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A Streetcar Named Desire Character Analysis

Decent Essays

A Streetcar Named Desire is a drama play by Tennessee Williams, the play takes place in the 1940s. The movie adaptation by Elia Kazan was published later in 1951. Both the movie and the film exposes the reality of the struggle between men and women for power in society during the time that the play took place. Williams emphasizes this struggle by using social attitudes that represented gender expectations and inequality as well. In a streetcar named desire, William uses spanking, violence, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, mental health, and emotions, to portray the woman’s lack of authority, weakness, and submissiveness. In the play and in the movie, Blanche Dubois is the flowery, ladylike vision of womanhood; but she challenges the symbol of manhood. Stella, Blanche’s sister, represents the infantilized, and ultimately submissive version of womanhood. While Stella and Blanche offer conflicting views of womanhood, their story along with Stanley’s represent the gender norms of their time as well as the growing conflict that came from challenging those norms.
Women in America went to work during World War II but were expected to return to their role as a housewife when their men returned and the war ended. This created conflict with excepted gender norms, with women increasingly questioning them and men fearing that their superior position was being challenged. There was, therefore, a backlash to feminine liberation. “As women were forced out of their wartime occupations and into the domesticity of the new American nuclear family, many women felt disenfranchised… The 1950s are often identified as the pinnacle of gender any quality as women were denigrated and portrayed as stupid, submissive, purely domestic creatures” (George). This explains a trope discovered in films leading up to the 1960s in which particularly “rebellious” women were spanked on screen. In the film, Stanley spanks Stella in front of his friends during a play of poker. Stella says “that is not nice”. Many people can see a simple spank as a harmless act, but by doing this Stanley is imposing authority and dominance. One researcher found at least 280 incidences of “independent women being spanked, and thereby ‘tamed’” (WITW Staff). Beating women

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