payment page
Compared to Blanche and Stella, Eunice appears worldly and competent. She and Steve are established enough to own the building they live in. Stella and especially Blanche are keen to brush over or hide the uglier sides of their lives, but Eunice approaches her struggles head-on and deals with them efficiently and practically. Eunice understands how their community functions and she acts as a mediator between Stella, Blanche, and Stanley. When the men’s poker night gets out of control, Eunice is the one to take in Blanche and Stella without question while Stanley cools off.
Like Stella and Stanley, Eunice and Steve have a teasing, overtly physical, occasionally violent relationship. Eunice angrily confronts her husband about his affair and threatens to go to the police when he hits her. Later, however, they make up quickly and passionately, similar to the way Stella and Stanley immediately reconcile. Although she yells and makes threats, Eunice seems to have no intention or desire to actually leave Steve. She is settled in her home and routine, and as is revealed later, Eunice believes male companionship is a woman’s anchor in society.
At the end of the play, as Blanche is escorted to an asylum, Eunice is compassionate but firm, able to keep her composure when Stella is overwhelmed. However, by assuring Stella that she doesn’t have to believe Stanley raped Blanche, Eunice in effect enables Stanley’s inexcusable act and argues that marriage is a woman’s means of survival. Given what the audience sees Eunice suffer at the hands of her husband, it is unlikely that she believes nothing of Blanche’s story. However, acknowledging its truth would require her to acknowledge her own husband’s abuse, and it would interfere with her own survival.
