In some plays the experience of an important character changes him or her; this can be said about Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. A perfect example of a changed character from this play is Walter Lee Younger. Through the trials and tribulations that him and his family are made to face he becomes a better man.
Beneatha’s Experience With Sexism Women and Men are the two genders that society measures on what they should do and how they should behave. Women, particularly, have faced discrimination for the majority of the years including the present day. In the book, A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha is described as a diligent and devoted college student, on the path to becoming a physician. Lorraine Hansberry portrays the sexism Beneatha encounters for wanting to become a doctor through her peers' disparaging comments.
In comparison to the movie, the play undermines male dominance by focusing on women’s efforts to solve their own problems. First of all, there aren’t even men in the cast of the play,
Even though Walter is the main character of the story, it is the women in his life who have the biggest dream for him, to find his own manhood. Manliness is having the strength to stand up for what is right, and Mama realizes that Walter has found his manhood when she says to Ruth, “He finally come into his manhood today, didn’t he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain”(1935). Throughout the play when Walter loses and eventually recovers his pride it forms a major plotline in the play. Since the play portrays people who have little to nothing to their name, pride is a means for them to hold on to their dignity and declare their worth as humans.
In the play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, there are many examples of sexism throughout its entirety. The character, Walter, demonstrates the acts of a sexist human being. Walter is sexist to not only women in general, but to the women in his family. Not taking into consideration of other people’s sayings and their feelings, Walter generally only thinks about himself, says what he believes, and truly only cares about money. Walter constantly is fighting with all of the women in the family as well.
When observing the male characters, thematic influences that shape their idea of freedom are status and wealth, from analysis of the text it is evident that it provides the men of these stories with a sense of masculinity and power. Taking a look at Walter’s relation to wealth in A Raisin in the Sun, it demonstrates that he believes that the more leisure and free spending his family has, the more of a man it makes him. When Walter, his mother, and his wife, argue over their spending and finances, Walter states, “Well, you tell that to my boy tonight when you put him to sleep on the living-room couch … Yeah—and tell it to my wife, Mama, tomorrow when she has to go out of here to look after somebody else’s kids” (1.2.191).
The idea of manhood is something that has come up again and again throughout history. It is a topic that has been the themes of many novels and even some plays. Lorraine Hansberry focuses on the concept of manhood in her well-known play A Raisin in the Sun. In this play, Hansberry develops the idea of manhood through several characters, primarily Walter. She shows that being a man does not just have to do with what material items you have in your life but also your character and what you are like as a person.
Reading and Reimagining Social Life In Allan Johnson’s Privilege, Power, and Difference, Patricia Hill Collins describes the Matrix of Domination as an intersectionality between all the isms, especially racism and sexism. Collins describes this cycle of domination saying “that each form of privilege is part of a much larger system of privilege” (Johnson, 52). Work for change needs to focus on the idea of privilege in all forms and the way in which it enables people to think in relation to inequality and power. The only way to understand the matrix, is by understanding its dimensions.
Although Walter does not deserve the power, the manhood of Walter Lee enables him to “control” the family. Conversely, Beneatha’s talkativeness and her aggressive personality are against how a 1950s African American should act. Ruth asks “Can’t you be a little sweeter sometimes? (Act 1, Scene 1)” to indicate the modest characteristics women should have. Furthermore, Ruth’s decision of abortion at the beginning of the play was unconventional since it was against gender expectation because it is against her duty as a wife and a mother.
Two men named Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were the faces of totalitarian dictators. These two men wanted to have control of everyone and everything and they did their job to accomplish it. Although Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin ruled two totally different countries, they had the same thoughts on how to rule their countries, which was using killing tactics, propaganda, and wanting their country to be the biggest and strongest there is. While Democracies prefer people to have an input on things, a totalitarian system does not.
Readers not only get to see oppression take place in her life, but also how she acts in breaking these barriers that alter women's social purposes. During this period, the 1950s was an era that further oppressed the Black community beyond slavery, especially socially. Rose fought a daily battle with prejudice based on her gender, this conflict often being activated by her own husband. Throughout the play, the contrasts between the roles of the men and the women were quite defined, the men being seen as the person with power who provides for their family, and the women contributing to their families' well-being, often by acting as a housewife. In a way, these role distinctions first originated based on the nature of the two genders that early society assigned; a man's nature is powerful, authoritative, and
The characters in the play reveal some of the gender stereotypes through the way they are presented in the beginning of the play, “The sheriff and Hale are men in the middle life… They are followed
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun presents the rise of feminism in America in the 1960s. A Raisin in the Sun is feminist because, with the feminist notions displayed in the play, women establish their rights to fulfil their individual dreams which diverge from traditional conventions of that time. Beneatha Younger, Lena Younger (Mama) and Ruth Younger are the three primary characters displaying evidences of feminism in the play. Moreover, Hansberry creates male characters who demonstrate oppressive attitudes towards women yet enhance the feminist ideology in the play. A Raisin in the Sun is feminist because, the play encourages women to develop an identity for themselves, particularly through education and career.
In a patriarchal society, women are encouraged to focus on their family and its well-being. Most often, women achieve this by caring for the children and the home. However, in the play A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry suggests that women do not have to focus on the family. Instead, they can prioritize their own well-being. Hansberry exhibits these ideas through two female characters, Ruth and Beneatha.
Just within the recent decades, men and women started to fight against the gender stereotypes and started to challenge their roles in a family and in the society. The play, A Raisin in the Sun, portrays the lives of African–Americans during the 1950s. Lorraine Hansberry, a writer and a social activist, reinforced the traditional gender roles, especially female’s, by depicting how the Youngers interact and how they act in an economical struggle. Throughout the play, A Raisin in the Sun, she uses Walter Lee Younger, Ruth Younger and Lena Younger to reinforce the traditional role of fathers, wives and mothers within a family.
