Feminism in a Street Car Named Desire

Vikramaditya Arora

Feminism refers to promoting women's rights in political, economical and social equality of women. They aim to fight against the constant injustice of gender stereotypes, which are prevalent in society for a long period of time. Gender stereotypes portray women as the inferior gender, where they do not have the right to live life on their own terms and cannot make decisions for themselves, as they're considered under men, and tend to receive instructions or orders from them. Women were also not allowed to work or vote, therefore the sole purpose of a woman is to be confined to the household work, and making sure that the children and the husband are contempt with their services. Feminism took place as a result of set beliefs, education and lack of believing in equal democracy. Where men believed women cannot aspire to be similar or better than them, nor can they have matching characteristics, as they can only be acquired by men.

The purpose of the feminist critics is to analyse and understand the relationship of control and power between men and women, not only in their personal lives, but also in front of the society as whole. Feminists tend to to pay attention to on how much independence and importance is given to the females in these works of literature. They mainly emphasise on how did the acts of discrimination originate, what were the different methods of displaying prejudice towards women and did women try to make their lives better or not. The feminist critics believe that these trends ceased to exist in the society for a long period of time, whether we like to accept it or not. Where Gender stereotypes have been established and reinforced in  English literature.

Over the years, the constant turmoil between both the the genders has been explored in brief ways of literature novels and written plays, where the feminist critics believe that the unorthodox treatment of women has been reflected in english literature over the years. There is a keen focus on the aspect of whether or not, females actually reinforce the stereotypes or  try to fight against the wrongdoing that is present towards them, but cannot because of their lack of power and control. The play a Streetcar Named Desire is based upon the following themes, and emphasises on the struggles faced by the women in in the 1960's.

The Setting of the play shows that Stanley and Stella live in a male dominated society, as Stanley is the head of the house and has all the power and control over Stella. In the recurring theme of Patriarchy, men are shown as the supreme gender who have all the authority, whereas women are considered fragile and hesitant, who wouldn't dare to improve their situation.

The first event in which addresses feminism is the poker night, as poker is considered a game of men and women are not allowed to be present in the same room as men. Thus, Blanche and Stella are commanded by the men to out for the night. After they return from home, Stella does not listen to Stanley, causing him to become angry and violent, after returning Stella implies that Stanley's behaviour was normal.  Regardless of the fact, that Blanche tries to fight Stanley, Stella continues to defend his acts, saying that drinking and gambling is a common thing during a men's night and Stanley losing control was a justifiable.  This is a clear example of the discrimination faced by the women in the 1940s, where the accept the injustice and wrongdoing that is presented towards them.

Review of Feminism on Street Car Named Desire

Sanya Garg 

FEMINISM IN “A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE”

Feminism is the idea or concept of gender equality, specially, parity of women with men, and their opposition to gender stereotypes which prevailed for a very long period of time in our society. Gender stereotypes portrayed a woman to be lower in position, receiving instructions and orders from man without any demand for equality in terms of her rights, choices, wishes and does not protest against her subjugation. She is basically confined to the roles and responsibilities of household work, taking care of children and husband, according to the wishes and directions of her husband. 

The feminism became an undercurrent as a result of spread of modern education, popularity and support to the concept of democracy, justification of right to full development of an individual’s personality and, above all, the concept of equality irrespective of gender and race. It came in the forefront in the decade of 1960s through various women movements. Feminist literary critics in this time and onwards are now more interested in finding out the ways in which women in society are represented and portrayed in the orthodox literature. Although the play “A Street Car named Desire” by Tennessee Williams came much before the woman’s movement in 1960s, feminists look back on it again and again to understand the relative position, of American women at that time, both at home and in American society. 

Feminist critics try to judge and analyse the extent to which power relationship exists between men and women at home, in the private sphere that reflect and affect the balance of power in the public domain. According to them, the relationship between Stella and Stanley in the play clearly portrays this, and, feminists often try to focus on how much importance and space is given to the female experience in those literary works, which is a clear indicator of the respective position in terms of importance and power in the eyes of male dominated, patriarchal society of that time. They are also interested to know, how and where in the orthodox literary texts, such evidences and instances of power imbalance is portrayed and they highlight it to show to what extent females are shown as victims of male dominance and patriarchal oppression. 

