Comparing A Streetcar Named Desire And A View From The Bridge

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

Women are marginalised in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ through their economic status, their mental health and their place as a woman in the society of 1940s. They are held as possessions for admiration and housework. Neither of the men in the play treat them as they should be treated, and see them as nothing more than a housemaker and a child bearer. Also, it is made prominently clear by Williams that no woman would be able to survive without a man at that time. However, at some occasions, Williams portrays that women can prove to be challenging if undermined.

The themes of A streetcar Named Desire are mainly built on conflict, the conflicts between men and women, the conflicts of race, class and attitude to life, and these are especially embodied in Stanley and Blanche. Even in Blanche’s own mind there are conflicts of truth and lies, reality and illusion, and by the end of the play, most of these conflicts have been resolved.

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.

All the characters are in conflict at one point or another in the course of action.  Some of the minor characters, like the couple upstairs, reflect a mirror situation of Stanley and Stella.  The play is not easy to understand on the psychological level for it is complex.  Blanche is a middle-aged former beauty who cannot tolerate the miserable condition of her present.  Everything she does, from hanging a paper lantern over a naked light bulb to pretending she is younger than Stella is an effort to dim the harsh facts of her reality.  Stella knows Stanley is abusive and not in control of his passions, but she cannot face the world alone and tolerates whatever she must to have him as a source of identity and stability in the harsh world.  Mitch is full of illusions about women and cannot bare the truth about Blanche, but he does have more empathy than Stanley.  Stanley is cold, insensitive and lives only for himself.  He could care less what others think, and, if anyone challenges what he does or how he feels he is ready

The A Streetcar Named Desire film starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando has several differences from the play. However, the two that are the most significant to me are when Stanley comes into the house unbeknownst to Stella and Blanche, and the very end between Stella and Stanley.

Typically, in a relationship from the historical social construct, there is a stereotype amongst gender roles where the male is the dominant figure, and the female tends to be vulnerable and compliant with the male. In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, this relationship is exemplified through the main characters Stanley Kowalski and Stella. Stanley possess the role of “Alpha Male,” and projects this onto Stella who assumes the role of “submissive wife”. She experiences mental and physical abuse, yet unconditionally loves him. In the setting of 1950’s New Orleans, this would be considered part of the norm, despite modern social beliefs. With current social standards, their relationship would push past the boundaries

A Streetcar Named Desire is a pessimistic work that is the “culmination of a view of life in which evil, or at least undiminished insensitivity, conquers throughout no matter what the protagonistic forces do”(Szeliski 69).  In other words, sensitive individuals all meet a similar fate-crushed under the heels of those who lack sensitivity.

Throughout the final scene of “A Streetcar Named Desire” Tennessee Williams evokes a resounding feeling of sympathy within the audience, through allowing them to see Blanche’s fate before her which creates a conspiring atmosphere of mistrust and ambush. This is created by this scene directly following the most dramatic in which Blanche is raped by Stanley and Stella gives birth, creating a just as dramatic denouement.

Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) critiques society’s idea of strictly categorizing men and women into roles based upon gender. Williams starkly highlights the vast difference between these assigned gender roles and the resulting consequences of placing these unobtainable expectations on people. The main difference between the two socially conceived genders correlates with the amount of power each gender holds and, therefore, how each gender reacts to the opposite. The female gender should submit all power to males resulting in men being in complete control over women. Masculinity becomes associated with manipulation and control, implying and encouraging female frailty and weakness. Williams exhibits this balance between masculinity and

Tennesse Williams was a man who had a unique and creative mind, with which he created many famous plays that still resonate with audiences today. The play “Street Car Named Desire” illustrates Williams’ harsh upbringings and complex relationships that symbolise the reality of the world we live in. This is evident through the themes of denial of reality, effects of brutality and human desire. These themes are conveyed through the relationships of Stella and Blanche’s sisterly relationship, Stanley’s brutality towards others and characters all in need for desire.

Tennesse Williams in his A Streetcar Named Desire creates a conflict of civility and brutality through the characters of Blanche and Stanley. The conflict is created through Apollonian and Dionysian thought and supported in the play with symbols, characters, motifs and language/dialogue. Williams creates a constant struggle between Blanche’s need for fantasy and illusion and Stanley constantly trying to ground Blanche, forcing her to acknowledge reality. The first image of Stanley throwing meat at Stella is a symbol that represents his primitive self, inner brutality and savage like behavior, all qualities of Dionysian thought.

In 'A Streetcar Named Desire', by Tennessee Williams, Williams explores many important themes and social issues in the book that are relevant in the real world. The most popular themes Williams investigates and explores to the audience in the book is illusion and fantasy. Each character in the book creates their own fantasies and illusions but at the same time has those fantasy and illusions destroyed by other characters cruelty. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams shows the harsh reality of people’s lives and the innate cruelness that people are born with. He also shows how they use that cruelty against people who are different than themselves.

Scene X is arguably the most structurally and thematically significant scene of A Streetcar Named Desire, presenting the final confrontation between Blanche and Stanley and concluding with Stanley, in his brutal rape of his wife’s sister, emerging as the undisputed victor. Williams uses language, sound, visual symbolism and violent stage directions in this passage to explore all the play’s key ideas, thus securing it as the dramatic climax of Streetcar. One of the primary concerns dealt with in this scene is that of death and desire, which has been a preoccupation of the play since its beginning. In Scene I, Williams explicitly links sex and death as Blanche arrives at the Kowalskis’ having taken two streetcars named “Desire” and “Cemeteries”.

Tennessee Williams utilizes the theme illusion as a moving force made up of every action and word delivered from the character Blanche Dubois in his play Streetcar Named Desire. Her ‘Southern Belle’ personality as fragile quickly becomes a metaphor for the fading Southern Belle, displaying a facet of the old America’s culture that was defeated after the Civil War. Being a ‘Southern Belle’ was rejected after Post Civil War and no longer a common image of the modern woman. After America became more modernized, White elite women of the South could no longer focus mainly on their femininity; they resorted to working to attain economic gains.