He jumps at her, grabs her arm when she swings at him, and forces her to drop the bottle. “We've had this date from the beginning,” he says, and she sinks to her knees. He picks her up and carries her to the bed. The pulsing music indicates that Stanley rapes Blanche.
Even when Stella refers to Blanche as delicate, Stanley cries out in disbelief: "Some delicate piece she is." It is, then, Stanley's forced brutality which causes Blanche to crack up. The rape is Blanche's destruction as an individual.
He rapes her out of anger, out of pent-up sexual frustration, and as a way to assert his power. He's a complex villain, to be sure, but the scene is written and staged primarily from Blanche's point of view, so that we experience her fear and her sense of being closed in upon.
Blanche manages to disarm Stanley and convince him that no fraud has been perpetrated against anyone. Stanley lets slip that Stella is pregnant. Stella returns from the drugstore, and some of the men arrive for their poker game.
Stanley makes Stella stop working and listen to him. He has found out something about Blanche. While Blanche is singing "It's Only a Paper Moon," Stanley reveals that Blanche has a notorious reputation in Laurel. She was so wild that the low-class Flamingo Hotel asked her to move out.
Key interpretation. Stanley's refusal to kiss Stella in front of Blanche could show that he is inhibited in Blanche's presence, or that he resents his wife for allowing her to stay with them.
Stella screams at him and tells everyone to go home. Stanley becomes enraged and hits Stella. The men pin Stanley down while the women leave.
Stanley's intense hatred of Blanche is motivated in part by the aristocratic past Blanche represents. He also (rightly) sees her as untrustworthy and does not appreciate the way she attempts to fool him and his friends into thinking she is better than they are.
Progress booster: Stella's devotion to Stanley
It is obvious, even without her passionate declaration in Scene Four, that she is deeply in love with her husband, and this love is the cornerstone of her existence.
Stanley Kowalski is a representation of New America - an America that was born after World War. Stanley, having fought in the Second World War, as “a Master Sergeant in the Engineers' Corps”, is now a part of the working class in New Orleans. He represents the American Dream of freedom and opportunity for all.
As Blanche and Stanley represent two diametrically opposed worlds, so Stella represents a bridge between the two poles. For Stella shows that a meeting point of coexistence is possible between Blanche's and Stanley's separate worlds.
Stanley yells "Stella!" in scene three. It comes after he has just physically beat Stella, who escapes upstairs to Eunice's apartment with Blanche. Stanley is in the street, half-dressed and drunk, calling for his wife to come back. Eunice tells him to stop and berates him for abusing his pregnant wife.
Stanley Kowalski serves as the antagonist of A Streetcar Named Desire—both as a representative of the modern world that Blanche is, in her own words, “not hard or self-sufficient enough” for and as an individual.
In the beginning of A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley appears to the hero since he contrasts Blanche's upper-class sensibilities. However, he soon becames the villain when he shows his abusive nature towards Stella. He cements this position when he rapes Blanche towards the end of the play.
During the final scene of "A Streetcar Named Desire," the audience witnesses Stella adopting the delusion that her husband is trustworthy—that he did not, in fact, rape her sister. When Eunice says, "No matter what happens, we've all got to keep going," she is preaching the virtues of self-deception.
The men pull him off, the poker game breaks up, and Blanche and Stella escape to their upstairs neighbor Eunice's apartment. A short while later, Stanley is remorseful and cries up to Stella to forgive him. To Blanche's alarm, Stella returns to Stanley and embraces him passionately.
Blanche's attempt to flirt with Stanley is her only known way of achieving success with men. She tries to use her charms. Actually, she wants Stanley to admire her and willingly commits a breach of decorum when she attempts this symbolic seduction.
Besides, she says, Stanley is always smashing things around like that. On their wedding night, she says, he took one of her slippers and went around their new place smashing all the light bulbs with it.
Williams establishes Blanche's role as Stanley's victim far earlier on in the play than his physical domination of her, and Stanley's menacing characterization implies that Blanche's flawed character does not give her singular potential to fall victim to him.
A Streetcar Named Desire ends with the aftermath of Stanley's climactic rape of Blanche.
And Blanche's attraction to Stanley is evident from the beginning. But then again, Blanche is pretty much attracted to any man who shows her the slightest bit of attention. Blanche is no genteel lady of refinement as she would have everyone believe and Stanley sees through that delicate balancing act.
As Blanche sits in the tub singing “It's Only a Paper Moon,” Stanley tells Stella the details of Blanche's sexually corrupt past. Williams ironically juxtaposes Blanche's fantastical understanding of herself with Stanley's description of Blanche's real nature.
Stella says that Stanley is "too busy making a pig of himself" and tells him to go wash and help her clear the table. Stanley explodes in anger, throws his plate to the floor, and warns Stella never to use such words to him again, that he is "king around here." As he leaves, Blanche demands to know what has happened.
In the beginning of A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley appears to the hero since he contrasts Blanche's upper-class sensibilities. However, he soon becames the villain when he shows his abusive nature towards Stella. He cements this position when he rapes Blanche towards the end of the play.
To Blanche, Stanley represents a holdover from the Stone Age. He is bestial and brutal and determined to destroy that which is not his. He is like the Stone Age savage bringing home the meat from the kill. He is animal-like and his actions are such.