There are thousands of papers, stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve as, piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications – to put it plainly! The four-letter word deprived us of our plantation, till finally all that was left – and Stella can verify that! – was the house itself and about twenty acres of ground, including a graveyard, to which now all but Stella and I have retreated.
– Tennessee Williams
A Streetcar Named Desire, Scene 2. When Stanley accuses Blanche of swindling Stella out of her inheritance, Blanche blames the loss of Belle Reve on the debauchery of her male ancestors. She creates the illusion that it was destroyed by the out of control sexual behavior of the men in the family. But it is later revealed that Blanche herself has been guilty of the same "epic fornications" she complains about in others. We see the theme of death here with the reference to the plantation being reduced to a few acres of land, including a graveyard.