The character Stanley in _A Streetcar Named Desire_. Not so inhuman?

Just a little follow-up to my previous post about the _Streetcar_ characters. (http://literatureeh.blogspot.com/2012/01/thoughts-on-characters-of-tennessee.html)

At the end of scene 11, right after Blanche has been taken away, this happens:

Stella: Blanche! Blanche! Blanche!

…
[… Eunice descends to Stella and places the child in her arms. … Stella accepts the child, sobbingly. … Stanley has gone out on the porch and stands at the foot of the steps looking at Stella.]



Stanley [a bit uncertainly]: Stella?

[She sobs with inhuman abandon. …]

Stanley [voluptuously, soothingly]: Now, honey. Now, love. Now, now, love. [He kneels beside her and his fingers find the opening of her blouse] Now, now, love. Now, love...

So, basically, Stanley starts groping Stella as soon as Blanche is taken away. My initial interpretation of this, in my first two readings, was to judge it as evidence of Stanley's inhumanity. Blanche's fate doesn't matter to him at all. It's as if she never came into their lives. All he thinks about is sex. There's something monstrous about this man.

But now that I read it yet again, I don't think that's the case. Because upon seeing Stella in such a state of despair, he first says, "a bit uncertainly", "Stella?" This indicates some measure of concern for her.

It seems to me that his comforting words, "Now, honey, now, now, honey" etc, is a demonstration of comfort. I think that his sexual gesture, slipping his fingers into her blouse, is a gesture of comfort too. That all he knows is sex. That this is the only way he knows to comfort Stella.

We know from scene 1 that "since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women". And we know that the couple is accustomed to making up by having sex (end of scene 3). So it all adds up.

Maybe I'm just trying to look at him in a warmer way to shield myself because I can't stand wanton sexual predation? Maybe he's just so evil that he can overlook Stella's emotional agony, so that the only reaction it provokes in him is "uncertainty".