Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire

1550 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Gender roles of women in the 1950s

The play A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, manipulates the ideas of Men and women’s roles in society as well as the unmaintained sexual desire between the two. During the era of the 1950’s, marriage was between a man and woman and vows were seldom broken. Gender roles were for the most part set in stone. The women would cook dinner, watch the kids, and clean the house. Men of the 1950’s would go to work and work all day to put the food on the table. Men genuinely were the head of the household controlling most of the “say so.” Throughout the 1950’s gender roles came to a halt and drafted in an alternate direction. With quick rise of World War II, gender roles during the 1950’s changed drastically due to men being drafted to war in large numbers and shipped over seas, leaving the women in charge. Many experts began to believe that “instead of toughening men war had made them passive, fearful, and effeminate.” (Miriam, 58) Women began to pick up the slack men left behind in order to generate the country as it already was. The play confirms this idea of gender roles, as it is highlighted throughout the play to give a genuine 1950’s feel. As Stanley goes to work, Stella holds down the fort as the housekeeper. Stanley even lays a hand on Stella with no consequence. Unmaintained sexual desire runs rampant, Stanley rapes the sister of Stella in the play. Both men and women and men are responsible for the decline of morals previously known. Ultimately Tennessee Williams created a threshold of learning opportunity on a 1950s marriage. But could contemporary society be engendered by the large changing gender roles of the 1950’s? Men and women’s roles and actions are surely to blame for the change of an era.

...

... middle of paper ...

...y of how things may have changed life, as we know it.

Works Cited

Cuordileone, K. A. Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.

Martschukat, Jurgen. "Men in Gray Flannel Suits." Troubling Masculinities in 1950s America 32 (2011): 1. Gender Watch. Web. 30 Apr. 2014. .

May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. 20th ed. New York: Basic Bks, 1988. Print.

Price, Jane Ashurst, and Pamela Hall Zaida. Understanding Women in Distess. Florence KY: Routledge, 1989. Print.

Reumann, Miriam G. American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports. Ewing, NJ: U of California P, 2005. Print.

Williams, Tennessee. A Street Car Named Desire. Sewanee Tennessee: U of The South, 1947. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Literary Analysis Of A Streetcar Named Desire

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in the 1950's Compared to Gender Roles Portrayed in Rebel Without a Cause

    1162 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many parts of history show that the 1950’s was a time of great turbulence and unrest in both politics and social life. All this unrest was caused by major historical events, including the Red Scare/McCarthyism and the Cold War. However, although many aspects of life in the 50’s were in such disarray, gender roles were not one of those aspects. In fact, there was a very narrow, strict idea of what it meant to be a male and a female during this time. The following discusses what was considered proper gender roles in the 1950’s and how these roles vary compared to the gender roles portrayed in the 1955 movie, Rebel Without a Cause.

    Read More

  • Homemaker to Superwomen: The Evolution of Betsy Rath

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the 1950’s becoming a wife, having and raising children and taking care of the home was the primary goal for most women. Post war brides were marrying young, having children at significant and unrivaled rates, and settling into roles that would ultimately shape a generation. This ideal notwithstanding, women were entering the workplace like never before and changing the face of American business forever. In the movie The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit directed in 1956 by Nunnally Johnson, we get an inkling of the type of voice American women would develop in the character of Betsy Rath. We are introduced to a wife and mother who leverage her role in the family to direct and influence. The decade of the 50’s signify the beginnings of the duplicity that women would embrace in America, being homemakers and independent women.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Gail Bederman's Manliness And Civilization

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization, she aims to describe the concepts of manliness and masculinity at the turn of the century. Bederman explains that the concept of what it means to be a man is ever changing as a result of the ideology of the time as well as the material actions of the men. During the Progressive Era, many forces were at work that put pressure on the supremacy of white, middle class men. Some of these forces included the growing move toward empowered women, the unionization of the working class, and the move from self-employment to big, corporate business. She delves into the way that both racism and sexism were used to build up the concept of masculinity and the turn of the century discourse on civilization.

    Read More

  • The Interrelationship of Characters and Themes in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire

    435 Words  | 1 Pages

    In Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire the characters represent two opposing themes. These themes are of illusion and reality. The two characters that demonstrate these themes are Blanche, and Stanley. Blanche represents the theme of Illusion, with her lies, and excuses. Stanley demonstrates the theme of reality with his straightforward vulgar ness. Tennessee Williams uses these characters effectively to demonstrate these themes, while also using music and background characters to reinforce one another.

    Read More

  • Essay On Masculinity In America

    488 Words  | 1 Pages

    American men’s political, social and economic identity was no longer fixed. If social order, permanence could no longer be taken for granted and a man could rise as high as he aspired, then his sense of himself as a man was in constant need of demonstration. Everything became a test- his relationship to work, to women, to nature, and to other men. (43)

    Read More

  • Character Conflict in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire

    572 Words  | 2 Pages

    Character Conflict in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play wrought with intertwining conflicts between characters. A drama written in eleven scenes, the play takes place in New Orleans over a nine-month period. The atmosphere is noisy, with pianos playing in the distance from bars in town.

    Read More

  • A Streetcar Named Desire: Sympathy for Blanche

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Characters of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire

    1233 Words  | 3 Pages

    Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American dramatists of the 20th century. Most of his plays take us to the southern states and show a confused society. In his works he exposes the degeneration of human feelings and relationships. His heroes suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in the society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes of his plays are racism, sexism, homophobia and realistic settings filled with loneliness and pain.1 Tennessee Williams characters showed us extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior.2  One of his most popular dramas was written in 1947, and it is called A Streetcar Named Desire.

