Gender Roles In A Streetcar Named Desire

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

In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, gender roles were reflected on gender roles in the American Society in the 50’s. The male gender was predominant while the female gender was considered less powerful. Williams really emphasizes this stereotype, yet he focuses on the females in the play the whole time.

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.

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.

In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams explores the internal conflict of illusion versus reality through the characters. Humans often use illusion to save us pain and it allows us to enjoy pleasure instead. However, as illusion clashes with reality, one can forget the difference between the two. When people are caught up in their illusions, eventually they must face reality even if it is harsh. In the play, Blanche suffers from the struggle of what is real and what is fake because of the difficult events of her past. Blanche comes to her sister Stella seeking aid because she has lost her home, her job, and her family. To deal with this terrible part of her life, she uses fantasy to escape her dreadful reality. Blanche’s embracement of a fantasy world can be categorized by her attempts to revive her youth, her relationship struggles, and attempts to escape her past.

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

2016. Many works of literature contain a character who intentionally deceives others. The character’s dishonesty may be intended to help or to hurt. Such a character, for example, may choose to mislead others for personal safety, to spare someone’s feelings, or to carry out a crime. Choose a novel or play in which a character deceives others. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the motives for that character’s deception and discuss how the deception contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

The play A Streetcar Named Desire, was remade into a movie that was filmed in New Orleans. The film takes place in the 1950s with Blanche who moves in with her sister, Stella, and her brother in law, Stanley. The movie is about Blanche’s experience and eventually demise all in New Orleans.

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,

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

Gender roles and expectations have a lot of impacts on our society and it needs to be changed in order to create a better civilisation. Although our society has ameliorated tremendously in the past years, there are still some discriminatory actions among genders that are affecting someone 's life negatively. Any remaining differential between genders need to be changed for a better moral standard of living.

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

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”- Edmund Burke. The desire to have power can be traced through the natural instinct of competition for dominance over weaker beings, through the human need to be superior. Throughout history, humans have fought for control over everything they believed belong to them, such as land, territory, and food. As humanity has evolved, the fight for control and power has evolved as well, to where violence and rape have become a normal part of society as a whole. Through the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the novels Things fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and the poem A White man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling, rape is used to insert superiority