Blanche even speaks french at times, while Stella's speech patterns are on a more basic level, at times even similar to Stanley's. .
A more substantial and telling contrast, however, is in how Blanche and Stella look at and interpret the things and people around them: Blanche seeing the romantic and visionary side of things and Stella seeing the more practical and realistic side. Blanche mentions how Shep Huntleigh's Cadillac must have been a block long and Stella's comment is that it must have been "--inconvenient in traffic!" While Stella is not rude and crass like Stanley, she is similar to him in this realistic view of life. There are some instances, however, in which Blanche's view shifts from being merely a fanciful perception of things to a sharp and educated voice of reason, with Stella being the one who is viewing things through a fog, especially when Blanche tries at different times during the play to explain to Stella what kind of a man Stanley really is and how she should leave at the first opportunity. Even though Blanche is the voice of reason in these scenes, she doesn't acknowledge that they might actually be in love (an emotion Blanche has trouble with) and that it would not be a simple thing to just leave Stanley. Blanche's "voice of reason" also loses some of its authority at times because while her insight into Stella's life is keen at times, her insight into her own life is lacking, as in the fourth scene when she says: ".your fix is worse than mine is.(but) I"m going to do something. Get hold of myself and make myself a new life!".
In a larger sense, the contrast between Blanche and Stella can be seen as not only romance versus practicality, but as the artificial versus the real. Most of the things that are associated with Blanche throughout the play have something to do with the artificial, or the covered-up. The clothes that Stanley finds while rumaging through her trunk are the epitome of artifice: the tiara is made of rhinestones and that the dress is from a costume ball.
