Gender Stereotypes In Streetcar Named Desire

Stereotypical gender roles have existed as long as human culture has, becoming a natural part of all of our lives. Within each gender lies a variety of stereotypes and expectations. Most notably for men they are often depicted as tough and the family provider. Whereas women are often shown to be soft and vulnerable. Throughout the play A Streetcar Named Desire the author; Tennessee Williams illustrates the main characters, Stanley, Stella, Mitch and Blanche with these stereotypes. The play takes place in the 1950s in New Orleans containing a diverse population. However, is race discriminated against, those who go against classifed gender roles are often discriminated and have trouble finding their way in society. Although gender equality has

The Fight for Dominance In today’s society, gender norms convince men that unless they are able to control women, they are weak. Considered the inferior gender, women must find new ways to prove their own strength, whether it be through manipulation or their sexuality. The battle between the two continues as men strive to remain dominant, often by immoral means, and women attempt to gain the upper hand. In the screenplay, “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, the sexual tension and struggle for dominion between Blanche and Stanley is evident, and as the play continues, Blanche's promiscuity and Stanley's predatory nature foreshadow an inevitable confrontation.

Gender and Power in the Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire is crucial factor and is portrayed well through the play. The essay also is going to plan to examine the different ideas about female sexuality that convey from the character of Blanche.

Society of Tennessee Williams’ time saw sexuality as a part of ourselves that should be suppressed because of it’s destructive nature. Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire Williams showcases his characters in this anti-sex society. He shows them in this society, not to praise it, but instead to highlight the negative effects of existing in such a world. Through the actions and consequences his characters face in conforming to societies’ standards Williams manages to communicate a story that condemns society for keeping people from expressing their sexuality and from being stable, whole and sexual human beings. Expressing sexuality or sexual desires leads the play 's characters to death or to ruin, the suppression of desire is destructive and

In conclusion, “A streetcar named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, uses characterization of the main characters to convey theme of the desire and how it can influence and change someone’s personality. Because of the situations and arguments the characters get in, Williams is able show how desperate the characters are to get what they want. Stanley was willing to put his wife and his baby’s lives at risk, only to prove that he was the man of the house. Blanche ruined her chance of getting married because her promiscuous past caught up with her. Tennessee Williams uses his upbringing to show the theme of male versus female in many of his plays and it especially shows in “A streetcar named Desire”.

This shows that women in “A Streetcar Named Desire” happen to be weak against the opposite sex, or controlled and overpowered by men. To illustrate, in the article by Roth Foley about women being victims in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, the writer mentions that Stanley’s visible aspect provides an intuition on how to control women, and lead them using their weaknesses destroying them. Blanche and Stella were both victims of male dominance, they were Stanley’s toys and he could take advantage with any of them without considering that Stella is

In A Streetcar Named Desire, the author Tennessee Williams exaggerates and dramatizes fantasy’s incapability to overcome reality through an observation of the boundary between Blanches exterior and interior conveying the theme that illusion and fantasy are often better than reality. Blanche, who hides her version of the past, alters her present and her relationship with her suitor Mitch and her sister, Stella. Blanche was surrounded by death in her past, her relatives and husband have passed away, leaving her with no legacy left to continue. The money has exhausted; the values are falling apart and she is alienated and unable to survive in the harsh reality of modern society. Throughout the novel Williams juxtaposed Blanche’s delusions with

The play “A Streetcar Named Desire” is about an emotionally unstable lady named Blanche. She moves in with her youngest sister and her husband because the landlord took the land away from Blanche because they could not pay for it anymore. After being their for a while Blanche starts remembering her horrible past which is something she was trying to do in the first place. The husband of Stella, Stanley Kowalski was also someone that made Blanche’s life miserable for complicating everything and harassing her in every possible way.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a renowned play, written in 1947, by American playwright, Tenessee Williams. The play unravels an intense series of confrontations made between Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski, which inevitably leads to the “death” of the traditional Southern values that Blanche represents, and thus, the rise of new, post-war American values, which is portrayed through Stanley. Williams was strongly critical of modern America, and disagreed with the inequality present between men and women, and disliked the tough, callous society that came with modern America. This criticism of modern American values led Williams to deliberately present Stanley in a negative manner, through his animalistic characteristics, lack of emotion, and dominating qualities towards women. Thus, Williams makes use of characterisation, stage directions, and props to reveal how Stanley’s powerful, yet negatively portrayed characteristics, represents the social group of the working class of modern America.

