Blanche attempts to stay back in the past but it is impossible, and Stella only survives by mixing her DuBois blood with the common stock of the Kowalskis the old South can only live on in a diluted, bastardized form. Their strain of Old South was not conquered by the march of General Sherman's army, but by the steady march of time, and as Blanche's beauty fades with age so too do these vestiges of that civilization gone with the wind. Belle Reve, their family's ancestral plantation, has been lost, and the two sisters are the last living members of their family and, symbolically, of their old world of cavaliers and cotton fields. Stella and Blanche come from a world that is rapidly dying. To survive, Stella must also resort to a kind of illusion, forcing herself to believe that Blanche's accusations against Stanley are false so that she can continue living with her husband. Throughout the play, Blanche's dependence on illusion is contrasted with Stanley's steadfast realism, and in the end it is Stanley and his worldview that win. Fantasy has a liberating magic that protects her from the tragedies she has had to endure. She is a quixotic figure, seeing the world not as it is but as it ought to be. But her deceits carry no trace of malice, but rather they come from her weakness and inability to confront the truth head-on. Blanche dwells in illusion fantasy is her primary means of self-defense, both against outside threats and against her own demons.
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