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The role and status of women in a streetcar named desire
Gender roles in the streetcar called desire
The role and status of women in a streetcar named desire
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There are many things to be said about Ms. Blanche DuBois in the literary work “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Blanche Dubois has many personality flaws and traits have come from her many troubled experiences. One of her personality traits is that she is in a way insecure mainly due to the fact that she once had wealth and estate but lost it all. Those insecure faults arose from when she once felt the security of a marriage but lost that also when she discovered that he liked man in which led to him committing suicide. One of the best textual evidence to point to the fact is when she was looking for a compliment from Stanley.
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.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a renowned play, written in 1947, by American playwright, Tenessee Williams. The play unravels an intense series of confrontations made between Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski, which inevitably leads to the “death” of the traditional Southern values that Blanche represents, and thus, the rise of new, post-war American values, which is portrayed through Stanley. Williams was strongly critical of modern America, and disagreed with the inequality present between men and women, and disliked the tough, callous society that came with modern America. This criticism of modern American values led Williams to deliberately present Stanley in a negative manner, through his animalistic characteristics, lack of emotion, and dominating qualities towards women. Thus, Williams makes use of characterisation, stage directions, and props to reveal how Stanley’s powerful, yet negatively portrayed characteristics, represents the social group of the working class of modern America.
There are still much more symbolism in A Streetcar Named Desire. In the beginning of the play, it starts out with Stanley throwing meat at Stella (Williams 4). At first, I wonder why would meat be a symbolism. After reading over and over again, I figured out the meaning. It is sort of a sexual gesture that Stanley makes to Stella.
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,
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee Williams, the main character, Blanche DuBois, travels to New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella, and Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski. Throughout the play, sexulaity is seen as a strong motivator for many of the characters actions. Early in the play, Stanley is introduced as a particularly sexual character, “ Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence... He sizes women up with a glance, with sexual classifications…” (Williams 25).
Gender and power are quite distinctive from one another in both these texts. From one point of view it could be argued the men are the autocrats and considered as oppressors of females in the male dominated society. In the male dominated society men are the decision makers and have the instrumental role. Despite benefitting from the patriarchy they are still victims (Synnot n. p.).This is because to secure his place in the family, a man has to dominate over his children and wife, therefore faced with a choice between the two sexual dispositions, and a boy has to choose between his mother and father.
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.
In A streetcar named Desire, Stella is associated to this stereotypic role, she is an innocent woman and housewife who takes care of her husband by loving him in an outrageous way. Even if Stanley is hitting her, she still loves him. Whereas Blanche acts like a seductress, at first sight she seems to be pure by wearing a “daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice” (Williams 3). In reality the authors gives a false impression of her in order to affirm that stereotypes or first impression are not always true. Indeed, after several scenes Blanche uses her power of seduction in order to manipulate men and reach her objectives.
The short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is a novella that examines the murky side of human nature. The narrative takes place in a little American community where the locals assemble each year to take part in an unusual ritual. The narrative aims to stress the value of uniqueness and critical thought while emphasizing the risks of questioning traditions. Initially, "The Lottery" appears to be a basic account of a tiny village getting ready for an annual ritual.
The Fight for Dominance In today’s society, gender norms convince men that unless they are able to control women, they are weak. Considered the inferior gender, women must find new ways to prove their own strength, whether it be through manipulation or their sexuality. The battle between the two continues as men strive to remain dominant, often by immoral means, and women attempt to gain the upper hand. In the screenplay, “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, the sexual tension and struggle for dominion between Blanche and Stanley is evident, and as the play continues, Blanche's promiscuity and Stanley's predatory nature foreshadow an inevitable confrontation.
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.
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
Eliza Penn Gender roles in the mid-1900s held a prominent place in society because they defined an individual’s behavior and outlook. In A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, two of the protagonists, Stanley and Blanche, strongly represent and embody the extremes of masculinity and femininity. Stanley exemplifies the strong and aggressive male in the 1900s, while Blanche represents the frail and superficial woman. When these two types of characters are placed in close proximity to one another, the results can be devastating. Tennessee Williams wrote this play in order to demonstrate what happens when Blanche, a feminine woman, and Stanley, a masculine man, are brought into conflict; when these extremes clash, it can result in violence and the shattering of an individual’s defense system.
“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.
