Looking Back Upon Civil Rights, Women'S Campaign For Suffrage

In the late 1800’s through the early 1900’s, women were not given the rights they have today and were being mistreated, but because of a few brave women who gave up their lives to fight for what they knew was right, this all changed. Many of these women were educated and brave, but were still denied their rights. Women have suffered through this long battle to get what they knew they deserved and took time out of their lives to fight for what they believed in, which was to have a voice. Women wanted to get the same respect that men were given. The women’s suffrage movement was not only in the United States, but it was all over the world. It took the women’s suffrage movement many years to work and come through, but women were finally able to vote and have the same rights as men. Through their work in the suffrage movement, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony and many more changed the role of women in society.

Blanche’s financial decline, illuminating her vulnerability, links to Aristotle’s theory that the tragic heroine must fall, allowing the audience to relate to her. Her insecurities – “I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” stereotypically reflects the insecurities women feel about their appearance and age. The uses of imperatives and exclamatory sentences suggests Blanche’s obsession over her appearance, a flaw leading her to dismiss her true identity. Her inability to avoid drink and her compulsive lies, demonstrated in her frequent references to Shep Huntleigh’s letters, makes her a more authentic woman than Stella, who is described by Williams as the “gentle, mild and contented one”. Blanche’s loss of identity, dominated by her homosexual husband’s suicide, exacerbates her solitude – “The boy-the boy died. (She sinks back down) I’m afraid I’m – going to be sick!” The fragmented, repetitive speech Blanche uses illustrates her guilt and pain, whilst the physical act of “sinking” highlights the extent of her regret, giving a sense of foreboding for her downfall. Her guilt is also exacerbated by the implied physical act at the end which shocks the contemporary audience, who would not sympathise with homosexuals, evoking pity and reinforcing that “Streetcar” is a tragedy for Blanche.

This essay will describe whether or not Blanches’ unfortunate eventual mental collapse was due to her being a victim of the society she went to seek comfort in, or if she was solely or at least partly responsible. The factors and issues that will be discussed include, Blanches’ deceitful behaviour and romantic delusions which may have lead to her eventual downfall, the role Stanley ended up playing with his relentless investigations of her past and the continuous revelations of it, the part society and ‘new America’ played in stifling her desires and throwing her into a world she could not relate to or abide by.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator uses the psychological gothic genre to present the portrayal of women, women faced in a marriage, within the time frame of the 1890s. Women were seen as the “shadow” as men dominated society. This is presented throughout the book as many readers first interpitation

Blanche’s and Stella’s reliance on men and inability to support themselves are used to illustrate the subliminal pressure for women to follow society’s norms. Women without men are seen as weak, and those who break away from their rigid social classes are looked down upon. Since these social norms have been instilled into Blanche, she believes that she has to have a man fawn over her feet at all times. She realizes that she is aging and thus by engaging in sexual trysts with men, she thinks that she is still wanted and that she still has a place in society despite her current status. “After the death of Allan - intimacies with strangers was

One of the roles of this excerpt is to provide the background towards understanding Blanche, and the justifications for her mental state and actions. It is evident that in the past she belonged to a higher class where extravagance was common. But when her family in

The Women’s Suffrage Movement of the 1920’s worked to grant women the right to vote nationally, thereby allowing women more political equality. Due to many industrial and social changes during the early 19th century, many women were involved in social advocacy efforts, which eventually led them to advocate for their own right to vote and take part in government agencies. Women have been an integral part of society, working to help those in need, which then fueled a desire to advocate for their own social and political equality. While many women worked tirelessly for the vote, many obstacles, factions, and ultimately time would pass in order for women to see the vote on the national level. The 19th Amendment, providing women the right to vote, enable women further their pursuit for full inclusion in the working of American society.

