Gender Roles And Expectations : ' A Streetcar Named Desire '

In the 1950s a male and a female did not share equal responsibility or power in a relationship. As seen in A Streetcar Named Desire the male portrays a role of power and success whereas the female is seen almost as an accessory to the male. The male partner would go to work every morning and the female would stay home, cooking, cleaning, and making sure everything was acceptable for her husband’s return that night. When a male and a female were married in the 1950s the male partner became entitled to all of a female’s possessions, however, she was not granted the same power. This relationship has changed drastically in today’s society. It is no longer common to see this large power gap between the male and female figures in a relationship,

Within Tennessee Williams's story about love and abuse within marriage and challenging familial ties, there lie three very different characters that all see the world in vastly different ways. These members of a family that operate completely outside of our generation’s norms, are constantly unsure of themselves and their station within the binary not only of their familial unit, but within the gender binary that is established for them to follow. Throughout the story of the strange family, each character goes through a different arch that changes them irrevocably whether it is able to be perceived or not by those around them. The only male, Stanley is initially the macho force in the home who controls everything without question. He has

Women have been downgraded and mistreated because of their gender. From birth, Women and Men grew up with very different rules to follow. Men were raised to be the head of the house and do work for a living. Growing up as little girls, women were taught to raise their kids and make food for their families. “Strong family structures were necessary because the family was the basis for all other institutions. The government, church, and community all worked through the nuclear family unit.”(“Gender and

Throughout history empowerment and marginalization has primarily been based on gender. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, this idea of empowerment is strongly flaunted. Tennessee Williams’ characters, primarily Stanley, Blanche, Mitch, and Stella, conform the expected roles of men and women at the time. Although World War Two temporarily allowed women a place in the work force, they were dismissed from such empowerment when the war came to a close. Characters in A Streetcar Named Desire are accurate representations of the social historical context of that time. The power struggle between Stanley and Blanche conveys dominant ideas about gender such as the primitive nature, aggression, and

The play A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, is a play about a woman named Blanche Dubois who goes to live with her sister after she loses her home in Mississippi. Between the hardships of her previous life and the way she is treated now, she is not in a good way by the time the play ends. She basically has a mental breakdown. There are three stages of Blanche’s mental state. She lives in a fantasy, Mitch rejecting her, and Stanley raping her, Blanche is mentally unstable by the end of this ply.

In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, the representation of male and female characters are based on gender stereotypes, which represent a patriarchal society. The way in which Tennessee Williams portrays the main characters: Blanche, Stanley and Stella, by using gender stereotypes demonstrates the patriarchal society`s value, norms and beliefs of the 1940s.

As a country, we have come a long way to reaching equality between women and males. During the 19 centuries women fought for their right to vote. When talking about gender, there are a lot issues that continue to be present until this day. Women had to fight for equality during the 19 century which lead up women in today’s society to have a voice. Despite of all the improvement close to gender equality, society still expect particular things from females and males.

Older literary works such as book or plays have always been used as a way for feminist literary critics to understand and examine gender roles portrayed in these books and how much significance is given to the females and to what extent they are shown as victims of patriarchy at the time the book was written. “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams is a great work for this use of literary analysis. Throughout the book Tennessee uses his play to display the different stereotypical relationships that existed in the era, he critiqued this stereotype and other gender based formalities that were present and or originated in the 1940s.

The role of women in the 1950 was seen to be repressive and constrictive in many ways. Society placed high importance and many expectations for these women on behavior at home as well as in public. Women were supposed to fulfil certain roles, such as a caring mother, a diligent homemaker, and an obedient wife. The perfect mother was supposed to stay home and nurture so society would accept them. In fact, even if a woman wanted to voice an opinion, her lack of education would not allow it . The play A Streetcar Named Desire is set during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s period where it describes the decline of a fading Southern belle named Blanche DuBois. The women in this play are represented to be dependent and submissive in nature and in addition they are also seen to be manipulative. However, Williams has also portrayed these women to be independent and taking control of the situation. This can be seen through the use of the main characters

Many different depictions of gender roles exist in all times throughout the history of American culture and society. Some are well received and some are not. When pitted against each other for all intents and purposes of opposition, the portrayal of the aspects and common traits of masculinity and femininity are separated in a normal manner. However, when one gender expects the other to do its part and they are not satisfied with the results and demand more, things can shift from normal to extreme fairly quickly. This demand is more commonly attributed by the men within literary works. Examples of this can be seen in Tennessee Williams' “A Streetcar Named Desire”, where Stella is constantly being pushed around and being abused by her

Social upheaval in many senses was explicit through the beginning of the twentieth century; two world wars had - for a short time - shifted the balance of power between men and women. Women were increasingly employed to fill positions which had previously been considered masculine. This was not to last however, and by the fifties men had reassumed their more dominant role in society. People were finding new voices at this time by taking pre-existing forms and pushing the boundaries to re-voice established literary forms. Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire around the time this reversal was occurring in American society. Williams was a homosexual from the deep south of America, and his play is about physical, emotional

Men and Women's lives are controlled by the double standards all around them. Every gender is told how to feel and how not to feel, how to act and how not to act rather than just acting and feeling as they want to. The lives of human beings are plagued by these awful societal rules that are all meaningless. Despite the progress made in equality for men and women, double standards create inequality for both genders.

In this globalized world, where interaction between two individuals became easy as seams of finger touch and where we always debate, speak about the equality rights for men and women, we still see many instances of many individuals being discriminated based on the gender difference.

Throughout many decades women have been struggling to be equal to men, both at home and in the work place. Women have come a long way and are certainly fighting to gain that equality, but gender roles are very important in our society. They have become important in life from birth, and society continues to push these gender roles. The treatment of the male gender is very different from that of the female, and this issue has become very important to me, as a woman. As children we learn and adapt to specific gender roles, and as we grow they become more evident and more important to our role in a society. There is a lot of discrimination against the female gender. Carol Gilligan argued that

Especially the American south was an epitome for patriarchal society (90). Women were meant to be inferior to men and had to fit into the “good girl” picture, otherwise they were close to shunned by society. The play “A Streetcar Named Desire”, written by Tennessee Williams in 1947, depicts such a patriarchal society. The main conflict is between the protagonists Blanche DuBois and her brother in law Stanley Kowalski, which ends with Blanche being admitted into what seems to be a mental facility. I will argue that the patriarchy, which is especially represented by Stanley Kowalski, is the cause for the mental destruction of Blanche. In order to do so I will first elaborate what is actually meant by the term patriarchy. Then I will try to explain how Stanley Kowalski can be seen as an epitome for a patriarchal man and how he fits into the attributes attached to such. In the second chapter I will try to define the role a woman had in the patriarchal society of the 1950s and to whether Blanche DuBois fits into it or not. Last but not least I will attempt to connect the dots and show how Stanley, as the representation, and the patriarchy itself lead to Blanche’s mental