"You haven't said a word about my appearance." Blanche said to Stella once she arrived in New Orleans. Blanche is obsessed with how people view her. She always wants to look perfect. To make herself look that way, she lies about having lots of money, and why she left Belle Reve. Everything she does is about trying to make herself look better because she is worried about how people perceive her.
Blanche is very concerned with her looks and is always looking for a way to get people to tell her she looks good. If a person doesn't say something about her looks right away, she has to try to force it out of them. To do this she will casually bring up something about her looks and then wait for their reply about how she looks good. In scene two, Blanche is talking to Stanley and she says, "Oh, in my youth I excited some admiration. But look at me now! [She smiles at him radiantly.] Would you think it was possible that I was once considered to be--attractive?" And when Stanley says to her, "Your looks are okay." Blanche says right to him that she was looking for a compliment. Even Stella knows about this obsession; when Blanche was in the bathroom she told Stanley to tell Blanche that she looked good because it is her "little weakness.".
One of the ways Blanche gets the attention she wants is she pretends that she comes from a rich family. In scene five Blanche says to Shep in a letter, "I am spending my summer on the wing, making flying visits here and there." Not only does she lie about herself, she lies about her sister too, she continues "Most of my sister's friends go north in the summer but some have homes on the Gulf- By telling people things like this, she feels that they will think highly of her, which is important. This is not the only time she lied; she also lied about why she left Belle Reve.
In scene one, when Blanche arrives in New Orleans she is talking to her sister, she says to Stella, "You haven't asked me how I happened to get away from the school before the spring term ended.