While Blanche represents hope of women being able to be free and outspoken, however she also represents the idea that women are very dependent on men for everything. The idea of representing Blanche to be both proper and improper with the society’s rules and regulations is because Williams may have wanted to prove the idea that despite being independent, women will still somehow be dependent on men. Stella represents the submissive nature of women during that time period and is conveyed to be a submissive character, as Williams wanted her to represent what society thinks of women that time. Williams ultimately represents these women in this way in order to infer to the message of shattered dreams, which A Streetcar Named Desire also

Lastly the dependence of men plays an extremely large role in this book. Williams uses Blanche’s and Stella’s dependence on men to expose and critique the treatment of women during the transition from the old to the new South. Both Blanche and Stella see male companions as their only means to achieve happiness, and they depend on men for both their sustenance and their self-image. Blanche recognizes that Stella could be happier without her physically abusive husband, Stanley. Yet, the alternative Blanche

In “The Yellow wallpaper”, the wallpaper is a metaphor that expresses women’s protest against the repression of the society and their personal identity at the rise of feminism. During the Victorian era, women were kept down and kept in line by their married men and other men close to them. "The Yellow Wallpaper", written By Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a tale of a woman, her mental difficulties and her husband’s so called therapeutic treatment ‘rest cure’ of her misery during the late 1800s. The tale starts out in the summer with a young woman and her husband travelling for the healing powers of being out from writing, which only appears to aggravate her condition. His delusion gets Jane (protagonist), trapped in a room, shut up in a bed making her go psychotic. As the tale opens, she begins to imagine a woman inside ‘the yellow wallpaper’.

Both Blanche and the grandmother shelter themselves from threats––verbal, physical, or reputational––by using their gender as a shield. In a conversation with Stanley, Blanche claims that “a woman’s charm is fifty per cent illusion” (91). She hides behind her identity as a woman to vindicate her deceit. Alone and heartbroken, she desperately attempts to marry Mitch for financial security, yet again utilizing her femininity for

Although both Blanche and Stanley are driven by desire, Stanley’s “id” desires for both dominance and sex fit the expectations set for him as a man while Blanche’s desire for sexual freedom goes against the restricting expectations of purity and innocence set for her as a woman. She consequently becomes a social outcast due to her unacceptable sexual behavior. Blanche’s superego character that looks to

Stanley thrusts Blanche into insanity as means to assert dominance and affirm his reality by nullifying Blanche’s judgement. The rape is such a powerful catalyst for Blanche’s descent into madness, as she discerns the Apollonian consciousness of sexuality and darkness she has constructed is eerily indistinguishable from Stanley’s Dionysian ecstatic realm. Ergo, she has no true escape in the rhetoric question “how could I stay here with him, after last night, with just those curtains between us?” Thus, Williams encapsulates Blanche as the exemplar of patriarchy’s stigmatisation of female sickness, and fear of feminine sexuality that threatens the balance of the household and

Audiences and critics alike harbor hugely torn opinions regarding the role of Blanche in this play which includes depicting her as an angel who is a victim of her surrounding and also portraying her as a disturbed harlot. The downfall of Blanche can be depicted as William’s empathy for her plight and a criticism by her society which destroys her. In the entire play Williams sympathizes with Blanche proving that William is non misogynistic but instead condemns the surrounding which led to tragic occurrences facing Blanche (Lant, pp53).

As a young girl, Blanche marries a boy, with whom she claims to have had love just like a “blinding light”. She describes him as a tender and gentle man who eventually, turned out to be homosexual and Blanche admits that she told him that he disgusts her, for which he committed a suicide. Dedicated to the idea of having a man beside her, who could make her happy, she throws herself into many unsuccessful liaisons. Blanche’s scared of her fading beauty and realizes that, in order to have better chances to attract men, she has to hide her true age: “- How many candles you putting in that cake? - I'll stop at twenty-five.” ; a woman that uses the night as an ally to trap men and to find a love that she’s longing and craving for, hoping that a prospective husband [like Mitch] could help her to escape away from her miserable life: “…I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection-here and there…”