Two rooms are exposed, upstage and down, divided by portieres. It is somewhat the way it might have been painted by Van Gogh in his feverish interiors, with an abnormal emphasis of strident colors. Distortions and irregularities of design may be added to bring out the hysteria in this view. The white plaster walls of the interior are stained with lurid projections.

Sounds, too, are exaggerated. The cottage is near the railroad tracks and as the curtain rises a train is approaching and going by as loudly as if it were on the stage.

Blanche Shannon is seated at a dresser. She is a young woman, twenty-nine, a vividly dark southern type. It is through her senses that the play is projected.

In the upstage room, which serves as kitchen and dining room, Grace Kiefaber, Blanche’s married sister, is pouring red juice into a series of little jars set on an ironing board.

As the locomotive, still distant, approaches, its steady sound produces a mysterious voice.

A VOICE: Unfit—for her position! Unfit—for her position! Unfit— for her position!

[Blanche has been brushing her hair. She drops the brush and rises, pressing fists to her temples.]

Morally unfit—for her position!

[Now the locomotive thunder drowns out the voice. Blanche backs in panic away from the lowered window shade through which the sound bellows. The outside door opens in the upstage room and Jack Kiefaber enters with a bloodstained package from the butcher. He smiles and speaks to Grace. Passes her the package. She kisses him and crosses to the ice-box. Their voices are drowned by the passing locomotive. The noise is now receding. Blanche steadies herself and returns to the dresser and picks up the brush. Grace’s voice becomes audible through the fading roar.]

GRACE: I thought you were going bowling this afternoon.

JACK: I am. Came home to change. Blanche in the bathtub?

GRACE: I think she’s out. Are you, Blanche?

BLANCHE: What?

GRACE: Yes, she’s out of the bathtub. Jack wants to bathe.

JACK: I’m not going to bathe, I just want to make pee-pee.

[Blanche slams the brush down.]

GRACE: Jack!

JACK: Apologies, ladies. I mean I wish to relieve my kidneys.

BLANCHE [loudly]: I can’t stand anymore of it! We weren’t brought up like this and I can’t stand anymore of it!

[Through the portieres Jack makes a wide gesture of good-humored despair.]

It isn’t funny, nothing that goes on here is funny at all! [She crosses to bathroom and closes door. The light is normal.]

JACK: What is she talking about?