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Gender in 20th century English literature
Portrayal of women in literature
Gender in 20th century English literature
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In many great works of literature, whether they be plays, novels, or poetry, the idea of masculinity is prominent throughout the novels because for an extended period of history, men were seen as superior to their female counterparts. As time went on, writers began to portray females in their work as more dominant and less frail. In works such as Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, the female characters are more assertive, while the male characters are submissive in comparison. All these plays were written in the mid twentieth century, a time where America was changing, and the stereotypical roles for people, especially women and African Americans,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare is one of the world’s most well known plays, yet it doesn’t pass a very simple test: the Bechdel Test. While the Bechdel Test isn’t always accurate in measuring female representation and the work’s success in films and literature, it can help to give the audience a pretty good understanding of how significant the female roles are. This test shows the reader that A Midsummer Night’s Dream doesn’t have many well represented women in it, but neither do many other great works.
The use of alcohol has many different physical properties. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, alcohol plays a rather compelling and symbolic role. For instance alcohol occurs in both texts in the form of social meanings of having a good time and can also lead to violence. Therefore, the authors are trying to get across that alcohol is used, in different ways, to convey the moral degradations of society.
Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in 1911. As a successful playwright, his career was greatly influenced by events in his life. He was noted for bringing the reader "a slice of his own life and the feel of southern culture", as his primary sources of inspiration were "the writers he grew up with, his family, and the South." The connection between his life and his work can be seen in several of his plays.
In my research essay for my English Composition 2 class, I will be analyzing the different gender roles in Notes from the Underground and Death of a Salesman. Often times, in American Literature work, gender roles are used very differently due to whomever wrote it. This story and play fall into the category of “traditional” gender roles that are given to males and females based off of society and what is expected of males and females. I will use the gender approach to explain that roles in families and society are based off of gender. I will also compare a feminist approach to the gender approach and see how they are different. In Author Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s
The arts stir emotion in audiences. Whether it is hate or humor, compassion or confusion, passion or pity, an artist's goal is to construct a particular feeling in an individual. Tennessee Williams is no different. In A Streetcar Named Desire, the audience is confronted with a blend of many unique emotions, perhaps the strongest being sympathy. Blanch Dubois is presented as the sympathetic character in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire as she battles mental anguish, depression, failure and disaster.
Reading literature, at first, might seem like simple stories. However, in works like William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily,” Katherine Mansfield's “Miss Brill,” and Kate Chopin's “The Storm,” the female protagonists are examples of how society has oppressive expectations of women simply because of their gender.
In both plays, Hedda Gabler and A Streetcar Named Desire, the authors create very complex characters whose obsession creates conflict regarding their private lives. Tennessee Williams creates Blanche, whose the heroine and the antagonist Stanley, whose the antagonist. On the other hand, in the play Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen creates Hedda, the heroine and the antagonist, Judge Brack, the antagonist. Both authors establish antagonists, such as Stanley and Judge Brack, containing some sympathetic elements to help the reader understand their motivations towards the heroines, Blanche and Hedda. The characters of Stanley and Judge Brack obtain motivations analyzed by the reader to be known as vengeance and scornful but sympathetic acts to oppress the protagonists of the story.
Eugene August describes Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ as a profoundly male tragedy, one in which its protagonist is destroyed by a debilitating concept of masculinity . Masculinity is of course an ambiguous term and araises a gamut of views. Willy Loman, a failed salesman, embodies the deluded values and aspirations that could be said to originate from the American Dream, which infiltrates every aspect of his life. Whilst Willy is influenced by material and consumerist success, reflecting the play’s setting in the increasingly urbanized, cosmopolitan New York, Stanley Kowalski in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ defends imperilled masculinity in his less socially progressive community of Elysian Fields by resorting to primitive male behaviour in order to assert his dominance and territory. Despite the playwrights’ portrayals of masculinity, both suggest that male behaviour is shaped by their society’s concept of masculinity in order to survive.
Many different depictions of gender roles exist in all times throughout the history of American culture and society. Some are well received and some are not. When pitted against each other for all intents and purposes of opposition, the portrayal of the aspects and common traits of masculinity and femininity are separated in a normal manner. However, when one gender expects the other to do its part and they are not satisfied with the results and demand more, things can shift from normal to extreme fairly quickly. This demand is more commonly attributed by the men within literary works. Examples of this can be seen in Tennessee Williams' “A Streetcar Named Desire”, where Stella is constantly being pushed around and being abused by her drunken husband Stanley, and also in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”, where the female narrator is claimed unfit by her husband as she suffers from a sort of depression, and is generally looked down on for other reasons.
Society continually places restrictive standards on the female gender not only fifty years ago, but in today’s society as well. While many women have overcome many unfair prejudices and oppressions in the last fifty or so years, late nineteenth and early twentieth century women were forced to deal with a less understanding culture. In its various formulations, patriarchy posits men's traits and/or intentions as the cause of women's oppression. This way of thinking diverts attention from theorizing the social relations that place women in a disadvantageous position in every sphere of life and channels it towards men as the cause of women's oppression (Gimenez). Different people had many ways of voicing their opinions concerning gender inequalities amound women, including expressing their voices and opinions through their literature. By writing stories such as Daisy Miller and The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James let readers understand and develop their own ideas on such a serious topic that took a major toll in American History. In this essay, I am going to compare Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” to James’ “Daisy Miller” as portraits of American women in peril and also the men that had a great influence.
Society continually places specific and often restrictive standards on the female gender. While modern women have overcome many unfair prejudices, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women were forced to deal with a less than understanding culture. Different people had various ways of voicing their opinions concerning gender inequalities, including expressing themselves through literature. By writing a fictional story, authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James were given the opportunity to let readers understand and develop their own ideas on such a serious topic.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Fun and Games – What are the games, and how much fun do people have? The play begins with George and Martha, who have just returned from a welcoming-party at the college. From the first moments of the play, the audience are made aware of the great differences between these two characters. Martha is said to be a “large, boisterous” woman, whereas George is referred to as a “thin” man, with hair that is going grey.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.
In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, the female protagonists of the play, Beatrice and Hero, and Blanche and Stella, are submitted to battles against misogyny. Unlike the stereotypically submissive Elizabethan woman, Beatrice is ready to be ‘a man’ (Act 4.1.315) for the sake of her wronged cousin Hero and duel against ‘Count Comfit’ (Act 4.1.314). Blanche, while fighting against Stanley as ‘he advances’ (Scene Three, page 41) towards, and hurt, Stella, became relatable to a modern day audience when fighting against Domestic Violence. These women challenge the status quo of their eras, whether it is effective or not.
Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.