Gender Roles In Rear Window And Strangers On A Train

Alfred Hitchcock uses dramatic and verbal irony to explain women’s powerful intuition compared to men’s analytical skills. Gender differences are presented in a dramatic manner. Further, the short film explains the differences in gender character’s present in the society (Leitch, 18). For instance, men appear to have an arrogant feeling of superiority against women. This is highly evident in the society we live in because there are high levels of gender inequality. Moreover, women in the story act in solidarity-resisting men’s act of superiority. This brings the theme of feminism creatively in the film.

The violence in Alfred Hitchcock’s film exposes underlying issues with gender. In addition to abuse of domestic violence and sexual assault, violence is posed as a measure to treat or deescalate hysteria. There is a tendency in Hitchcock pictures for people to use slapping and subdued in order to contain hysterical women. However, hysteria does not represent a legitimate disease inflicted upon these women, but an excuse to knock down women who do not conform to authority.

During the nineteenth and twentieth century there was a number of changes made in America. Woman were looked at as less than back then and to a certain degree they still are today. There was a number of women that died or went insane because of the standards that they had to meet in order to be considered good women. In this research paper I will talk about the experience of the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and Blanche DuBois from the story A Streetcar Named Desire. It will be shown within these pages how the moral and societal standards for women were far different than they were for men, and how the standards changed over the years. Furthermore it will be shown how this effected the women of those two stories.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and see to what extent women have been depicted within typical stereotypes, how they have been objectified and only seen as a sexual sell, and what consequences and effects these depictions can have on both the female and male audiences. The analysis is over two decades where major social changes underwent. The time after the war, being a housewife and mother was heavily implemented. Whilst after a decade, women started to step away from what was considered the norm, what was considered the ideal life. They started to fight for a better future for themselves, and a life free from their husbands ruling hand. I have chosen visual analysis of magazine front covers as my method because magazines were a major resource for both women and men at the time, it was one of their sources of information about what was going on around them. Front covers often represent the magazine or the audience it is meant for, and

Alfred Hitchcock’s, ‘Rear Window’ (1954), is ultimately a film presenting the ideas of a natural voyeuristic nature within society and how the concepts of the traditional gender roles for males of ‘participating’ were challenged during this time. ‘Rear Window’ is a film about a magazine photographer who’s active and adventurous life gets turned around when he is confined to a wheelchair in his small apartment for six weeks. During these weeks he’s found himself occupied by watching out his window and sneakily looking into his surrounding neighbours lives, gathering suspicions that one of them, Lars Thorwald has murdered his wife in cold blood, under the neighbours noses. The typical male gender roles in the 1950’s were challenged as Jeff was

In the movie ‘Rear Window’ by Alfred Hitchcock, there is a distinct view of the world and how, in the director’s opinion, men and women fit in. It helped pinpoint some recurring elements about men and women and how they interact together. Men are shown as damaged and needing help, while women are shown as caregivers. Throughout the movie, feminine independence and strength are shown multiple times through the characters and their dialogs, despite taking place during a time period where men were dominate. Feminism plays an important role in the film throughout several different scenes.

The strong emphasis on the contrast between gender roles, specifically masculinity compared to femininity, is essential to the message portrayed in Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire. This 20th century work acts as a critique on the post war treatment of women and the dependent relationship between women and men. Williams pushed the gendered characteristics of his character to the extreme and the relationship between Stella, Blanche, and Stanley represents all aspects of the disparity between the masculine and feminine aspects of society. In the nineteen fifties men dominated over women and this is demonstrated through Stanley’s brute and aggressive attitude. Blanche and Stella are both defined through their relationship with men however portray different ideas of how women should act. The way that Tennessee Williams constructed his characters represents the truth of societies attitudes towards masculinity and femininity during this time period.

compliment Blanche on the way she looks and her style. “Admire her dress and tell her she’s

“Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed” (Judith Butler). This essay will conclude that classic literature challenges the traditional roles of men and women whom strive to fulfill their full potential, hence needing to obtain traits from the opposite texts. A Streetcar Named Desire tells of a typical married couple living in Elysian Fields who becomes disturbed by their pesky in law whom interferes with their greatest priority, sex. Blanche interferes where she does not belong and hides a past of sexual and financial discrepancy making her a target for Stanley and the loss of her sanity. Hamlet describes a royal son’s tragedy of losing his father, but learns he was killed for power and greed.

When the Senate Appropriations Committee tried to show that homosexuals and lesbians frequently seduced their impressionable young co-workers, Hitchcock films makes little distinction between Guy and Bruno. Though Guy would never murder Miriam (Laura Elliott) alone, yet he desired her death and even submissively allows Bruno to seduce him. When he finds that Miriam is ready for a divorce, he calls Ann (Ruth Roman) and tells his intention that he “could strangle her [little neck]” (qtd from the film), which echoes Bruno’s earlier proposal in the train. The lighter marked “A to G” in the film acts as a signifier of the instability of Guy’s sexual identity. Originally a token of Ann’s love for him turns out to be a token of Guy’s love for

Many authors in the post-realism movement wrote to bring awareness to and call for a change of social injustices. Tennessee Williams protests the treatment of women in traditional relationships through characterization and motifs in his drama A Streetcar Named Desire. Women are mistreated in relationships everywhere and Williams demonstrates this in his drama through characterization. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses characterization to protest the treatment of women in relationships.

Twentieth Century is the most complex era of the United States History. In this era, lots of changes were taking place in America; Industrial development, railroad network, cheap labor, mass production, and more. Standard of living started to improve with a focus on education and health care. People started paying more attention to family life. However, among all these developments; racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination was still predominant. Through these literary works; Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and Kerouac’s The Subterraneans, both written in the same era, but the former is set a decade earlier than the latter, we enhance our understanding of the diversity and complexity of mid-twentieth century America.

It is strange how one director can convey two entirely different depictions of women. Due to the time period in which Hitchcock filmed Vertigo and Psycho, women had limited capability in regards to what they could do in a film. Women could not be action heroes; in fact they were often depicted as damsels in distress. The easiest answer to this sort of prejudice is that it was a reflection of the culture of the 50s and 60s. Although this is partially true, it does not excuse the fact that male directors made misogynistic choices that could have been remedied without being considered radical or societally unacceptable. The inconsistencies in Hitchcock’s portrayal of women reveals this much, as shown by a study in the narrative, mise-en-scėne, and cinematography of Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960).

Streetcar Named Desire took place in “New Orleans which is names Elysian Fields and runs between the L & N tracks and the river.” It’s a poor neighborhood where full of decay and Belle Rave this is the name of Blanche’s family home in mississippi. It represent the “Beautiful dream” that Blanche wish but she never experiences. Whereas Blanche arrives in New Orleans as a somewhat broken woman, she keeps alive her desire to be with a man and to lead a life as an elegant, respectable women. Also see herself as higher class. In New Orleans where her sister named Stella lives with her husband named Stanley and she came to stay with them. Blanche who like to listen to music, drink, smoke, take bath in hot water and try be fancy she used the Chinese lantern and all this means something that is really massive. Symbols

   The roles of males and females in our society are subjects that entail great criticism, and have been under scrutiny for as long as a `society' has existed. In analyzing A Doll's House by Henrick Ibsen and A Streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the effects that gender-roles have on relationships is an evident aspect in both of the plays. The choice of words used by the authors strongly underscores the themes of supremacy, selfishness, inequality, and unmistakably, the roles of men and women in society.