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ed to her, and just as unable to comprehend how her sister Stella can endure her current living condition, Blanche is slowly losing her mind. Her desperate line, “I don't want realism! I want magic!” (Williams, 1978: 545) is a cry from the heart. She wishes to view life as one that is rose-colored and that goes along with her old-fashioned southern belle personality. The loss of her young husband Allan has caused her loneliness, sexual desire, and even certain signs of psychological instability. What Blanche does not realize is that she can not change the past through the present. Blanche's youth is gone, and she tries to give the appearance of being as youthful and innocent as she once was, but her illusion can not last. As an epigraph to the play, Williams quotes from the poem “The Broken Tower”, by Hart Crane:

And so it was that I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

The use of this poem helps to express Williams's choice of theme in A Streetcar Named Desire. After Blanche’s young husband Allan Grey dies, she has entered a “Broken world” of fear, longing, and sorrow because of her simple desire to hear “the visionary company of love, its voice”, or tender, gentle words of love and appreciation from Stella and Mitch. However, these words are only “visionary”. The loss of Allan and the desire to “trace” or recapture her love lead her to make so many desperate choices. (Londre, 1997: 49)
3.2 Victim of Social Circumstances
3.2.1 Victim of the Old Southern Culture
Given Mitch’s statement, it seems that Blanche’s bad sexual experiences and romantic delusions have been the source of her fall. Yet Williams depicts the fallen, Southern women as Blanche who is also a victim of society’s rules.
Before we see Blanche’s miserable life experiences and fall, let’s first have a look at the south land she has lost. In The Mind of the South, Cash present us a description of the land which cultivates those old southern gentlemen and ladies. The warm pleasant climate and leisure rich life there give this land certain atmosphere of romance. The plantation owners can have their own way in their land and enjoy the harvest by the slaves’ labors. Thus, a spirit of indulging and pleasure seeking is cultivated. But at the same time, Cash points out that those old southern residents, especially women, are puritans that are sternly restricted by their value of morality. The economic structure of the plantation leaves women highly dependent on men because for a long time, they are detached from working and management of the plantation. Thus they cling to men or become toys that entertain and please men. On one hand, they should act and speak appropriately and be lady-like because of the puritan doctrines they believe, on the other hand, they have to get men’s admiration and hearts in order to maintain their dependent position. Therefore, there is a mixture of Puritanism and hedonism in them(汪义群, 1992: 83). Clearly，we can see the contradiction of desire and soul in Blanche.
3.2.2 The Destruction of the Old South Genteel World
A Streetcar Named Desire describes the cultural and social differences and the arising problems between two different “worlds”. On the one hand is the former “wor