Quotes from Scene 1

"Blanche sits in a chair very stiffly with her shoulders slightly hunched and her legs pressed close together and her hands tightly clutching her purse as if she were quite cold. After a while the blind look goes out of her eyes and she begins to look slowly around."

"She pours a half tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down. She carefully replaces the bottle and washes out the tumbler at the sink. Then she resumes her seat in front of the table."

Blanche's body language tells us that she's very scared and very out of place and uncomfortable. An audience may wonder what she has to be afraid of in her own sisters home. Her response here is to seek comfort in alcohol and have a drink. This shows dependency straight off the bat. She takes the whiskey back with no problem, it seems, so she must be accustomed to drinking liquor and accustomed to taking it straight. Not only this, but she knows to hide the evidence that she's drank by carefully replacing the bottle and washing the tumbler she drank from. These are telltale signs of alcoholism which makes us, again, curious about her backstory and situation and what made her the way that she is.