Explore the similarities and differences in the presentation of female characters in A Streetcar Named Desire and The World’s wife
In this essay, I will be exploring the similarities and differences of female characters in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams; and ‘The World’s Wife’ by Carol Ann Duffy. Both texts denote women as somewhat weak and incompetent and as having a predatory attitude towards the mainly dominant male characters. A Streetcar Named Desire was written in 1945 and it initially connected with America’s new found taste for realism following the Great Depression and World War II. William’s based the character of Blanche on his sister who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Williams himself was homosexual, and
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In ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, the reader is able to see Stella fulfil the role of a protective mother when agreeing to send Blanche to a mental institution. Despite Blanches shocking accusations, Stella must ignore her sister for the sake of her child. Eunice says to her ‘you done the right thing, the only thing you could do.’ The reader is able to see the role of a female friend. In this case Eunice supports Stella through the difficult time. This is similar to ‘Queen Herod’ as in the poem, Duffy shows her as having a lack of sense when it comes down to her baby daughter. ‘Kill each mother’s son. Do it. Spare not one.’ Her sheer ruthlessness has been brought to light. In ‘Queen Herod’, Duffy also makes references to friendship and sisterhood. ‘The black Queen scooped out my breast,’ this quote shows that women are willing to help each other in their times of need.
The traditional qualities of a wife are subverted in ‘Medusa’. Duffy presents Medusa as a woman who has been engulfed by jealousy, caused by her adulterous husband. ‘My brides breath soured stank in the grey bags of my lungs.’ This quote displays that Medusa was once young and beautiful, but as a result of marriage has become hideous. This contrasts with the character of Stella in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, who is a devoted and loving wife despite the way Stanley behaves towards her.’ He didn't know what he was doing....He was
Does deviating from one’s gender norms inevitably doom one down a spiral of moral corruption? Tim O'Brien, author of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and Ernest Hemingway, author of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, certainly seem to hold this view, as evident by the fates of the major female characters in their respective works. The deviance of the major female characters in both works appears to corrupt not only themselves, but also pollute their partners, causing them to suffer injury or harm as a result. The degree of injury ranges from negligible, like Fossie’s demotion and broken heart, to fatal, like the bullet that rips through Macomber’s skull. It begs the question, are these stories meant to serve as cautionary tales for their female readers, or possibly for their husbands, so they may recognize gender deviance and stop it in its tracks before their wives transform into Margot Macomber or Mary Anne Bell? This essay will analyze what such characters say about pervading views of women, both in society and in literature.
Throughout history great writers have brought women’s struggle under male dominance to light. Shakespeare’s Othello and Glaspell’s Trifles bring great female characters to the stage that share similarities. Both Glaspell and Shakespeare follow the same theme, while using both foreshadowing and irony to illustrate that Desdemona, Emilia, Bianca, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale live under similar oppressive conditions.
The representation of gender roles is among the most prominent recurring subjects in theatre, literature and expressive art as we know it. Gender, and what it means to human beings, is a subject that is as difficult to precisely define as death, race, and the concept of existence. Anne Beall, Ph.D. graduate in Social Psychology at Yale University, details in her book The Psychology of Gender that “Gender is socially defined masculinity and femininity. Social psychology studies how gender is defined, created, and maintained through social influence, especially in the course of social interaction” (Beall; 10). The nature of gender roles is ultimately dictated by temporal, societal, biological and even geographical dimensions that are out of our control and though it is a given that gender as a concept has kept as relevant as it is ancient, there has only been under a hundred years of significant progress or general awareness on the matter. The subject matter of important art in any given time period is a reflection of that society’s most urgent struggles and the topic of gender has remained a constant across human history. The physical and emotional features of characters in art and literature are manifestations of the creator’s perception on subjects such race and gender. The message that a creator seeks to deliver on a topic, determines how they will convey the thoughts,
In the novel Hidden Figures, the characters face many challenges do to their race and gender. In the early to mid nineteen hundreds, Women working was quite unconventional exceptional if they were African American. Therefore when NACA and Langley decided to start hiring African women, as the United States was midst a war, it was a step into greater equality. Similar to these ideas, the play A Streetcar Named Desire deals with the ideas of women equality and the dominance men have on them. The themes of these novels are fairly alike however they are also extremely different. The theme of Hidden Figures is the problems of race and gender and the inequalities the characters face, comparably A Streetcar Named Desire, faces the theme of women's oppression.
