In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche’s view of the world is complex and hard to completely unwrap. This is due to how she presents herself differently than how she really wants to think and act. Like in The Awakening, Blanche understands that the society she lives in has certain rules for her behavior. Her reputation (which affects her jobs and the communities she can safely interact in) depends entirely on how she presents herself. Blanche’s introduction to the audience emphasizes her efforts to appear as a high-class woman who’s still both innocent and young. The back-to-back revelation that she’s lost the DuBois family house, Belle Reve, and the unpacking of her expensive clothes from her wardrobe is meant to put her sophisticated act at odds with her situation. When Stanley confronts her about this, it’s the first time Blanche breaks her act to tell him exactly how she sees herself. She knows she’s not everything she pretends to be, which she puts as, “I know I fib a good deal.” Next, she gives an excuse for this: “After all, a woman’s charm is fifty per cent illusion.” However, she believes that her looks have diminished with her age, so when she’s trying to court Mitch, she relies on lies and any other tactic that she think will work. This includes avoiding direct light and lying about her morals, like when she tells Mitch, “I guess it is just that I have- old-fashioned ideals!” In a sense, Blanche creates a character for herself to play in order to win over Mitch, one that’s carefully crafted by all that she knows about the rules of society. She tells Stella, “I want his respect. And men don’t want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand men lose interest quickly.”
This deceiving is also a means to an end. While Blanche does seem to have some attraction to Mitch, she also sees him as a way of escape from her predicaments. When Stella asks her if she actually wants him, she says, “I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again! Yes- I want Mitch… very badly! Just think! If it happens! I can leave here and not be anyone’s problem…” Blanche is someone who will try anything to get what she wants- whether that’s a sense of love or a passing desire. However, manipulating reality into her own fantasy costs her in the end, as she loses sense of what’s fake. This mental break is caused by a combination of trauma, stress, and Stanley. He rips the fantasy away from her and leaves her with everything she wanted to push away, including her dark past and the future she can no longer have when Mitch leaves. When her lies are exposed, everyone else no longer knows what to believe, either, which means no one helps her when she tells them that Stanley raped her when Stella was in the hospital. I think the end of the book creates the implication that Stella does believe her, but like Blanche, facing the reality of that would break her, too.