Gender Stereotypes In A Streetcar Named Desire, By Tennessee Williams

Stella's marriage to Stanley, on the other hand, seems to have given her the happiness and fulfillment, which Blanche has attempted to find in a guilt-ridden life of loneliness with promiscuity. As a result Blanche has become neurotic and alcoholic, slipping increasingly into insanity. Stella, meanwhile, appears to have been thriving in a profane, coarse, but wholly satisfying sexual relationship with Stanley. Thus, superficially, the main contrast between Stella and Blanche seems to be one between sickness and health, perversity and normality, particularly in the sexual relationship. Stella is thriving; Blanche is disintegrating. But a closer examination of these sisters begins to show more complex differences in their characters and situations. Blanche is disintegrating for reasons other than sexual perversity, and Stella is paying a rather steep price for her so-called "normal" life with Stanley.

Men: The ones worthy of praise whereas women are just accessories to be flaunted then left in the closet when not worn. Tennessee Williams reinforces this idea throughout the course of the play by the use of the characters Stella, Blanche, Stanley, Steve and Eunice; and their relationships with each other.

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

Social upheaval in many senses was explicit through the beginning of the twentieth century; two world wars had - for a short time - shifted the balance of power between men and women. Women were increasingly employed to fill positions which had previously been considered masculine. This was not to last however, and by the fifties men had reassumed their more dominant role in society. People were finding new voices at this time by taking pre-existing forms and pushing the boundaries to re-voice established literary forms. Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire around the time this reversal was occurring in American society. Williams was a homosexual from the deep south of America, and his play is about physical, emotional

In the 1950s a male and a female did not share equal responsibility or power in a relationship. As seen in A Streetcar Named Desire the male portrays a role of power and success whereas the female is seen almost as an accessory to the male. The male partner would go to work every morning and the female would stay home, cooking, cleaning, and making sure everything was acceptable for her husband’s return that night. When a male and a female were married in the 1950s the male partner became entitled to all of a female’s possessions, however, she was not granted the same power. This relationship has changed drastically in today’s society. It is no longer common to see this large power gap between the male and female figures in a relationship,

Stella, too, is a major character who lives in a world of hopes and fantasies. Stella’s tears over her sister as Blanche was taken away at the end of play reveals that Stella’s fantasies have been crushed by Stanley’s brutality. Stella calls her sister, “Blanche! Blanche! Blanche!”(142) , as if she does not want to let go of her sister. In spite of the fact that Stanley tried to justify and to relief her, Stella knows that something acquitted and abandoned had banished. She knows that her happy and humble world and her sister’s hopes had gone. Through her fantasy world, she thinks she could keep her sister for ever, but fantasy does not always work and makes life appear as it should be rather than what reality is. Also, Blanche imagines the doctor as a gentleman who is going to rescue her from a life that she imagines it as a life that does not want to accept her. Blanche finishes the play by saying, “Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (142). Blanche’s irony is demonstrated for two reasons. First of all, the doctor is not a gentleman; he came to take her to a mental health care. Second of all, strangers are not kind to her; they are kind only for trade of sex. Instead, they feel sympathy for her for creating a world where she is the victim. Blanche never perceives stranger’s kindness as something that people take advantage of. Instead, she thinks that Stanley is the one who does not treat her well, although he wanted

Tennessee Williams was an American writer known for short stories and poems in the mid 1950’s. His more famous writing was A Streetcar Named Desire. His writings influenced many other writers such as August Strindberg and Hart Crane. His writings A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie was adopted to films and A Streetcar Named Desire earned him his first Pulitzer prize. In A Streetcar Named Desire there is many elements that build the plot and story line. The story is about a girl who is drove crazy by his sister’s husband and eventually sent to the mental hospital. The main plot is towards the end of the story when Blanche Dubois is blackmailed by her sister’s husband and raped by him. Everything takes its toll on her until she begins drinking heavily and is thought to have gone crazy and placed in a mental hospital. In this story, many things play affect in the contrast of the writing such as Blanche arriving at her sister’s house, seeing her sister’s husbands attitude, the poker game, Blanche getting raped. These events make Blanche an easy victim. In Tennessee Williams, a street car named desire, the start of kindness turns to tragedy and pain.

