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The role of the female in a streetcar named desire
Essay analysis of a streetcar named desire
Essay analysis of a streetcar named desire
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For hundreds of years women have been fighting for equality and the same rights as men have. Numerous female writers throughout the history, focused on a critique on position of females in a masculine world. They presented stories of different women with similar issues gender roles. Females are often left alone in their fight and everyday struggle for happiness. Both Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Tennessee Williams created heroines, although in different times, struggling with isolation and mental issues caused by it.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells a story of a woman going through a resting cure treatment, a very popular method at the end of XIX century, and based on a belief that mental issues can be cured strictly
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When he finally notices the seriousness of his wife’s sickness, he faints.
This heroine has no real, direct influence on her fate. Even though she is ironic about the conditions in her life and marriage, she is not able to make real changes – like most of the women in Gilman times.
"A Streetcar Named Desire," a play by Tennessee Williams, is a story not only about changes in the South, but mostly about the situation of women in 1940’s America. Blanche, main character, has to give up living in the old, family villa because of financial problems, and moves to Stella her sister who gave up aristocratic roots and decided to live like a working class in the city. Blanche finds it difficult to adapt to the new reality that she suddenly is in. After unhappy marriage and suicide of her husband, her main goal in life is to find a new husband. What is more, she believes that her promiscuous life is not shameful, for she considers herself a lady: "Blanche's refusal to face up to certain acts of her past and the present reality of her own sexual drives which she covers over with such words as 'flirting'."
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Because of her loneliness, troubles with reconciling with new reality, and desperate need of
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She creates her own world in which she locks herself up and worsens her condition. It is visible that she considers herself worthy only if she has a man by her side. In the final scene, Blanche is having a mental breakdown, and talks about a
2 Alvin B. Kernan, Truth and Dramatic Mode in A Streetcar Named Desire, Modern Drama Vol 1, no.2
(1958).
millionaire coming to pick her up. Even in her critical moments, she thinks only about men.
Both she and her sister are depended on a man either economically or emotionally. The story might be considered as a critique of a position of women in the postwar America, and masculine position of power, for without men, women would not be able to survive out in the world. Heroine of a "Yellow Wallpaper" and Blanche share a few common issues. They are both put into new situations: one is made to live in the rented house and the other moves to live with her sister. In both situation, men play a big role in not properly resolving women's issues. John follows the resting cure method and does not listen to his wife's needs, and
Blanche is so focused on finding a man that she does not take up any other actions to make her life better. Because of their isolation and lack of understanding, women spend most of
Blanche’s immoral and illogical decisions all stem from her husband's suicide. When a tragedy happens in someone’s life, it shows the person’s true colors. Blanche’s true self was an alcoholic and sex addict, which is displayed when “She rushes about frantically, hiding the bottle in a closet, crouching at the mirror and dabbing her face with cologne and powder” (Williams 122). Although Blanche is an alcoholic, she tries to hide it from others. She is aware of her true self and tries to hide it within illusions. Blanche pretends to be proper and young with her fancy clothes and makeup but is only masking her true, broken self.
Within Tennessee Williams's story about love and abuse within marriage and challenging familial ties, there lie three very different characters that all see the world in vastly different ways. These members of a family that operate completely outside of our generation’s norms, are constantly unsure of themselves and their station within the binary not only of their familial unit, but within the gender binary that is established for them to follow. Throughout the story of the strange family, each character goes through a different arch that changes them irrevocably whether it is able to be perceived or not by those around them. The only male, Stanley is initially the macho force in the home who controls everything without question. He has no consequences for his actions against his wife and is never held accountable for treating the people around him poorly; this lasts until Blanche arrives. Blanche is an outwardly demure, but spirited young woman who after experiencing untold misfortune breaks mentally and decides to no longer care what others may think of her. She lives her life lavishly and foolishly by having dalliances with younger or richer men who shower her with gifts and attention to get sex from her all too willing form. Her effect on Stanley is one of temptation and challenge; she continually tries to convince her sister that she is too good for the man and in turn fosters a resentment for her in him. Stella acts as the antithesis of Stanley and Blanche’s extreme personalities. She is innocence and purity where they are the darkness that threatens to overtake her life. Throughout, Stella is a pawn that they both try to use against the other to no real avail as she is determined to make the best choice for herself. In th...
noble and not remarry even if her husband does not return for twenty years and
A Streetcar named Desire was written by Tennessee Williams, during the restless years following World War II. The play was based on the life of a woman named Blanche Dubois. Blanche was a fragile and neurotic woman, desperate for a place to call her own. She had been exiled from her hometown Laurel, Mississippi after seducing a seventeen year old boy. After this incident, she decided to move to New Orleans with her sister Stella. She claimed she had to move, in result of a series of financial calamities which have recently claimed the family plantation, Belle Reve. Her sisters husband, Stanley Kowalski is very suspicious seeing that Blanche seems like an ambitious woman. Therefore, he decides to investigate her. He wanted to make sure Blanche didn’t sell the plantation for her own good. As he begins to find out more about her past, all of Blanches lies catch up to her. Soon, her circumstances become unbearable.
Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it. She was passionately in love with Alan; but after discovering that he was gay, she could not stomach the news. When she revealed how disgusted she was, it prompted Alan to commit suicide. She could never quite overcome the guilt and put it behind her. Blanche often encountered flashbacks about him. She could hear the gun shot and polka music in her head. After Alan’s death, she was plagued by the deaths of her relatives. Stella moved away and did not have to deal with the agony Blanche faced each day. Blanche was the one who stuck it out with her family at Belle Reve where she had to watch as each of her remaining family members passed away. “I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths—not always” (Scene 1, page 1546). Blanche lost Belle Reve because of all the funeral expenses. Belle Reve had been in her family for generations, and it slipped through her fingers while she watched helplessly. Blanche’s anguish caused her loneliness. The loneliness fueled her abundance of sexual encounters. Her rendezvous just added to her problems and dirtied her rep...
tasks, it makes her feel as if she is a burden to her husband and
In Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" two of the main characters Stanley and Blanche persistently oppose each other, their differences eventually spiral into Stanley's rape of Stella.
A Streetcar Named Desire is an intricate web of complex themes and conflicted characters. Set in the pivotal years immediately following World War II, Tennessee Williams infuses Blanche and Stanley with the symbols of opposing class and differing attitudes towards sex and love, then steps back as the power struggle between them ensues. Yet there are no clear cut lines of good vs. evil, no character is neither completely good nor bad, because the main characters, (especially Blanche), are so torn by conflicting and contradictory desires and needs. As such, the play has no clear victor, everyone loses something, and this fact is what gives the play its tragic cast. In a larger sense, Blanche and Stanley, individual characters as well as symbols for opposing classes, historical periods, and ways of life, struggle and find a new balance of power, not because of ideological rights and wrongs, but as a matter of historical inevitability. Interestingly, Williams finalizes the resolution of this struggle on the most base level possible. In Scene Ten, Stanley subdues Blanche, and all that she stands for, in the same way men have been subduing women for centuries. Yet, though shocking, this is not out of keeping with the themes of the play for, in all matters of power, force is its ultimate manifestation. And Blanche is not completely unwilling, she has her own desires that draw her to Stanley, like a moth to the light, a light she avoids, even hates, yet yearns for.
By believing her own lie, Blanche disconnects herself from the reality in which she lives. She becomes so immersed in her lies that she herself is unable to tell where her fantasies end and reality begins. It is no longer a lie to maintain her appearance but a delusion that she believes in. In her mind she is not an aging women with few social contacts but a proper young lady with friends of high standings.
In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, main character Blanche Dubois to begin with seems to be a nearly perfect model of a classy woman whose social interaction, life and behavior are based upon her sophistication. The play revolves around her, therefore the main theme of drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the misfortune of a person caught between two worlds-the world of the past and the world of the present-unwilling to let go of the past and unable, because of her character, to come to any sort of terms with the present.
As Stanley continues torturing Blanche and draws Stella and Mitch away from her, Blanche’s sanity slowly dwindles. Even though she lied throughout the play, her dishonesty becomes more noticeable and irrational due to Stanley's torment about her horrible past. After dealing with the deaths of her whole family, she loses Belle Reve, the estate on which her and her sister grew up. This is too much for Blanche to handle causing her moral vision to be blurred by “her desperate need to be with someone, with ancestors for models who indulged in “epic fornications” with impunity, [Blanche] moves through the world filling the void in her life with lust” (Kataria 2). She also loses a young husband who killed himself after she found out he was gay when she caught him with another man. After that traumatic experience she needed “a cosy nook to squirm herself into because ...
The characters in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, most notably Blanche, demonstrates the quality of “being misplaced” and “being torn away from out chosen image of what and who we are” throughout the entirety of the play.
Tennessee Williams’ psychodrama, A Streetcar Named Desire, explicates the benevolent yet intricate personality of Dubois Dubois, and dives into the uncontrollable tempest that she physically and psychologically battles. Dubois’ intense desire to reinstate a permanent and devoted relationship with someone into her life manipulates her behavior around people. Her psyche - as a result of the sheer nature of this ruling passion - eventually overflows causing repressed emotions, feelings, and impulses to be freely expressed. Throughout the play, Dubois goes on a rampage to find a new mate – she feels that she deserves another life partner, especially after the death of her first and former lover, Allan. She believes to repay herself by starting
finding any work very difficult. She does not like the simple, and in her view, boring way of life her sister and brother in law live.
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.