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A Streetcar Named Desire Patriarchy

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The play “A Streetcar Named Desire” written by Tennessee Williams portrays the character of
Blanche Dubois following her from her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi to New Orleans where she is to stay with her sister Stella Kowalski and her sister’s husband Stanley Kowalski, beginning Blanche's dependence on men, as she is still ultimately depending on her sister's husband (Stanley) for her mental and economic recovery.Feminists believe that patriarchy not only suppresses women in such aspects as politics, economy, society, culture, education and so on, but also mistakenly defines women's psychology as being unsound, irrational, illogical and impulsive. Under this kind of bias and discrimination, women's psychology is easily distorted, and cannot …show more content…

Domestic Violence is different to each character in this play. This is because each character has a different experience with it, and the consequences of violence in their lives have been so diverse that each has made up their own conclusion on what it is to be violent or to be a victim of it.
Stanley, for example, is by nature a violent man. He has created a stereotypical view of women in his mind, and his wife should be the embodiment of subservience and submission. When he drinks, these ideals become more powerful and make him even more violent. When his wife does not do as he says he hits her, they fight, and then there is the post-fighting lovemaking which intends to patch all mistakes. Yet, this is to him a form of aphrodisiac and violence is a way to channel his pathological views of life. Blanche becomes a victim of his violence, particularly during the rape scene.
Stella is at the receiving end of Stanley. She is the one getting the hits, surviving the fights, and then getting with him for sex after fighting. However, this to Stella is another curious form of …show more content…

The 1940's were different, life for women was expanding, the men were at war and so the women had to step up and take the men's place. Not only men were going to war either, the war was so big that in 1942, “The Women's Army Corps” and “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency
Services” were established. After these organizations were accepted congress authorized women to serve in the U.S. Navy. Back in the USA, women worked factory, and labour intensive jobs.
Throughout the 1940's the amount of women in the workforce increased by 25-35%. This was a prosperous time in women's history. Blanche, however, was removed from her job as a teacher, as she had sexual relations with a 17 year old boy. This is another scene in which we see Blanche as a victim, who has been ostracised due to her promiscuity.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” as a whole is connected to misogyny in the sense that it criticizes the way that women in the 20th century heavily depended upon men. The women in the play (Blanche and Stella) choose to fall back on men and depend on them to help them not only economically, but also emotionally and sexually. When Blanche felt insecure, she turned to younger men in an

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775 Words | 4 Pages

In the book “A Streetcar Named Desire” written by Williams, Tennessee central ideas such as power, identity, and home continue to reappear throughout the novel in different moods and contexts. Characters such as Blanche, Stanley, and Stella drive these central ideas through power struggle and conflicting motives and rightfully so the positions each character was put in the spot to play were at the time immovable limiting their ability to shape their own identities. Stanley, In the book Stanley is our tension character who creates most of the uneasy scenes and is moving or plotting against another character in this case Blanche who has had a power struggle with Stanley ever since her unexpected arrival. Knowing our context that the play was

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798 Words | 4 Pages

The men in the play take a dominant role of the women and use them. This is evident in two different relationship Stanley to Stella, and Stanley to Blanche. Stanley repeatedly mistreats and hurts Stella. For example, in scene three it’s the first time we get to see Stanley mistreat Stella. Stella and Blanche come home to Stanley and his friends poker game.

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994 Words | 4 Pages

In Tennessee William’s play, A street Car Named Desire, the author introduces a character named Blanche Dubois who is described as a southern bell. She is revealed to the readers as a complex person. Desperate need of attention, Blanche who is Stella’s older sister, arrives to visit Stella and her husband, Stanley, in New Orleans. As Stanley and Blanche are introduced, he acquires a dislike for Blanche. Through a careful analysis of Blanche in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar

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718 Words | 3 Pages

She refused to leave him when Blanche insisted and didn’t believe Blanche when it came to her being raped. Blanche, Stella, and Stanley all have the same want to be desired. The ways they act and treat each other back that up. Blanche feels the need to be desired by everyone around her, Stanley by Stella and others, and Stella by Stanley. Their lives revolve around desire.

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1066 Words | 5 Pages

Domestic violence, seen frequently throughout the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, had been an unpopular and unspoken topic to be used in screenwrite. Knowing how controversial this topic was for the times, Tennesse Williams gambled with the idea and created A Streetcar Named Desire. With this work, he sheds light on the global issue domestic violence had become to society. Williams emphasizes the normalization of domestic violence through the use of characterization in Stella and Stanley, representation of their relationship and the insight given to the audience about the societal norms that were found in the 1950s. Williams shows the audiences that domestic violence will be an important factor in the play by capturing our attention on the

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922 Words | 4 Pages

The Desire for Equality Between the Sexes Men have long been afforded more rights and privileges than women both enforced by legislation but also societal norms and expectations. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams tracks the life of a troubled Blanche Dubois as she lives with her sister Stella Dubois and her sister's husband Stanley Kowalski. Stanley and Stella have, from an outsider's perspective, a peculiar relationship. Stanley on numerous occasions is portrayed as a physical brute who lashes out angrily. Despite this, Stella remains with him and seems perfectly content with her situation much to the dismay of Blanche Dubois.

