Note that as soon as Blanche says that she was born under the sign of the virgin, Stanley chooses this moment to ask her about the man named Shaw. Blanche becomes visibly agitated during the cross-examination. At the end, when Stanley leaves, she is trembling and in need of a drink. This, then, is Blanche’s past life beginning to close in upon her. This is also the beginning of Stanley’s plan to destroy Blanche, and she feels herself being trapped. Thus in this encounter between Blanche and Stanley, Blanche is seeing her own valued world disintegrate under the force of Stanley’s attack.
This scene also illustrates Williams’ fondness for the use of symbols. The astrological signs, the spilled coke on Blanche’s white dress, and the cherry soda that the young man mentions are all used as slightly suggestive symbols.
At this point in the drama, the scene with the young boy might seem puzzlingly out of place. It is not until later that we learn Blanche had once married a young boy and had been terribly cruel to him when he most needed her. Therefore, her sexual promiscuity returns to her guilt feelings over her failure to help her young husband. She seeks to relive the past and longs for a young lover to replace the young husband who shot himself. In other words, since she once denied help to her young husband, she now tries to compensate by giving herself to almost anyone.
