front. In Cannan's poem, the phrase "and the" functions as anaphora-but
not without the deepest somber sense of rue, echoing the meaning of the word
"anaphora" in Greek, "a carrying back."
-NATHAN A. CERVO, FranklinPierce College
Copyright © 2007 HeldrefPublications
KEYWORDS
anaphora,May Wedderburn Cannan,World War I poetry
NOTE
1. "And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!" (75); "After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets" (101). Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was first
published in Poetry (Chicago) in 1915, one year before the appearance of "Rouen:'
WORK CITED
Cannan, May Wedderburn. "Rouen' The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. New
York: Oxford UP, 1973. 301-02.
Williams's A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
Tennessee Williams turned the quotidian into the tragic. A series of phone
calls, actual or attempted, in A Streetcar Named Desire illustrates how an
ordinary prop can have portentous implications. When, where, and how a
call is made; whether there is a connection; and if the call is successful, what
is said encapsulate two leading themes of the play. According to Williams,
Streetcar was about "misunderstanding" more than "malice" ("Letter" 329).
But for Elia Kazan, who directed the play on Broadway and also the 1951
film, Blanche was an "emblem of a dying civilization" (the Old South) and
Stanley's "animal cynicism" became the "basis for his stylization and choice
of props" (365). The stage business and dialogue involving telephone calls
encode Blanche's fantasy and Stanley's predatory response to it.
The first reference to a telephone call is broadly comic. In scene 1, Eunice,
who is angry that she had to eat alone, accuses her husband, Steve, of negligence for failing to call her about playing cards with his friends. But Steve protests, "I told you and phoned you we was playing:' After Eunice bristles, "You
never phoned me once" Steve retorts, "I told you at breakfast-and phoned you
at lunch. . "'which leads her to conclude, "Well, never mind about that. You
just get yourself home here once in a while" (Williams, Streetcar 24). There
34
has been little or no connection between Steve and Eunice either on the phone
or in person. Happily, however, her chastisement subsides as she welcomes
her returning husband home "above?' Although this spat provides comic relief,
more importantly, it prepares audiences for the serious conflicts that phone calls
generate between a disappointed woman and her absent/errant man.
Audiences do not have to wait long. Near the end of scene 3, after an
enraged Stanley attacks his wife, Stella, he "goes to the phone and dials, still
shudderingwith sobs"' and shouts, "Eunice, I want my baby" and then "hangs
up and dials again." "Eunice! I'll keep on ringin' until IItalk with my baby"
(65). The phone now becomes a weapon for Stanley to get his own way (he'll
keep "ringin" it). His call to Eunice (and through her to Stella) signals that
he will connect with the woman he wants through violence if necessary. The
ominous stage direction that follows describes the effects of Stanley's phone
bullying: "An indistinguishable shrill,voice is heard. He hurls the phone to
floor" (65). A few seconds later, we hear his epical cry-"-ýStella"ý-and witness the abused wife descend from Eunice's apartment into Stanley's waiting
arms. As in scene 1, a telephone call is central to marital (dis)harmnony.
In scene 4, Blanche decides to phone her fantasy savior, Shep Huntleigh,
to rescue her and Stella from Stanley's brute "animal force" (79). Claiming
not to know how to reach Western -Union, Blanche just picks up the phone
and "speaks shrilly'"asking for "Operator! Western Union!" (77), an echo
of the high-pitched voice heard on the other end of Stanley's chll to Eunice.
But Stella cautions, "That's a dial phone, honey,' to which Blanche responds,
"I can't dial, I'm too.. .":Trying to calm her, Stella advises, "Just dial 0 for
operator'"but Blanche "puts the phone down" because she has not prepared
her message---!I've got to write it down first"ý-and uses a "sheet of Kleenex"
on which she writes with an eyebrow pencil--"Sister and I in desperate situation. Will explain details later. Would you be interested in-?" (78). This small
incident involving a telephone call carries a great deal of symbolic weight.
Blanche's lack of knowledge about how to make a call helps characterize her
old-fashioned charm, but it also betrays her vulnerability. If she does not know
how a telephone works, especially the one in her brother-in-law's fiefdom,
she will never reach Shep. Moreover, Stella's "Just dial 0" becomes the sign
and symbol of the messageless abyss into which Blanche will, fall later in
New Orleans. Aptly, her most frequent interjection is "0." Blanche's message
also alerts us to her habit of twisting hyperbole into hysteria-"PDesperate
situation. Will explain later" (77). Responding to Blanche's comic absurdity,
Stella mildly scolds-"Don't be so ridiculous, darling"ý-revealing a major
difference of opinion between the sisters about whether they are "in desperate situation." Blanche's aborted phone call to Shep ends with her overblown
declaration, "I'll take to the streets" (79)-a proleptic remark, given her miscommunication with Stanley and others.
35
The call Blanche makes in scene 8 connects but not to the right person.
Stood up by Mitch at her birthday party, Blanche is determined, against Stella's
wishes, to call him--"I intend to be given some explanation from someone.'