Iconic literary works often share common grounds that can be detected by readers and literary critics. Such similarities can be discerned from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. These classic novels can be effectively juxtaposed in regards to their portrayal of the role of women, the cruciality of setting, and the display of the issues of the eras.
The dawn of the twentieth century beheld changes in almost every aspect of the day-to-day lives of women, from the domestic domain to the public. By the midpoint of the twentieth century, women 's activities and concerns had been recognized by the society in previously male-dominating world. The end of the nineteenth century saw tremendous growth in the suffrage movement in England and the United States, with women struggling to attain political equality. However, this was not to last however, and by the fifties men had reassumed their more dominant role in society. Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire around the time this reversal was occurring in American society. In this play male dominance is clear. Women are represented as delicate, reserved, and silent, confined to a domestic world that isolated them from the harsh realities of the world. By analyzing the character of Stanley; a masculine and Stella; a symbol of femininity; and other characters of this play, readers can clearly see how male-dominated world it was.
In many modern day relationships between a man and a woman, there is usually a controlling figure that is dominant over the other. It may be women over man, man over women, or in what the true definition of a marriage is an equal partnership. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams Stanley is clearly the more dominant figure over Stella. Throughout the play there are numerous examples of the power he possesses of her. Williams portrays Stella as a little girl who lives around in Stanley’s world. She does what he wants, takes his abuse yet still loves him. Situations likes these may have occurred in the 1950’s and lasted, but in today’s time this would only end up in a
Many wifes throughout the years have endured countless amounts of persecution from their husbands, but some men take it to a whole new level. Two male authors, Henrik Ibsen and Robert Browning, brought female hardships to light in the nineteenth century. Ibsen’s 1879 play, A Doll’s House, was so controversial at the time that he was forced to write a more pleasant ending in which Nora returned after having left Torvald. Browning’s poem, “My Last Duchess”, written in 1842, showed the immoral perspective of a Duke who had his wife murdered merely because she did not preserve her pleasant personality singularly for him. It was influential writers such as these who eventually gave feminism a kick start. The two husbands in these stories share a vast amount of similar characteristics. Despite the fact that Torvald loved his wife, and Duke had murdered his, both of them exhibit extreme authoritative and egoistic behaviors.
The most prominent woman figure in this play is Linda, but the male characters in this play also give us insight into women’s roles and help feed the feminist analyses
‘Duffy’s collection The World’s Wife is nothing but feminist propaganda’. Consider this view in the light of your readings of Delilah and Anne Hathaway.
Lady Macbeth is proof that women have the potential to be just as malicious and ambitious as men. She is so deliberate on getting her point across that she describes the death of her own baby, she says, “How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, wile it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this”
The way women are presented in ‘Of Mice and Men ' differs in comparison to ‘Macbeth '. Upon analysing the two texts, I have differentiated the two female protagonists, Curley 's wife and Lady Macbeth, and came to a conclusion that one is dissimilar from the other. Yet, both are supposedly speculated to be the stereotypical woman. In Shakespeare 's play Macbeth, feminism and society 's injustice towards women are two of the main themes that assemble the well-known play that was ‘fit for the Kings '. In addition to this, in both books the females are known to not have an identity. This, furthermore, highlights society 's opinion towards women, in which they 're considered as nothing. In these two texts, Lady Macbeth and Curley
A strong contrast and fight for dominance is evident between the sexes. Men, unfortunately, contain all the power and women struggle to grasps whatever control they can from their oppressors. Such a strife is a universal female plight and so it is referenced and can be observed through all types of media and publications, including in the theater. A play that focuses on such a conflict is A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Throughout the play, Stanley Kowalski presents himself as the domineering male figure and Blanche DuBois is the female protagonist who challenges his authority.
Throughout many pays and novels, women have had important roles of helping form the main characters, in the way they think, move or change the story. Women have always been subordinate to men all through history, but in plays, novels, short stories, etc, they have been given large enforcing roles, showing the power within women. William Shakespeare and Sophocles use guilt, pride, and influence to demonstrate the importance of the women’s role to support the main characters in both the plays of Macbeth and Antigone.
In part 4 of our english course, we study and analyze famous literature works such as Shakespear's "Othello" and Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire". For this written task, we have to choose an imaginative way of exploring an apsect of the material we have studied. In other words, it is a creative assignment regarding an aspect or theme of either "Othello" or "A Streetcar Named Desire".