Then Mitch forces her to admit her past life. With this revelation, Blanche is deprived of her chief attributes — that is, her illusions and her pretense. She is then forced to admit all of her past. After hearing her confessions, we see that Mitch aligns himself with the Stanley world. He cannot understand the reasons why Blanche had to give herself to so many people, and, if she did, he thinks that she should have no objections to sleeping with one more man. But Blanche's intimacies have always been with strangers. She cannot wantonly give herself to someone for whom she has an affection. Thus she forces Mitch to leave.
Later that same night when Stanley comes from the hospital, Blanche encounters the same type of brutality. Stanley rapes Blanche, assuming that she has slept with so many men in the past, one more would not matter. In actuality, Blanche's action in the first part of the play indicates that on first acquaintance, when Stanley was a stranger, she desired him or at least flirted with him. But Stanley was never able to understand the sensitivity behind Blanche's pretense. Even when Stella refers to Blanche as delicate, Stanley cries out in disbelief: "Some delicate piece she is." It is, then, Stanley's forced brutality which causes Blanche to crack up. The rape is Blanche's destruction as an individual. In all previous sexual encounters, Blanche had freely given of herself. But to be taken so cruelly and so brutally by a man who represents all qualities which Blanche found obnoxious caused her entire world to collapse.
Blanche's last remarks in the play seem to echo pathetically her plight and predicament in life. She goes with the doctor because he seems to be a gentleman and because he is a stranger. As she leaves, she says, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Thus, Blanche's life ends in the hands of the strange doctor. She was too delicate, too sensitive, too refined, and too beautiful to live in the realistic world. Her illusions had no place in the Kowalski world and when the illusions were destroyed, Blanche was also destroyed.