But she reaches Mitch's mother instead, leaving only a "very important" message to have Mitch call her at Stanley's number--"Magnolia 9047." After she
hangs up, she "remains by the phone with a lost frightened look" (133). The
reasons for her fear are symbolically inscribed in the accursed exchange and
numerology of Stanley's phone. "Magnolia," the exchange, alludes to the name
associated with a rueful Mississippi for Blanche; it is her lost home state and
the river on which "poker grew up," empowering gamblers like Stanley (Kelly
43). Paradoxically, the "nine" in Stanley's phone number is rich in births and
deaths in Streetcar.Stella's child/Blanche's nephew is bom after nine months
on September 15, which means that he shares the ninth zodiacal sign, Virgo,
with his Aunt Blanche. Ironically, her birthday party is only a prelude to her
rape. The "zero" can represent disconnected or absent operators (Shep, Mitch)
in Blanche's life as it plummets toward the abyss. The next digit, "four," can
be linked to the "four letter word that deprived [Blanche] of [her] plantation"
(44) as well as to the Four Deuces, a site of bacchanal violence in New Orleans.
Although Blanche romanticizes the number seven with a mythological reference
to the "Pleiades, the Seven Sisters... going home from their little bridge party"
(102), it also points to the game Stanley always wins--"seven-card stud:'
Harrowingly, Stanley's number rings a few minutes after Blanche leaves her
message for Mitch. When she "rises expectantly" announcing, "Oh, that's for
me, I'm sure" (134), Stanley commands, "I'm not sure. Keep your seat:' It is his
call in every way. Pugnacious and controlling, he tells the caller that he refuses
to bowl at Riley's, where he has had "trouble:' insists on going to "the West
Side or the Gala" instead, and gruffly ends--"All right, Mac. See you:' Once
again, a call that Blanche thinks will save her produces the opposite effect. This
telephone call enables Stanley simultaneously to impose his will on Mac and on
Blanche, whom he orders to stay away from it-another prop of his domain, not
hers. Stanley's phone number, manners, and message silence Blanche.
The phone call she attempts to make in scene 10 is a tragic replay of her lighthearted plan to communicate with Shep in scene 4. Terrified by Stanley as well
as by "grotesque and menacing shadows on the walt' (159), Blanche "crosses
to the phone andjiggles the hook" In a frenzied voice, she asks the operator for
Shep but still does not know his number or his address---"He's so well-known he
doesn't require any address.' Speaking in a "hoarse whisper" so Stanley cannot
hear her from the bathroom, she relays essentially the same message to Western
Union that she improvised in scene 4--"In desperate, desperate circumstances.
Help me! Caught in a trap. Caught in-Oh!"--but without any mention of Stella.
Coming out of the bathroom, Stanley "backs [Blanche] away from the phone"
and stares at her. "Then a clicking becomes audiblefrom the phone, steady and
36
rasping""You left th' phone off th' hook," he informs her, and then "deliberately
[...] sets it back" (160). Like a time bomb ticking away her last hope, the clicking phone marks Blanche's defeat. Again, it is an instrument of her undoing and
Stanley's authority to thwart any message he does not want to hear, whether it
pertains to his wife from Eunice or about bowling alleys from Mac.
The last reference to a phone call-in scene 11-comes from Blanche, who
continues to expect a message from Shep: "If anyone calls while I'm bathing
take the number and tell them I'll call right back" (165). But, as we have seen,
Blanche is not good about remembering numbers, and her beaux are not good
about returning calls! Still, when she emerges from her bathroom sanctuary,
she inquires, "Didn't I get a call?" Sadly, Stella responds, "Why, not yet,
honey!" (167). "How strange I"--muses Blanche who has heard all manner
of voices in Streetcar.Yet "someone is calling for Blanche"--it is the matron
whose "bold and toneless" voice is a response to the "shrill" and furtive cries
Blanche has poured into Stanley's telephone. At the end, as in the beginning
of Streetcar, a telephone call never leads to a happy good-bye.
-PHILIP C. KOLIN, University of Southern Mississippi
Copyright © 2007 HeldrefPublications
KEYWORDS
A Streetcar Named Desire, telephone calls, telephone numbers, Tennessee
Williams
NOTES
1. Quotations of stage directions are italicized, as in original.
WORKS CITED
Kazan, Elia. "Notebook for A StreetcarNamed Desire." Directorson Directing. Ed. Toby Cole
and Helen Krich Chinoy. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963. 329.
Kelly, Jack. "Poker:' American HeritageDec. 2006: 38-48.
Williams, Tennessee. "Letter." Elia Kazan: A Life. By Elia Kazan. New York: Knopf, 1988.
365.
A StreetcarNamed Desire.Introd. Arthur Miller. New York: New Directions, 2004.
-.
GAY CHAPS AT THE BAR: A Close Look at Brooks's Sonnets
In her "Gay Chaps at the Bar" sequence, Gwendolyn Brooks uses the
ancient frame of the sonnet, but she paints her wartime modernist picture
37
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TITLE: Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire”
SOURCE: Explicator 66 no1 Fall 2007
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