I am reading “Streetcar” for my book club. With any great work of fiction, the Williams draws his characters with such deftness that they come to life on the page. Of course, this got my thinking of the astrological makeup of Stanley and Blanche and I concluded that they are on the opposite sides of the Virgo – Pisces Axis.
Stanley, of course, must have a badly afflicted Mars. I give him an Aries rising (or an Aries personality) with Mars in Aries in the first opposing Uranus. Mars, the god of war, rules Aries and Uranus adds a quirky spark. When they are opposing one another especially when having an influence on personality, they spark the volatile, animal anger so indicative of Stanley’s reactions.
In the play, we learn that Stanley’s Sun is in Capricorn. Frankly, the Sun is the third thing I look at when I am examining a person’s personality It is all about South Node and rising sign. Sun energy is your inner spark and Stanley exhibits Capricorn’s firm ideas of right and wrong and authority structure.)
Blanche is a Libra rising, the sign of money, beauty and co-dependence. She hides in the beauty of her clothing and of her past as the money slips away. Her Neptune, the planet of illusion and escapism, sits very closely to her Sun in Virgo. (She tells us in the play that her Sun is in Virgo.)Venus rules Libra and she stubbornly clings to her illusion of her virginial southern belle upbringing.
So why am I talking about a Virgo and Pisces axis? Because I believe those where their Nodal axis signs. The Nodal axis contains the South Node or our past life personality indicator which we carry over to form a strong basis of our current personality. The opposite side is the North Node, the sign that we should be striving to embody in this lifetime.
Stanley retains the earthiness of his Virgo past life. Highly critical and concerned about showing his perfection to the world, Stanley is languishing in the shadow of Virgo’s negative attributes. He lashes out because of his own Virgo feelings of inadequacy with the thunder and anger of his Aries rising.
Place is on the other side of the access and slips into the delusion and mental trauma that can accompany the refusal to leave the negative aspects of Pisces. She does the very Piscean action of escaping into the bottle.
If we relied only on Sun Sign Astrology, we would say these two are a perfect match as his Capricorn and her Virgo are both in compatible Earth signs. See how limited that is?
The sad aspect here is that they could learn from each other. Stanley can learn to love the wonderment that is so a part of the Pisces experience and Blanche can absorb the down-to-Earth practicality of Virgo. However, they seem doomed to stay firmly entrenched in the shadow of each. Then again, if they did not it would not be a Tennessee Williams play.