Society looks down upon actions such as viewing others’ sexual features while you are already married, which makes the reader appalled by Stanley’s character and makes the reader feel an extreme hatred towards Stanley even before the action of the play has begun. This account of Stanley and his actions establishes him as the villain in the play, but, in any story, there is always a hero to contrast the villain. Typically, this hero is the exact opposite of the villain, and, in this play, although it may not be clearly defined, Blanche is set up by Williams in the beginning to be the hero. Williams does this by depicting her as the opposite of Stanley with her sense of propriety and class that is juxtaposed with the harsh environment of Stanley’s world (Williams 1119). Although the reader becomes aware that Blanche is not quite the hero that she was expected to be as they play progresses, the reader is always compelled to take Blanche’s side when injustices are brought upon her by Stanley due to Williams’ careful construction of Blanche and Stanley’s characters in the very beginning.

A streetcar named desire was written by Tennessee Williams in 1947, in purpose to show the “declining of the upper class and the domination of the bourgeois middle class in the U.S.A. where the south agriculture class could not compete with the industrialization.” Blanche Dubois the protagonist of our story, a southern beauty that is trapped by the restrictive laws of her society. But she broke them, and eventually put herself in a state, where she had no job and no house. So she had to go to her sister, Stella and live with her and her sister’s husband, Stanley. While staying there, she created a façade for her to hide her flaws and kept acting as a lady, where she is anything but that.

Would one rather accept reality- death, sickness, loneliness- or explore a pretend world of happy endings? Tennessee Williams’ exceptional play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” brilliantly showcases the struggle to accept reality through all the loss and sadness rather than imaginary happiness. Blanche tries to wash away her past and hide her present from her family and Mitch, all while Stella ignores the truths of their dysfunctional marriage, and Mitch is struggling with the inevitable death of his mother. Throughout the play, the ugly truth is overlooked and replaced by a string of beautiful lies. “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams portrays the inability to accept reality rather than the imaginary through Blanche’s past and present,

Past and Present Intertwine Through Symbolism Tennessee Williams is a world famous playwright. He has won many prestigious awards. In 1947, Williams penned one of his most famous plays, A Streetcar Named Desire, winning him the Pulitzer Prize. William’s background greatly influenced his writing, and because of this, alcoholism and mental illness are issues strongly reflected in his works (Williams 1817). A Streetcar Named Desire is a story about a women with mental health issues, named Blanche Dubois.

Strength, lack of emotion, aggression, and confidence are some of the traits society has assigned to men. The play A Streetcar Named Desire uses its lead character to support and portray these traits. The play takes place in the late 1940’s, a time when men and masculinity played a significant role in both households and society. Stanley Kowalski, the leading male, displays the timely masculine qualities while also showing what affect masculinity can have on those around him. Stanley is strong willed and very opinionated, allowing him to treat both men and women in a disrespectful way. Masculinity is most prominently defined at and around the kitchen table, in Stanley and Stella’s flat, through dialogue and physical actions.

Tennessee Williams is one of the most recognized playwrights that lived during the mid-twentieth-century (“Tennessee Williams”). After finishing college, Williams decides to move to New Orleans, where he writes A Streetcar Named Desire. His career starts to take off as he begins to write more plays (“Tennessee Williams”). A Streetcar Named Desire talks about the life of a woman, Blanche DuBois, who is very secretive about her past and does not expose her true intentions of coming to live with her younger sister Stella. As the play goes on Stanley, Stella’s husband, starts to dig into the dark past that terrorizes Blanche when they begin to have a conflict with each other.