A Streetcar Naked Desire: A Degrading Portrayal of Women Society undertakes the responsibility to protect the minds of the innocent within the world’s corrupt culture. This responsibility entails the prevention of adverse teaching within schools. However, some would argue that banning books takes away the freedom of adolescents and divulges more about the censorship than if it were not banned at all. As it stands, the matter of sheltering students versus indulging them in inappropriate subject matter has always been of the utmost importance. The line of censorship is crossed in Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire, where Blanche’s physical and mental health deteriorates over the course of her misplaced stay in New Orleans …show more content…
People would argue that an individual has to be of certain age of maturity before discussing sexual content, which is displayed thoroughly throughout the play. High school individuals do not yet understand the seriousness of their actions and they are vulnerable to imitate faulty sexual behavior, which is glorified within the play. Moira Hodgson from, The Nation, accentuates the ability to which Stanley’s character can impact ones thoughts and actions by stating, “… Stanley, a sneering bully, became an American icon--an inarticulate sex symbol with a tormented inner life” (Hodgson). Hodgson’s description accentuates the way the play could potentially influence the public, especially the youth, that inappropriate sexual actions are normal and desirable in society. Within the play, multiple scenes portrait Stanley easily taking control of Stella and eventually forcing himself on her sister, Blanche. Stanley has no remorse for his abusive actions which can be very misconstrued and allude to similar behavior within adolescent students. Additionally, Blanche is very sensual and craves the affection of men, making it seem like she desired or deserved to get raped. In scene three Stanley and his friends are playing a game of poker and Blanche is depicted undressing in the adjacent …show more content…
This argument showcases an issue in today's society, where people are skeptical of rape accusations and choose to ignore or turn their head to the topic of sexual harassment and domestic abuse. Society alludes to the idea that women put themselves in vulnerable situations for men to take advantage of them. With the realistic plot and dynamic between Stanley, Stella, and Blanche, the rape and abuse scenes are highly predictable. This candor in the play brings recognition to talk about the issue of what consensual sex means today. However, the play depicts explicit scenes of what a relationship is, which will lead to an inaccurate understanding of sex and violence, where woman are forever inferior to men. Julia Wood, from the Department of Communications, at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, supports the idea of misrepresentation of relationships in the play, by stating, “[Media] has trivialized abuse of women and underlined women’s dependence on men with a story of a woman who is bound by a man and colludes in sustaining her bondage” (Wood 235). Throughout the entire play, woman are trivialized as meaningless and their one sole purpose is to offer sex. Wood describes the foundation of which Blanches character is built, and how she is just a fragile woman waiting to be violated. Blanche is a fragmentation of a woman who’s
In Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses the suicide of Blanche's husband to illuminate Blanche's insecurities and immoral behavior. When something terrible happens to someone, it often reveals who he or she truly is. Blanche falls victim to this behavior, and she fails to face her demons. This displays how the play links a character’s illogical choices and their inner struggles.
The sexual dominance of male characters over their female counterparts in the plays establishes their superiority and control. Both playwrights suggest that a degree of personal status is acquired by sexually dominate women. The rape scene shows Stanley’s use of power sexually through rage and strength, used to illustrate his final defeat of Blanche and establish himself as ‘King’ of his territory, ‘limited to expressing basic desire’ . ‘Since earliest manhood… his life has been pleasure with women... giving and taking of it... with power and pride’. It is a power he can achieve over women that they cannot over him. ‘Let’s have some rough house! [He springs towards her, overturning the table. She cries out... he picks up her inert figure… carries her to the bed]’. The use of stage directions portrays Blanche’s passivity, and gives the audience a better understanding of how the event empowers Stanley; also the enjambment, ‘Don’t you come towards me another step or I’ll-‘, intensifies Blanche’s lack of power comparatively with Stanley’s. Similarly Albee shows men’s power through the ability to overpower; George asserts ‘I’d take you by force, right here on the living room rug.’ It is telling that at the end of the play he takes her to bed, after destroying her illusion. Albee also uses sexuality as a tool for battle, Martha says ‘I was necking with one of the guests’ in an attempt to antagonise her husband; his nonchalant response undermines her quest for power, ‘... Good... Good you go right on’.
