From the first scene the audience learns that Blanche and Stella were brought up on a plantation and that Stanley and his friends are poor and uneducated. In the first scene the two families come together in a scruffy environment, it is therefore Blanche who must adjust to the situation. When Stanley exposes Blanche's past and when he rapes her, he turns her ‘upper-class’ upbringing (of which she is very proud) into something without any meaning. The conflict, therefore, is bigger than Stanley vs. Blanche or even male vs. female, it is the Old South vs. the new ind ustrial age and the upper-class life vs. the ‘common’ life. With Blanche, it is not only her sinful ways that causes her misery, it is her upper-class upbringing and clinging to the past that is one of the reasons for her downfall - a tragic end for a tragic character.…