Mitch Confronts Blanche

Mitch Confronts Blanche

Is she? Why?

Blanche Maintains the Facade

Mitch: 86 What music?

Blanche: The “Varsouviana” The polka tune they were playing when Allan – Wait! [the revolver shot is heard] There now, the shot! It always stops after that…. Yes, now it’s stopped.

Mitch: Are you boxed out of your mind?

Blanche: I’ll go and see what I can find in the way of – [she goes and pretends to search for bottle] Oh, by the eway, excuse me for not being dressed. But I’d practically given you up! Had you forgotten your invitation to supper.

Mitch: I wasn’t going to see you any more.

Blanche: Wait a minute. I can’t hear what you’re saying and you talk so little that when you do say something, I don’t want to miss a single syllable of it…. What am I looking around here for? Oh, yes – liquor! We’ve had so much excitement around here this evening that I am boxed out of my mind. [she pretends to find the bottle suddenly] Here’s something. Southern Comfort! What is that , I wonder?

The Dark

Blanche:

Who is it, please?

Mitch:

Me. Mitch.

Blanche:

Mitch! – Just a minute. [she rushes about, hides bottle, checks her face, etc. before she lets him in] Mitch! – Y’know, I really shouldn’t let you in after the treatment I have received from you this eveningn! So utterly uncavalier! But hello, beautiful! [she offers him her lips. He ignores it and pushes past her into the flat.] My, my, what a cold shoulder! And such uncouth apparel! Why, you haven’t even shaved! The unforgiveable insult to a lady! But I forgive you. I forgive you because it’s such a relief to see you. You’ve stopped that polka tune that I had caught in my head. Have you ever had anything caught in your head? No, of course you haven’t, you dumb angel-puss, you’d never get anything awful caught in your head.

Mitch: It’s dark in here.

Blanche: I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me.

Mitch: I don’t think I ever seen you in the light. That’s a fact...

Mitch: What it means is I’ve never had a real good look at you, Blanche. Let’s turn the light on here.

Blanche: Light? Which light? What for?

Mitch: This one with the paper thing on it. [he tears the paper lantern off the light bulb]

Blanche: What did you do that for?

Blanche Reveals All

Reality

Mitch Fails at Being Stanley

Mitch: No, just realistic.

Blanche: I don’t want realism. I want magic. Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! – Don’t turn the light on!

[Mitch crosses to the switch and turns the light on]

Mitch: I don’t mind you being older than what I thought. But all the rest of it –Christ! That pitch about your ideals being so old-fashioned and all the malarkey that you’ve dished out all summer. Oh, I knew you weren’t sixteen any more. But I was fool enough to believe you was straight.

Blanche: Yes, a big spider. That’s where I brought my victims. Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan – intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with…. I think it was 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 but – somebody wrote the superintendent about it – “This woman is morally unfit for her position!” True? Yes, I suppose – unfit somehow – anyway…. So I came here. There was nowhere else I could go. I was played out. You know what played out is? My youth was suddenly gone up the water-spout, and – I met you. You said you needed somebody. Well, I needed somebody, too. I thanked God for you, because you seemed to be gentle – a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in! But I guess I was asking, hoping – too much! Kiefaber, Stanley and Shaw have tied an old tin can to the tail of the kite

Blanche: What do you want?

Mitch: [fumbling to embrace her] What I been missing all summer.

Blanche: Then marry me, Mitch!

Mitch: I don’t think I want to marry you any more.

Blanche: No?

Mitch: You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.