Human conflict is ever-present in sex and desire. But, not until the streetcar named Desire was first shown in 1947 had the corporeal act of sex been so openly depicted on stage as a basis of dominance and power. The streetcar in the New Orleans Street, Elysian Fields, is an urban harsh world, where the laws of nature are the enduring rules of engagement. As the wild sex and violence are intimately connected, Intercourse is a product of aggressive dominance, competition and submission to a certain extent than romance. Although Williams repeatedly claimed that his piece cautioned against the world where brutes were permitted to reign, the play 's end, shows the sexually imposing dominance placed upon Blanche by Stanley, whom demolished her illusions
This gradual fall and loss of her sense of reality is truly tragic. Blanche is a person largely driven by the part of her that wants to be liked and be accepted. She cares greatly about how she is viewed and how she looks which is seen throughout the play. Even at the end when she’s living almost completely in the imaginations of her mind she asks Stella and Eunice how she looks before being taken away to an insane asylum. Tennessee Williams, the author of the play, uses all the conflict between Blanche and others, specifically Stanley, to show that fantasy is unable to overcome reality. Stanley and Blanche are both the epitomes of fantasy and reality. Stanley is a man focused on sexual drive, work, and fighting. He is exhibited as animalistic and strongly driven by his desires which is shown when he says, “Be comfortable. That's my motto up where I come from.” Stanley loves and searches after reality which is why he is so set on breaking down the facade he sees in Blanche. Blanche on the other hand is running from her reality and her past. Her fantasy of being high class and chaste is the exact opposite of her reality which is why she wants a life like that so badly. She wants marriage and stability, two things she was jealous of Stella having after arriving in New Orleans. Her fantasy she was building in her new life is shattered when Stanley is able to learn of her past and bring reality crashing down on her. Williams
Susan Glaspell uses literary elements that show the readers the feminist theme in the play. The use of characters in this play really shows the feminist theme the most. Men in this play clearly demonstrates how men wer...
She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and shields her past. The essential conflict of the story is between Blanche, and her brother-in-law Stanley. Stanley investigates Blanche’s life to find the truth of her promiscuity, ruining her relationships with Stella, and her possible future husband Mitch, which successfully obtain his goal of getting Blanche out of his house. Blanche attempts to convince Stella that she should leave Stanley because she witnessed a fight between the two. Despite these instances, there is an essence of sexual tension between the two, leading to a suspected rape scene in which one of their arguments ends with Stanley leading Blanche to the bed.
After two world wars, the balance of power between the genders in America had completely shifted. Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a harsh, yet powerful play that exposes the reality of the gender struggle. Williams illustrates society’s changing attitudes towards masculinity and femininity through his eloquent use of dramatic devices such as characterization, dialogue, setting, symbolism, and foreshadowing.
Stanley rape Blanche, so she can not reclaim her purity anymore. Her only solution is by living in her imaginary world which she can create free of adversity. She no longer survive in the harsh world of reality . Stanley decided to send her away to a mental institution. When Blanche is told that she will be leaving. Blanche further expand her imagination to Shep Huntleigh. She believed that Shep Huntleigh will take her away. The only thing that she can conquer her adversity is by using her imagination ,which result her a complete loss of identity. She is send away to her last exile and entrapment. Having proven unable to adapt her identity in order to overcome
(Williams 162). Stanley’s alleged rape finally pushes Blanche over the edge, especially when Stella does not believe Blanche’s claim. Stanley finally defeats Blanche with this persistent realism when he physically exerts it onto Blanche; making it impossible for her to not admit the truth. In the last scene of the play,
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
As women's studies programs have proliferated throughout American universities, feminist "re-readings" of certain classic authors have provided us with the most nonsensical interpretations of these authors' texts. A case in point is that of Kathleen Margaret Lant's interpretation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in her essay entitled "A Streetcar Named Misogyny." Throughout the essay, she continually misreads Williams' intention, which of course causes her to misunderstand the play itself. Claiming that the play "has proved vexing to audiences, directors, actors, readers, and critics" (Lant 227), she fails to see that it is she herself who finds the play vexing, because it does not fit nicely into the warped feminist structure she would try to impose upon it.
Feminists usually do not vary in the views that they have. The feminist wants equal rights for both sexes, and wants all women to be treated just like men. The short story and the play suggest something different. Within the story there are many instances that suggest that Susan Gla...
...ices, such an attempt to elicit sympathy for this monster falls short” (Bell 2). Stanley is looked at as the monster of the play which is how he should be viewed. Luck was not on Blanches side through her life which made her make the mistakes she made. Even though her past was not clean, Stanley did not purge her of this. He tried to show her the reality of the world, but through his brutal treatment, only made her sensibility worse. Stanley is a primitive ape-like man, driven only by instinct, who views women as objects and has no respect for others. He is a wife batter and a rapist who is responsible for the crumbling sanity of Blanche who is “the last victim of the Old South, one who inherits the trappings of that grand society but pays the final price for the inability to adapt to a modern world that seeks to wipe grace and gentility out of existence” (Bell 2).
Stanley’s treatment of Blanche leaves her alone once again, with what little dreams of returning to her previous status destroyed like the paper lampshade that once gave her the shield from the real her she desperately craved. Stella, the one person Blanche believed she could rely on, sides against her husband after Blanche’s ordeal, leading Blanche to be taken away, relying on the “kindness of strangers”. This final image that Williams leaves us with fully demonstrates that Blanche has been cruelly and finally forced away from her “chosen image of what and who” she is, leaving an empty woman, once full of hope for her future.
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a play about a woman named Blanche Dubois who is in misplaced circumstances. Her life is lived through fantasies, the remembrance of her lost husband and the resentment that she feels for her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Various moral and ethical lessons arise in this play such as: Lying ultimately gets you nowhere, Abuse is never good, Treat people how you want to be treated, Stay true to yourself and Don’t judge a book by its cover.