entertain the thought of being without him. In the end, she must make a choice between Stanley and Blanche—and she chooses her husband. Although she loves her sister, she refuses to consider that Blanche might be telling the truth about Stanley. She tells her sister that she does not want to hear the truth and explains to Eunice that she could not believe Blanche’s accusation “and go on living with Stanley.” Stella chooses to be blind.

During the 1940’s, women were not raised to be independent. Stella and Blanche have been raised to be dependent on men. So, if Stella gathered the strength to leave Stanley, she would not know what to do next. She does not display any characteristics that give us hope for her survival on her own. She would also be endangering her child’s future, with both Stella’s uncertainty and Stanley’s cruel tendencies. To be sure, if she left, Stanley would come after her. To Stella, her only option is to stay and close her eyes to truth.

One reason Stella chooses to remain in an abusive marriage with Stanley is her borderline hero-worship for him. Stella is completely in love with Stanley and even tells her sister that she goes mad if he is out of town for a week. Stella's adoration for Stanley seems to blind her to the abuse she suffers on a weekly basis. Essentially, Stella's extreme affection for her husband distracts her from seriously examining her relationship and leaving him.

Stella is also sexually attracted to Stanley, who is portrayed as a primitive, masculine man. Stella's relationship with her husband is primarily physical, and Stanley fulfills her sensual desires. Stanley is also Stella's ticket out of Belle Reve. Without Stanley, Stella would still be in her home town and forced to deal with her family's terrible financial situation and delusional sister. Overall, Stella chooses to remain in an abusive relationship with Stanley because he fulfills her sensual desires and she is completely in love with him. Stella seems to embrace her submissive role and worships her primitive, "uncivilized" husband.

Throughout the play, Tennessee Williams makes it clear that Stella is crazy about Stanley even though, or because, he has such a violent and animalistic nature. She is in love with him. She expresses her feelings clearly in scene 4 when Blanche tries to persuade her to leave Stanley.

BLANCHE:
But you've given in. And that isn't right, you're not old! You've got to get out.

STELLA:
I'm not in anything I want to get out of.

Earlier, in Scene One, Stella makes such statements as:

I can hardly stand it when he is away for a night . . .

And:

When he's away for a week I nearly go wild!

Obviously Stella is willing to put up with a certain amount of crudeness and physical abuse from a man who gives her such sensual pleasure and genuine love. There is no question of her leaving Stanley. If he has her in his power, she enjoys it. It would appear that Stella has him in her power too, as exemplified in that famous scene where Stanley shouts, "HEY, STELLA!" This is something Blanche could never understand.

Stella is madly in love with Stanley. She wouldn't consider leaving him. In Scene One she tells Blanche, "I can hardly stand it when he is away for a night . . . " And then, "When he's away for a week I nearly go wild! . . . . And when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby . . ." Besides this strong attachment to Stanley, which is of course partly sexual, Stella is now expecting a baby. There is never any real question  of her leaving Stanley, although Blanche disapproves of him and tries very hard in Scene Four to get her to escape from him. When Blanche tells her, "You can get out," Stella replies emphatically, "I'm not in anything I want to get out of." Blanche is already an unwelcome guest in this two-room apartment. The coming baby is sure to make it impossible for her to stay.

Certainly, pragmatism is one of the strongest reasons that resonates with why Stella does what she does. Stella is practical. She understands that her situation is not going to immediately lend itself to her leaving Stanley and starting a new life with her newborn child. She understands fully that there has to be a sense of recognizing what is in order to function in daily life. For Stella, "it is what it is" might be an apt way of describing how she functions with Stanley. At the same time, I believe that Stella combines her pragmatism with a sense of the illusion that is so dominant in Blanche.  Stella believes that she has a connection with Stanley that others will fail to grasp. It is one that "there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark—that sort of make everything else seem—unimportant." This is so important to understand in Stella's conception of her marriage. She believes that these carnal expressions reflect a type of love between husband and wife. Whether she is right is not as important as the fact that this resonates with her, and is something that is important in terms of understanding how and why she stays with Stanley.

Stanley represents a whole different world to Stella; a world of danger and excitement; a world far removed from her staid, genteel upbringing. On the face of it, it may seem that married life with Stanley doesn't have much to offer Stella—or any other woman, for that matter. Stanley's a hulking great brute, who regularly engages in outbursts of violence against Stella. By anyone's standards, this is an abusive relationship.

But Stella saw something in Stanley, something that drew her irresistibly towards him like a moth to a flame. As well as being attracted to him sexually, she also sees him as her protector against a world in which she'd otherwise struggle to survive on her own. On a subconscious level, Stella seems to understand that society is changing, and that she must change with it. This means that she can no longer remain in the rarefied, upper-class world of the Southern plantation in which she grew up, but must instead make her way in the thrusting metropolis of New Orleans. But as she lacks the ability to do this on her own, she needs a guiding hand, and what better man to fulfill that role than the thoroughly urbanized, street-smart Stanley Kowalski.

The background to Stella and Stanley's marriage is not explained directly in the play, but Stella's reasons for marrying Stanley are implied.

It is implied in the play that Stella met Stanley in New Orleans, where she moved from Belle Reve (the plantation in the countryside where she and her sister Blanche were raised). Stanley, a strong, gritty Polish immigrant, would have been different from the other men Stella knew. Blanche suggests that Stella was seduced by Stanley and that she is enamored with his masculinity. 

Stanley, however, suggests that Stella married him because she wanted to get away from the quiet, well-ordered life of Belle Reve. He says, "I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it, having them colored lights going!" In this passage, the "columns" refer to the stately columns of Belle Reve plantation, which represents Stella's rarified social status. According to Stanley, Stella was excited by the "colored lights" of New Orleans and the life he gave her there. 

Whatever else may be said of the Kowalskis' relationship, there's no doubt that it's based on love. Stanley may be a hulking great brute who regularly abuses his wife, but there seems little doubt that he still loves her, even if he has a very funny way of showing it.

As for Stella, she loves Stanley, despite his ill-treatment of her. In him, she sees a lover, a fighter, and a protector, a macho guy who fits in with her rather narrow ideal of what a man should be.

Because Stella and Stanley's relationship is based on mutual love, Blanche has no chance whatsoever in getting her sister away from a man she regards with utter contempt. For the educated Blanche, to be uneducated is synonymous with being stupid, so in her eyes, the uneducated Stanley is indeed a very stupid man.

This snobbish assumption ultimately leads to Blanche's undoing, as it makes her underestimate Stanley. Though definitely not an educated man, Stanley is nonetheless quite smart, as can be seen in his quoting chapter and verse of the Napoleonic Code at Blanche and the way in which he outmaneuvers her when it comes to keeping hold of Stella.

When all's said and done, however, it's not Stanley's street smarts or Blanche's miscalculations regarding her sister that enables the Kowalskis' relationship to prevail in the end, but the deep love they have for each other.