Misogny in a Street Car Named Desire

Wo men and Misogyny and Fatalism in Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named impulse Tennessee Williams wrote this critically acclaimed run during the 20th century when women and their place in society were greatly challenged. According to Boydston (2004) men were breadwinners and women resided in the home where they would raise children and maintain the home. As protector of the home, women exhibited characteristics much(prenominal) as piety, purity and domesticity. The notion of women entering the workforce, she continued, endanger the ideals of true womanhood and masculinity.In other words the womans dismantle into the mans sphere violated the separation of roles between men and women because the public sphere was reserved for men. It is this ideology that forms the basis for the misogynistic and fatalist adopt of women in the manoeuvre. Fatalism as defined by Abrams (2005) is the belief that all events atomic number 18 predetermined and are therefore, inevitable. As a conseque nce, a submissive perspective to events results from such a belief.Through word picture and the choice of dramatic genre, The Streetcar Named Desire exposes the deleterious effects of misogyny on women and the dominance that men oversee over subservient powerless women. The characterization of the dominant characters in the play develops the idea of misogyny and fatalism. Stanley the male dominant in the play is seen as an alpha male. True to the custom of Williams characterization of men from the North, Stanley is place as a brutish character who sizes women up at a see with sexual classifications.Stanley does not regard women as being valuable apart(predicate) from their worth in slaking his sexual desires. Stanley remembers that women exist to serve his needs, respect him and accompany him without question. This is in keeping with the age in which the play was written and the occurrence that men were seen as the stronger of the sexes. His language and behaviour are lade n with pure(a) sexual overtones. Stanley Kowalski objectifies women as he appreciates their physique however, he ignores the immanent needs and complexities of the women he claims as his.Stanley uses sex and his brute strength to quash the women who fall into his circle. After visiblely abusing his wife he uses sex to actualize his insincere apology. He also uses sex to comfort Stella after Blanche leaves and last rapes Blanche in order to regain his sense of manliness and bring her refine from the columns she had built her life on which have the appearance _or_ semblanceed superior to him. In scene one, Stanley forces a packet of met upon his wife this symbolizes his male dominance in an increasingly antiquated society. He acquires a feeling of superiority from this standpoint.Williams depicts Stanley receiving his wifes fondness with lordly quietude this insinuates that Stanley believes that he deserves his wifes respect and devotion without having to work for it in any counseling because he is a man he believes that she should have these feelings towards him as a matter of automation. The statement Be comfortable is my motto, is extremely true for Stanley as he does what he wishes and disregards the consequences. Through dialogue such as this, Williams asserts that Stanley inherently fails to seize on into account the repercussions his own requirements and desires have on others.He is in nitty-gritty control and the scarcely person endowed with power therefore the only person he takes into consideration and the only person his wife is allowed to take into concern is himself. The fatalistic view of women is evident in Williams characterization of Stanleys misogynistic behaviour which is promulgated by his passive wife Stella. She accepts his grating behaviour and cleans up after him. Stella does not think for herself and as a result she fears life without her abusive husband. She depends totally on him for economic excerpt and for her sense of self.As a result she acquiesces to his e precise whim and fancy and accepts and blames herself for his physical and verbal abuse. She betrays her own thoughts and chooses her husband and places her sister in an asylum. By refusing to believe that Stanley raped her sister, she reconciles her decision to continue living with him. Williams depiction of Stella alludes to the idea that her upcoming is linked to her submissive nature and the tenets of fatalism. She hardly speaks and when she does her speech is barely audible. Stella is presented as a flat character with no imagination or complexities.Additionally, Blanche is cast as a foil to the misogynistic Stanley and the polar opposite of her sister, Stella. From the first scene, Williams creates antipathy between Blanche and Stanley and this sets the stage for the descent and discord that runs from beginning to denouement in the play. The seeming purity and lofty air proffered by Blanche is only an tone-beginning at sophistry to hide the shame of her promiscuous life. Her education allows her to play the part of the demure genteel lady, while being willing to lay down an unsuspecting newspaper boy.Blanche uses her sexuality to achieve things and although she may seem polar from Stella in her vociferous opposition to Stanleys physical abuse, the two sisters were very alike in that they found their own sense of self and value in their relationships with men. Williams underscores this with his discussion of Blanches promiscuity, the death of her homosexual husband, and her relationships with students at the educate at which she taught. Blanche flirts and teases Stanley until she receives the onslaught of his overpowering primal animalistic behaviour, when she is raped.Through this ultimate transgression, Williams shows that the women of that era who tried to escape the prescribed roles assigned to them will be destroyed. Stanleys outright disgrace of Blanche allows him to gain the transcendence and puts her effectually in her place. Blanche seems ill-fated for this as she has built a fantasy world for herself where she is constantly pretending. genius would think that as a result of her constant incredulous pull of reality other that what it is, Blanche was fated to the mental breakdown which she experienced at the end of the play.In addition to characterization, Williams also uses the dramatic genre to create the misogynistic and fatalistic view of women in the play. The play is written as a innovational tragedy. Griffith (2006) describes a tragedy as a subgenre of drama that, according to Aristotle, contains conventions such as a larger-than-life hero whose reproach brings about a precipitous fall and whose fate inspires pity and fear in the audience. In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche is this heroine whose actions grab the attention of the audience/reader.From her entrance her incongruity with Elysian Fields, is evident. She is from Belle Reve, a place of beauti ful dreams. Blanches great flaw is that she fails to accept the changes that are happening in the world. She tries to recapture her lost integrity and the respect she once had through pretense, deceit, self-aggrandizement and pride. Her fantastical ideas about what she deserves are exposed by her hypocrisy. Her vanity makes her rude and obnoxious as she believes that she was demote than those with whom she had to share the hovel.Finally her lies cause her to lose the love she tries to gain and the saneness she tries to preserve. Her deceit and callous treatment of others, in an attempt to make herself seem superior, result in her final delusion and separation from reality. The men she loves frustrate her, and she, even in a delusive state, finds that she must depend on a man for sustenance. Blanches tragedy comes from her own vanity, duplicity and unconstraint which she hides under her superior intellect and vocabulary.