    Read More

  • Classic Television Show: Leave It To Beaver

    930 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the 1950‘s suburbs such as Levitown were springing up all across the country, and the so-called American dream was easier to achieve for everyday Americans than ever before. They had just come out of two decades dominated by The Great Depression and World War Two, and finally prosperity was in sight. The need for women to work out of the home that was present during the war was no more, and women were overwhelmingly relegated to female-dominated professions like nursing, secretaries, and teachers, if they worked at all. Televisions became very popular, and quickly became part of the American cultural canon of entertainment. Leave It To Beaver is a classic American television show, encompassing values such as respect, responsibility and learning from your mistakes. But, at least in the episode used for this essay, it is also shockingly sexist to a modern viewer. This begs the question, what does the episode The Blind Date Committee1 say about the gender expectations of the 1950’s?

    Read More

  • Hegemonic Masculinity By Micheal Kimmel

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the views of Micheal Kimmel “hegemonic masculinity” is a socially constructed process where men are pressured by social norms of masculine ideals to perform behaviors of a “true man” and its influence on young male’s growth. It is the ideology that being a man with power and expressing control over women is a dominant factor of being a biological male. The structure of masculinity was developed within the 18th to 19th century, as men who owned property and provided for his family with strength related work environments was the perfect example of being a generic “American man.” Kimmel introduces Marketplace Manhood and its relation to American men. He states, “Marketplace Masculinity describes the normative definition of American masculinity.

    Read More

  • A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

    1266 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Stella and Stanley Kowalski live in the heart of poor, urban New Orleans in a one-story flat very different from the prestigious home Stella came from. This prestige is alive and well inside Stella’s lady-like sister, Blanche Du Bois. Over the course of Blanche’s life, she has experienced many tragedies that deeply affected her, such as the death of her gay husband, the downward spiral in her mental health that followed, and most recently the loss of her wealth and therefore social status. She constructs a proverbial lampshade to mask her pain and to control the last part of her world that she is able to, the image she projects into the world for herself and others to see. The brooding prince of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” chooses a very similar way of coping with the hand life has dealt him. When his mother remarries his uncle only a month after his father’s passing, the ghost of Hamlet’s father visits the young prince demanding avengement. These events cause Hamlet to try to replace the old lampshade that helped him cope with reality by changing his own image and fooling himself and others into thinking he’s crazy. An examination of both plays reveals that the importance of subjective truths and the way in which Blanche and Hamlet use them to cope transcends the context of both plays.

    Read More

  • Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire - Ghosts of the Past

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    Our lives are consumed by the past. The past of what we once did, what we once accomplished, and what we once could call our own. As we look back on these past memories we seldom realize the impact these events have on our present lives. The loss of a past love mars are future relationships, the loss of our family influences the choices we make today, and the loss of our dignity can confuse the life we live in the present. These losses or deaths require healing from which you need to recover. The effects of not healing can cause devastation as apparent in the play A Streetcar Named Desire. The theme of A Streetcar Named Desire is death. We encounter this idea first with the death of Blanche and Stella's relationship as sisters. Blanche and Stella had a life together once in Bel Reve and when Stella decided to move on in her life and leave, Blanche never could forgive her. This apparent in the scene when Blanche first arrives in New Orleans and meets Stella at the bowling alley. Stella and Blanche sit down for a drink and we immediately see Blanche's animosity towards Stella. Blanche blames Stella for abandoning her at Bel Reve, leaving Blanche to handle the division of the estate after their parents die. As result of Stella's lack of support, we see Blanche become dependent on alcohol and lose her mental state. Blanche comes to be a a terrible reck through out the play as we learn of the details of her life at Bel Reve. Her loss of the entire estate and her struggle to get through an affair with a seventeen year old student. This baggage that Blanche carries on her shoulders nips at Stella through out eventually causing the demise of her relationship. As Blanche's visit goes on with Stella, the nips become too great and with the help of Stanley, Stella has Blanche committed to a mental hospital, thus symbolizing the death of the realtionship they once had. The next death we encounter in the film is the death of Stella and Stanley's marriage. Our first view of Stanley is of an eccentric man, but decent husband who cares deeply for his wife. However, as as Blanche's visit wears on, we come to see the true Stanley, violent and abusive.

    Read More

  • The Desires in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

    738 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first principle character in this play is Blanche DuBois. She is a neurotic nymphomaniac that is on her way to meet her younger sister Stella in the Elysian Fields. Blanche takes two 2 streetcars, one named Desire, the other Cemeteries to get to her little sisters dwelling. Blanche, Stella and Stanley all desire something in this drama. Blanche desired a world without pain, without suffering, in order to stop the mental distress that she had already obtained. She desires a fairy tale story about a rich man coming and sweeping her off her feet and they ride away on a beautiful oceanic voyage. The most interesting part of Blanche is that through her unstable thinking she has come to believe the things she imagines. Her flashy sense of style and imagination hide the truly tragic story about her past. Blanche lost Belle Reve but, moreover, she lost the ones she loved in the battle. The horror lied not only in the many funerals but also in the silence and the constant mourning after. One cant imagine how it must feel to lose the ones they love and hold dear but to stay afterwards and mourn the loss of the many is unbearable. Blanche has had a streak of horrible luck. Her husband killing himself after she exposed her knowledge about his homosexuality, her advances on young men that led to her exile and finally her alcoholism that drew her life to pieces contemplated this sorrow that we could not help but feel for Blanche throughout the drama. Blanche’s desire to escape from this situation is fulfilled when she is taken away to the insane asylum. There she will have peace when in the real world she only faced pain.

    Read More

  • Ethical Lessons in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire

Open Document