Blanche, in a Streetcar Named Desire is extremely insecure and searches for security in compliments and being desired.
Since her past husband was a homosexual and Blanche couldn’t “cure” him by being his wife leading to his suicide, she thought herself as less beautiful and less desirable to men in general.
Blanche: [...] There was something different about the boy, a nervousness, a softness and tenderness which wasn’t like a man’s, although he wasn’t the least bit effeminate looking-still that thing was there… He came to me for help. I didn’t know that. I didn’t find out anything until after our marriage when we’d run away and come back and all I know was I’d failed him in some mysterious way and wasn’t able to give him the help he needed but couldn’t speak of! He was in the quicksands and clutching at me- but I wasn’t holding him out, I was slipping in with him!
Psychologically Blanche was completely messed up by this experience and completely changed herself. Once a proper aristocratic woman in the south, she became a well known woman, searching to be desired and possibly “save” the men who suffered with the problem her past husband suffered with by keeping herself open to multiple men.
Blanche: Yes, a big spider! That’s where I brought my victims. Yes, I had many intamacies with strangers. After the deateh of Allan- intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with. . . I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection- here and there, in the most- unlikely places- even, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy [...]
When Blanche arrived at New Orleans, she c ouldn’t continue her way of finding comfort like she did in Laurel so she tried a new approach. Since she was caught and lost her job, she tried to convince everyone in her sisters town that she was still a virgin and was truly still a proper woman from the south. She looked for confidence by asking for compliments and doing her best to look well in hopes of finding another husband, or another young man to “save”.
