Stella and Blanche are two important female characters in Tennessee Williams' "poetic tragedy", A Streetcar Named Desire. Although they are sisters, their blood connection suggests other similarities between the two women. They are both part of the last generation of a once aristocratic but now moribund family. Both demonstrate great culture and sensitivity and, as a result, both do not seem out of place on the Champs Elysées. As Miller (45) notes, “beauty is shipwrecked on the rock of the vulgarity of the world.” Blanche, in particular, is much more anachronistic than Stella, who has, for the most part, adapted to Stanley Kowalski's environment. Finally, Stella and Blanche are or were married. It is in their respective marriages that we can begin to trace the profound differences between these two sisters. Where Blanche's marriage, to a man she loved deeply (Miller 43), proved catastrophic for her, Stella's marriage seems to make her blossom as a woman. Blanche's marriage to a young homosexual and the tragedy that followed when she discovered her husband's degeneration and his inability to help him are responsible for much of the perversity of her life..