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.

Gender roles and expectations have a lot of impacts on our society and it needs to be changed in order to create a better civilisation. Although our society has ameliorated tremendously in the past years, there are still some discriminatory actions among genders that are affecting someone 's life negatively. Any remaining differential between genders need to be changed for a better moral standard of living.

Much like Mitch, Stella does nothing to address Stanley’s overemphasized masculinity. Stella has convinced herself that she enjoys her role as Stanley’s sexual object, which allows him to continue his problematic behavior. She is there for his gratification and her well-being is irrelevant. To be fair, during this time period Stella did not have many options for herself if she were to leave Stanley, but her complacency speaks volumes. Stella is the example of what happens when no one challenges a patriarchal society. She is complacent and therefore in part responsible for her own downfall as well as Blanche’s. Her failure to acknowledge the assault Stanley carried out on her sister is almost just as bad as the assault itself. The reader is left to assume that because she has refused to stand up to Stanley for herself or for her sister, her son will grow up to be like his father, creating another generation of Kowalski men who believe that being a man means being brutal and oversexualized. Stella is undeniably in a tough situation and her fear of ending up like her

While Blanche represents hope of women being able to be free and outspoken, however she also represents the idea that women are very dependent on men for everything. The idea of representing Blanche to be both proper and improper with the society’s rules and regulations is because Williams may have wanted to prove the idea that despite being independent, women will still somehow be dependent on men. Stella represents the submissive nature of women during that time period and is conveyed to be a submissive character, as Williams wanted her to represent what society thinks of women that time. Williams ultimately represents these women in this way in order to infer to the message of shattered dreams, which A Streetcar Named Desire also

It was not just her self that put her in the lime light of being a victim; it is also her new change of environment and people. Stanley is Stella's husband; he is described to be very masculine and aware of his sexual magnetism. “Strongly, compactly built”. He is mostly at ease with people however, if they lack loyalty and affection to him, he will bully them. Especially women, as he believes them just to be easy conflict. It is seen in scene 3 that Stanley has little respect for women. “I said to hush up!” This is addressed to his wife who is seen emotionless and impassive in this play. As for Blanche how is fussy and at edge, she would be very effected by the crude attitude that Stanley presents and so tries to hysterical take Stella away from her husband. Stanley does not forget of this act of interference and makes him all the more determined to be rid of Stella’s “charity case”. The real reason for Stanley’s bulling is that Blanche immediately received all Stella’s attention. “How about my supper huh? I’m not going to no Galatorires’ for supper” This made Stella dominant in power over Stanley and Blanche, something Stanley was not used to. “I put you a cold plate on ice”.

Although there is nothing wrong with Stella offering her sister a help and let Blanche stays in her place, but the biggest missing component, in this case, is the cause a huge embarrassment, that is Stanley. Stanley is Stella’s husband, they live together with peace and entertainment so far; nevertheless, the involvement of a third person would interrupt or even shatter the situation, and this person is Blanche. Stanley represents the new rising Americans, and we can envision him as urban-hunkey. His lifestyle is full of manhood; he goes to bowling, loves poker party, and we gain the picture of him as an aggressive, dominant and very sexual person. To satisfy Stanley is quite simple, first, his sexual desire would override his other senses, which means his sexual relationship with his wife is extremely important to him; second, Stanley enjoys maintaining stereotypical gender roles in his home and being respect as the head of the household. After Blanche’s visit, both of his old habits are being disturbed because Blanche takes herself as someone who’s more superior which goes against his gender role and she sleeps right across them with only a thin layer of the barrier which also stops his lovely night party with his wife. These reasons caused Stanley being so unsympathetic to the way Stella treats Blanche, which furthermore

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

Although Stanley’s power works mainly to downgrade Blanche, his violent and aggressive nature also disempowers Stella. She is abused during poker night, a moment of masculine bonding. Following the poker night she is made powerful when she retreats to Eunice’s Flat. However, she returns to disempowerment when she leaves Eunice’s flat and Stanley ‘bears her into the dark flat’. Stella’s decision to stay with Stanley is not based on choice, but rather on the fact that she must. This enforces the dominant belief that women are unable to support themselves, emotionally and financially.