"If I can turn the trick again" -- Blanche DuBois in "Streetcar"

[dd...@bellsouth.net]

Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" says something like, "I
don't know if I can turn the trick again." I've always been puzzled by
this line. Does it indicate that she had been a prostitute?

[Bill Anderson]

Prostitute? Such a distressing word for a lady as cultured as
Blanche. Of course life was very difficult back at Belle Reve and
sometimes the lady of the house must do what she must do. Thank
goodness for the kindness of strangers.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

[Stone me]

<dd...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:8d498ade-e4fb-4eaf...@o30g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...

> Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" says something like, "I
> don't know if I can turn the trick again." I've always been puzzled by
> this line. Does it indicate that she had been a prostitute?

I don't know the film well, but it could be a straight cards reference.
Taking tricks comes from Bridge-like games. Presumably turning
those tricks refers to putting them face down for counting later.

Stone me.

[John Dean]

No, although the play suggests she has been promiscuous. In context:

"When people are soft-soft people have got to shimmer and glow-they've got
to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a-paper
lantern over the light.It isn't enough to be soft. You've got to be soft and
attractive. And I-I'm fading now! I don't know how much longer I can turn
the trick"

IOW, she sees herself as one of the people who need to "shimmer and glow"
and she doesn't know how much longer she can pull off that trick
--
John Dean
Oxford

[David Oberman]

It's from Scene v. It's a bridge reference with several connotations:
working for a living, prostituting, keeping up a facade. The play is
filled with card-game references. In Scene ix, Blanche tells Mitch
that she was "played out," that her youth was "gone up the
waterspout."

Blanche wasn't exactly a prostitute; she was more of a nymphomaniac, a
psychoneurotic, using sex with strangers to beat back loneliness. She
was a Lorelei (thrown out of the town of Laurel -- get it?), a
seductress whose own anxiety about aging & death drove her to pick up
young men.

The scene v line is: "It isn't enough to be soft. You've got to be
soft & attractive. And I--I'm fading now. I don't know how much longer
I can turn the trick." That makes the context clearer. What Blanche
fears is aging, which would destroy her ability to stay young &
alluring to men.

[pgmem...@gmail.com]

All the ones below "supporting Blanche" are so in tune with her. Great job!!

[leno...@yahoo.com]

I realize the thread is old, but anyway, here's something from a couple of years ago...


From Quentin Crisp's piece on Marlon Brando:

"(After Mr. Tennessee Williams' plays came to Hollywood)....the image
of manliness became more extreme. All this dramatist's early plays are
about women brought deliciously low by their sexual appetites. His
heroines are really men in drag and therefore their lovers are brutes.
That is how the world first saw Mr. Brando - as a desirable oaf, a
furless Mr. Kong."

And, from Crisp's book "Resident Alien":

"In the green room, I found Kitty Carlisle, whose name is etched for
ever on my memory because of a remark she made to me many years ago. I
had said that I thought all Mr Williams' plays were about how awful it
is to be a woman, to which she replied, 'I think they are about how
awful it was to be Tennessee Williams.' "

And, from pages 31-32 of Sunny Decker's book "An Empty Spoon" (about
her two years - 1966-1968 - as a white teacher in an all-black high
school in North Philadelphia):

"The night we went to see 'Streetcar Named Desire,' we had our only
tense moment. We filled the first several rows of the theater. None of
the kids had ever been to a play before. And they did love it. The
problem was that they thought it was a comedy. That ridiculous broad
in the white dress guzzling booze and the big dummy in the bowling
shirt were the funniest things they'd ever seen. They roared. Through
the whole first act. The actors seemed tense. I shrank down in my
seat. But how can you be mad? They were beautifully behaved—they just
saw the play differently than the rest of the world— which was
certainly their privilege. At intermission, I decided something had to
be done. In my quietest lecture voice, I talked for fifteen minutes
about Tennessee Williams and his pathetic Southern heroines, who, like
the slaves, had been devastated by the Civil War and clung to the
security of the past. I painted poor Stanley as an animal, reacting
only on instinct, trying to survive in an artificial society. They
nodded their heads. Poor Blanche. Poor Stella. Poor Stanley. Then the
second act began. They roared."


Lenona.

[Bill Anderson]

Thanks to all of you in the thread. Those are the most interesting,
insightful comments I've read in this newsgroup in quite a while.