Birds, Blanche, and Streetcar

It’s Chris Tudor here again – and recently I’ve been spending a lot of time with A Streetcar Named Desire and have come across what I think is some rather interesting stuff, which I thought I’d share with you. And I want to start somewhere slightly unexpected.

With birds.

Noticing the Pattern

If you’ve read or seen Streetcar, you might recall that it’s a play that’s full of references to birds and other flying animals – moths, butterflies, and so on.

More importantly, the vast majority of these references apply to the same character: Blanche.

Once you start noticing them, they’re everywhere. In Scene 1, when Blanche first arrives, a stage direction tells us that “there is something about her uncertain manner … that suggests a moth”.

Like a bird, Blanche is terrified of cats. Twice in Scene 1, we hear a cat screech, and both times Blanche overreacts. The first time, she “catches her breath with a startled gesture”. The second, she “springs up”, asking: “What’s that?”

In Scene 2, when Stanley is pulling all of Blanche’s dresses out, he comments on the “feathers and furs” that Blanche has brought here to “preen herself” in. ‘Preening’, of course, is what birds do when they tidy and clean their feathers with their beak.

In Scene 3, irritated by Blanche and Stella’s conversation in the bedroom, Stanley calls out: “You hens cut out that conversation in there!”

Blanche herself leans into the imagery. In Scene 5, reading through her letter to Shep Huntleigh, she describes herself as spending the summer “on the wing”, making “flying visits” here and there, perhaps even “swooping” down on Dallas.

Later in the same scene, we hear of the hotel in Laurel where Blanche has been staying: the Flamingo.

Still in Scene 5, Blanche tells Stella that “soft people” like her have to “put on soft colours, the colours of butterfly wings”.

In Scene 6, when Mitch picks Blanche up by the waist, he remarks that she is “light as a feather”.

In Scene 7, while Blanche sings in the bath, Stanley refers to her – twice – as a “canary-bird”. In the same scene, Stella explains that Blanche has always been “flighty”.

In Scene 8, Blanche tells a joke involving a talking parrot – notably the second bird-related joke in the play.

In Scene 10, when Stanley arrives, he looks at Blanche and asks: “What’ve you got all those fine feathers on for?”

And finally, in Scene 11, the matron must catch hold of Blanche’s arm to prevent her “flight”.

By this point, the pattern is hard to miss.

Blanche is a bird.

So What?

On one level, this might seem fairly straightforward. The comparisons highlight Blanche’s qualities: her delicacy, her nervousness, her tendency towards performance and self-presentation – her ‘preening’, her ‘flightiness’.

But there is something else going on.

There are, I think, just two other references to birds in the play – and both of them point in a rather different direction.

In Scene 3, Steve tells a joke in which a rooster is on the point of raping a hen, but is distracted by some food.

And then there is this description of Stanley in Scene 1: “Since earliest manhood the centre of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens.”

Stanley, in other words, has sex with women like a rooster with hens.

If that means anything like the rooster in Steve’s joke, it suggests something darker: that he is, at least potentially, a rapist.

Blanche and the Rooster

At this point, the imagery starts to align. If Stanley is figured as the rooster, then who is the hen?

Not Stella – but Blanche.

The character who is persistently, insistently, repeatedly associated with birds is also the one who is placed in a position of vulnerability within this symbolic framework.

Looking Ahead

This means that when Blanche is compared to a bird, it’s not simply about highlighting her bird-like characteristics – her lightness, her fragility, her tendency to ‘preen’ or to ‘take flight’.

It also serves as a warning.

The imagery points towards her sexual vulnerability to the ‘rooster’ of the play, Stanley, and anticipates what happens in Scene 10.

That’s just one of the things I noticed while going through Streetcar over the last week or so.

There are several more... but you'll have to wait for the next few blog posts!

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If you want more Streetcar content right away check out these brilliant courses on the site: Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire, Prof. John McRae and Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire, Dr Alfie Bown.