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778 Words | 4 Pages

It is Blanche’s obsessive desire for a clean slate that ultimately drives her streetcar into destruction. With each lie she tells, the last lie becomes a reality to her, and once her delusional reality begins to fade, Blanche recedes into a dark hole where neither she or anyone else could ever truly see herself

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1266 Words | 6 Pages

A streetcar named desire was written by Tennessee Williams in 1947, in purpose to show the “declining of the upper class and the domination of the bourgeois middle class in the U.S.A. where the south agriculture class could not compete with the industrialization.” Blanche Dubois the protagonist of our story, a southern beauty that is trapped by the restrictive laws of her society. But she broke them, and eventually put herself in a state, where she had no job and no house. So she had to go to her sister, Stella and live with her and her sister’s husband, Stanley. While staying there, she created a façade for her to hide her flaws and kept acting as a lady, where she is anything but that.

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652 Words | 3 Pages

It also highlights Stella’s submissive nature, and how she conforms to the sexist societal expectations of a helpless and fragile woman. Although the surrounding male characters disregard Stanley’s abuse, the audience is repulsed by it and identifies it as morally wrong. This shows how Williams is criticising the acceptance of this abusive behaviour in society, using Stella’s dilemma as a victim to plea for a change. Stanley is even abusive when displaying his

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698 Words | 3 Pages

This is made clear through Stanley’s insecurities about inferiority to women and his prolonged struggle to defeat Blanche. Again, this is evident with Blanche and even Stella. Stella is perceived as a static character with no real individuality, and Blanche, who is seemingly more independent, is characterized mostly by her sexuality. Tennessee Williams demonstrates society’s need for the superiority of men to women through the interactions of Stanley and Blanche in the play, their struggles, and their ultimate

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1547 Words | 7 Pages

Tennessee Williams wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Williams, 1947) It is based in New Orleans a new cosmopolitan city which is poor but has raffish charm. The past is representing old south in America 1900’s and present is representing new America post world war 2 in 1940’s. Past and present are intertwined throughout the play in the characters Stanley, Blanche, Stella and mitch. Gender roles show that males are the dominant and rule the house which Stanley is prime example as he brings home food and we learn of one time when he got cross and he smashed the light bulbs.

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608 Words | 3 Pages

In A Streetcar Named Desire, the author Tennessee Williams exaggerates and dramatizes fantasy’s incapability to overcome reality through an observation of the boundary between Blanches exterior and interior conveying the theme that illusion and fantasy are often better than reality. Blanche, who hides her version of the past, alters her present and her relationship with her suitor Mitch and her sister, Stella. Blanche was surrounded by death in her past, her relatives and husband have passed away, leaving her with no legacy left to continue. The money has exhausted; the values are falling apart and she is alienated and unable to survive in the harsh reality of modern society. Throughout the novel Williams juxtaposed Blanche’s delusions with

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765 Words | 4 Pages

This overall outcome is caused by a series of events building on each other. Both Stanley and Blanche embody their specific gender roles at the time. In the mid-1900s, masculinity meant control, aggression, physical dominance, and even violence. Complementing these traits is a typical absence of manners, refinement, and sensitivity. One point of view voiced in the play is that this sort of physical masculinity is sub-human and primitive; another is that it is sexually attractive and appealing.

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847 Words | 4 Pages

“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a very elegant film in which the Southern gothic culture is demonstrated profoundly. Tennessee Williams uses the characters in the play to bring about a sense of how corrupt society truly was in the 1940’s in the South. The 1940’s was marked by an immense amount of violence, alcoholism, and poverty. Women at the time were treated as objects rather than people. Throughout the play Tennessee Williams relates the aspects of Southern society to the characters in the play.

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1220 Words | 5 Pages

The 1947 play “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams tells the story of the sweet, polite, but willfully oblivious Blanche DuBois’ difficult relationship with her rough & tough brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. When Blanche loses the family plantation, she travels to the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, to visit and temporarily live with her sister, Stella. Blanche is in her thirties and, with no money, she has nowhere else to go. Problems arise between Stanley and Blanche when Blanche begins a series of lies and half-truths, and belittles Stanley, labeling him as “common” and “barbaric”. Things escalate between the two because of Stanley’s drunken rage taken out on Stella, but also because Stanley begins to become suspicious and aware of Blanche’s many lies and cover-ups.

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