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Essay On Women In Othello And A Streetcar Named Desire

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Although being written centuries apart, the limited expectations of women presented in ‘Othello’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ differ little from each other. The female characters are confined by society’s expectations of male dominance, female purity and virginity, and the many passive roles of women. Despite the differing legalities surrounding the position of women between the centuries in which the plays were written, both plays explore the impact of how societal conventions confine women and the ways they must comply to be safe in a patriarchal society. The behaviours and treatments of Desdemona, Blanche and Stella illustrate the attitudes enforced on and the behaviours of women throughout both periods in time and it is these attitudes and behaviours that impact the plays to the greatest extent. When characters in either plays defy their norms, or demonstrate a lack of compliance they induce negative consequences, such as the murder of Desdemona and the institutionalisation of Blanche. In Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, Desdemona is spoken about as if she is Brabantio’s possession; his ‘white ewe’. Not only does the …show more content…

The line ‘I’m looking for my sister, Stella DuBois. I mean- Mrs Stanley Kowalski’ delivered by Blanche, in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, illuminates the similar attitudes towards women throughout the Jacobean and post-war eras. The separation of the common noun ‘sister’ and the noun ‘Mrs’ illustrates the separate roles of a sister and a wife, particularly as sister comes before wife chronologically, but the impact is on the correction, as a wife was seen as a more important role than a sister, which is similar to the separation of Desdemona’s roles as a daughter and a wife. Even though Blanche is a woman, and women were legally independent, she assigns her sister to a man because of the powerful societal regulations which she has been exposed and fallen victim

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This passage has been extracted from Act I Scene I of Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire. In this extraction, Blanche sees and interacts with her younger sister, Stella, for the first time in many years. Upon this reunification, Blanche is forced to take in the discrepancies between her fantasy expectation of what their reunion will be like and the reality of how her baby sister looks, acts, and lives. As Blanche dwells on how different the Dubois’ plantation Belle Reve is compared to Stella’s current social status and living conditions, Blanche’s unadulterated character is easily scrutinized.

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Gender and Power in the Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire is crucial factor and is portrayed well through the play. The essay also is going to plan to examine the different ideas about female sexuality that convey from the character of Blanche. One important tenet of feminism is that gender is a social construct.

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Examining Marriage in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee William’s 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire takes place in Elysian Fields, New Orleans, and portrays the marital situation of this time. This play illustrates conflict over the marriage of Stella and Stanley. This marriage can be seen as strict, and controlling but also full of lust.

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A streetcar named Desire A streetcar named Desire, is a play by Tennessee Williams written in 1947. It addresses the American society in the post modern society, gender roles and how it feels to be an intruder in an environment you aren’t used to. One of the most central aspects in “A streetcar named Desire” is the gender aspect. We witness Stanley and Blanche act due to the gender society gave them.

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In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the main characters, Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski, share a great dislike and distrust towards one another, ultimately becoming the basis for the story’s conflict. Their common contemption stems from their contrasting personalities and backgrounds, their incompatibility of being able to function under the same environment, and inability to adapt to the situations they find themselves in. Although Blanche detests Stanley and the manner in which he behaves in, she realises that he is a necessary part for Stella’s life in New Orleans, an environment that greatly differs from the southern aristocracy that Stella and Blanche once lived in. Blanche expresses this idea by stating, “Oh,

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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.

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Also, each relationship in Othello provokes jealousy in one partner. In a typical Venetian society, a woman was considered to be a man’s property, so if a woman was disobedient, it negatively impacted the man, while also questioning his masculinity. The hyperbolic soliloquy as Othello expressed he would “rather be a toad” than “keep a corner of the thing I love” is Othello’s justification of killing his wife, as her untrustworthiness challenged his masculinity and reputation. Referring to Desdemona as a “thing” emphasises the idea of women being property. Iago’s jealousy of Desdemona and Othello’s relationship is emphasised through the degrading comment of Othello, “an old black ram” “tupping” Brabantio’s “white ewe”.

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There is no question that gender roles have a significant impact on people and society. This issue arises between Stanley and Stella's relationship in the play “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Through the feminist lens, gender roles have a number of detrimental effects on relationships, including imbalance, the development of stereotypical behaviour, and toxicity. The negative impacts can be clearly seen during the passage that follows the day after Stanley hits Stella which already illustrates their toxic relationship. “No, it isn’t all right for anybody to make such terrible row, but- people do sometimes.

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While Desdemona is a remarkably strong character, Emilia also displays independence unmatched by any other female in Othello, and there are multiple details of Shakespeare and his time that may have prompted such a portrayal. In Elizabethan England, many women worked behind the scenes of productions, like Shakespeare’s, as uncredited authors and editors (Crowley). Due to their anonymity, nobody can be sure that women were involved in Shakespeare’s plays nor Othello in particular, but there is a genuine possibility that female writers did have leverage. This may have had to do with how Emilia was portrayed as resilient from the time of Desdemona’s death all the way until her own, standing up for herself regardless of the ridicule it caused her (Iyasere). In fact, it even killed her in the end.

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