especially within a domestic setting—was rarely acknowledged publicly, let alone in art.

Question 5

Notes on structure and stagecraft in scene 10

Answer 5

• “Lurid reflections” and “menacing shapes” appear on the walls — these are Blanche’s hallucinations, making her internal chaos visible to the audience.
• These jungle sounds represent Stanley’s primal violence and Blanche’s mental collapse.
• Williams uses non-naturalistic sound to amplify tension and show Blanche’s psychological break.
• Blanche wears a soiled evening gown and rhinestone tiara — symbols of her delusions and deteriorated state.
• Stanley changes into his silk pajamas, which previously represented sexual confidence and now signal danger.
• Props like the bottle of liquor and telephone (which she tries to use for help) become symbols of both her desperation and
• The dialogue and action become more fragmented and frantic as the scene progresses.
• The rhythm speeds up as Blanche loses control and Stanley gains it — culminating in the implied assault.

Question 6

Links across literature in scene 10

Answer 6

• Blanche imagines a romantic death: “I shall die of eating an unwashed grape one day out on the ocean…”. This is a poetic, almost Shakespearean fantasy of death and purity. It echoes tragic heroines like Ophelia (Hamlet) or Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), who are idealized in death.
• Her flirtation sounds like something out of a film noir femme fatale, even though she is fragile and broken beneath the act.
• Her rhinestone tiara and fantasy about dying beautifully at sea echo old Hollywood melodrama, where women were tragic, glamorous, and doomed.
• Blanche’s cry—“I don’t want realism. I want magic!”—directly ties into modernist literature’s preoccupation with illusion, artifice, and subjective truth. This line can be compared to characters in T.S. Eliot or Virginia Woolf, who wrestle with the crumbling divide between external reality and internal perception.