Headscratchers / A Streetcar Named Desire

• At the beginning of the play, Blanche tells Stella that the reason she isn't teaching is because she took a leave of absence due to stress - this was in early May. Obviously in the months June, July and August she wouldn't be teaching anyway due to summer vacation. Yet by scene 7, it's 14th September, Blanche's birthday, and she still hasn't returned to teaching. Obviously this is because in reality she had been fired, but surely by this point Stella should have been just a little bit suspicious? Any leave of absence that Blanche could hypothetically have been granted would certainly not have extended into the next academic year, yet Stella is happy to keep her without asking questions. Then again, it's been suggested that Stella doesn't really care about anything except sex with Stanley...
  • Her school may have operated on a different schedule. The modern 9-10 month calendar with a summer break originated in northern urban districts - prior to the invention of air conditioning, summer was the one period that it was virtually impossible to operate the school building in a northern city. For decades and decades, rural districts set their own calendars based on the local farming calendar, since students would be held out during busy times on the farm, which often meant school ran during winter and summer.
  • It's also possible that Stella knows that something's up, but just chooses to humour Blanche.
    • Or that she realizes that Blanche wouldn't tell her the truth, anyway.
  • She seemed pretty shocked when she found out Blanche had been fired (along with the other stuff).

• On that front, how is it that Blanche rapes one of her students, and yet the only consequence is that she's been fired? Doesn't that sort of thing warrant a jail sentence?
  • I'm pretty sure that as the student was 17 and the age of consent was 16 then, although it would have been seen as inappropriate there was nothing illegal about the affair.
    • The age of consent in Mississippi is 16 even today (it ranges from 16-18 across the US.) It was highly inappropriate, both due to her being a teacher and due to her age difference - and was seen as such at the time, given the severe consequences she did face and how shocking the revelation is - but it was not illegal, so losing her job and being driven out of town was as severe as a punishment as she could have reasonably faced.
  • The student was a boy..
  • All of the above, plus in this time period, the school (and likely the parents) would likely want to hush up the whole embarrassing affair. The parents might even have agreed not to press charges as long as Blanche lost her job.