The roles of fantasy and reality play important roles in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Both Blanche and her younger sister Stella have constructed fantasies to escape the harsh reality of their lives.
Blanche is living with the guilt of her husband’s suicide and all the other things she’s done wrong. She is attempting to rebuild her life, and is hoping a relationship with Mitch later on in the play will allow her this. So through her lies, she constructs a fantasy where all her mistakes don’t exist. She left teaching for her nerves, not because of her underaged affair. Her actions after discovering her husband’s affair DIDN’T cause his death. This all comes crumbling down around her when Mitch learns the truth in scene nine. After being confronted, Blanche admits the truth and gives her an explanation.
“True? Yes, I suppose—unfit somehow—anyway. . . . So I came here. There was nowhere else I could go. I was played out. Do you know what played out is? My youth was suddenly gone up the water-spout, and—I met you. You said you needed somebody. Well, I needed somebody, too. I thanked God for you because you seemed to be gentle—a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in! But I guess I was asking, hoping—too much! Kiefaber, Stanley, and Shaw have tied an old tin can to the tail of the kite” (Scene 9). Blanche wanted to become the person Mitch needed through her lies and fantasies. But after discovering her lies Mitch wants nothing more to do with her.
After being raped by Stanley and her own sister choosing to not believe her; Blanche descends into her own mind as a form of self-protection. She continues this when the doctors come for her to protect her already broken mind. Fantasy is the only way she can protect herself in the end.
Stella’s fantasy is more subtle but all too grim; she living in a fantasy that her husband isn’t an abusive monster.
In Scene Four, we see Stella defending Stanley against Blanche the night after he hit her. “I know how it must have seemed to you and I’m awful sorry it had to happen, but it wasn’t anything as serious as you seem to take it. In the first place, when men are drinking and playing poker anything can happen. It’s always a powder-keg. He didn’t know what he was doing. . . . He was as good as a lamb when I came back and he’s really very, very ashamed of himself.” (Scene 4). Stella then proves her point at the end of the scene by kissing Stanley in front of her sister. Instead, this just brings on pity for Stella. She’d rather live in her fantasy than admit she returned to her abuser.
At the end of the play Stella has added to her fantasy that her husband isn’t a rapist; even encouraged to stay in this fantasy by her neighbor and husband. As Blanche is being taken away; some reality slips through to Stella as she realizes the fate she’s left her sister to. One could argue this shows on some level Stella knows what her sister said was the truth. But people around her are encouraging her to stay in her fantasy rather than face the reality.