Quotes from Scene 1

BLANCHE: Stella, oh, Stella, Stella! Stella for Star!

Firstly, there's a great deal of repetition here of Stella's name.

"Repetition is a major rhetorical strategy for producing emphasis, clarity, amplification, or emotional effect."

In this, the repetition has been done for emotional effect. It shows Blanche's excitement to see her sister. The way she speaks is described as "with feverish vivacity." This makes us think that Blanche has not seen her sister in a long time and also paints a very positive relationship between these two sisters. It also shows instability in Blanche as she cannot at all control her emotional outbursts - hers is much more extreme than her sisters - and that she repeats herself a lot through the course of the play. Blanche shows a deal of minor symptoms early on suggesting that she may not be in a good place mentally and this acts as foreshadowing for later on when her symptoms grow worse. It also makes her mental decline more realistic. 

Blanche calls her Stella for Star because Stella means Star in Latin. This is quite simple but the meaning of her name has been mentioned and highlighted by Williams for a reason. Stars are considered to be very beautiful and positive. They also have a lot of connotations with predicting the future in astrology - whether positive or negative. This could be ironic as, at this point, neither Blanche or Stella can predict what is about to happen later on. Stars also have heavy connotations with dreams and wishes - wishing upon a star. This links to Blanches fantasy's and Stella living her dream life. A 'star' may also be a successful person or a famous person or someone who is excellent at a certain thing (eg. a star football player), this is, again, ironic as Stella seems to have no ambition beyond living with her husband and being a housewife. The further into the past you go, the more 'successful' this would seem for women. Most people within a modern audiences would not be inclined to see this as totally successful. Streetcar was written in 1947 when women could work and had the right to vote yet attitudes would have varied on this and sexism was still prevalent. Regardless of audience interpretation. Stella sees herself a successful and living her dream life, having all she's ever wanted.