The orthodox literature has created and supported, if not directly then indirectly, a set pattern of relationship between male and female, and feminist critics are of this belief that such created gender stereotypes have been reinforced in the orthodox literature. Thus the canonical literature helps in perpetuation of a fixed and unequal roles of men and women according to the views and assumptions of patriarchal society. Sometimes there is seen an interesting kind of divergence in the views of feminist literary critics when considering and evaluating the gender stereotypes of orthodox literature. One section of feminists argues that it is the female characters in the literature who reinforce gender stereotypes whereas others argue that they have the potential to defy them but they cannot do so because they lack the freedom to do so. 

In Street Car, the setting of the play clearly shows that Stella and Stanley live in a patriarchal society which is male dominated, as Stanley has all the powers which he shows when he indulges in violence and sexist violence against Stella and Blanche to maintain dominance. In patriarchy, all men are powerful and oppressive, whereas, women are powerless and victims. Men are to rule and women are to obey and assume a subordinate role. 

The section “The poker night” in the play, gives various glimpses of male dominance, patriarchal oppression and female subjugation. The unequal position of men and women gets highlighted in this section in the instance when Stella and Blanche go out for the night on the night of poker game. It is because only men are allowed to play poker. On their returning back to home, they find to their disliking that the game was still going on. Stella and Blanche’s attempt to disrupt the game makes Stanley frustrated and angry which makes Stanley mad at Stella and hits her. This incident shows how unequal is the power sharing between Stanley and Stella. The subjugation of Stella is also shown here, when Stella is hit by Stanley, and goes to Eunice’s house, but soon after returns back to Stanley. Moreover, she doesn’t make a strong statement against this violence but explains it as if there was nothing to blame about by explaining “In the first place, when men are drinking and playing poker, anything can happen. It’s always a power-keg. He didn’t know what he was doing…”. Stanley’s friends and others blamed it on the alcohol which Stanley and his friends were having during the game of poker. They gave another excuse blaming the game itself by saying that poker is an aggressive game. Another excuse was that Stanley did not know what he was doing. This entire episode of the poker night shows that men definitely have more power than women who are not treated equally. The excuses given for hitting his pregnant wife Stella don’t show that Stanley is blamed for it in any way. Rather, instead of being held accountable for this violence, it is the women who are blamed for this for being at the poker game. 

Group 4 Project

Ujjwal Arora

The group 4 Project is a collaborative activity where students from different G4 subjects (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Design Technology) work together on a scientific topic, allowing for concepts and perceptions from across the disciplines to be shared. The project is a mandatory part of the IB Diploma Program and is a collaborative activity where students from different subjects work together on a scientific / technological topic.

We (students of grade 11) this year are working on creating a prototype of “Low cost energy efficient Greenhouse” which was started by identifying a place in school where an actual version of the same can be set up connecting it to a real- life situation. This will include the elements from our own research from different subject groups.

A prototype of the greenhouse will be made by the Design Technology students and the presentation by all the subject groups will provide an in depth study and collaborative work done by students.

We were divided into groups according to the science subjects we had. 

The first step was planning. It included research on aquatic plants that can be put in the greenhouse which are easy to grow, require less maintenance and are self sustaining. We divided our group into two further groups so that more information could be collected at once and the work could be completed quickly. To decide what plants to put in the greenhouse, we all first started researching on the types of aquatic plants and plants that would grow the best in the greenhouse that we were planning to build. 

After doing some research, I gained some knowledge about the types of aquatic plants and found out that there 5 main types of them which include: bog plants, deep-water plants, floating plants, oxygenating plants and marginal plants. After getting a fair idea of what aquatic plants are and their types, we decided to start our research on the plants we will put in the greenhouse. 

To choose good plants of the greenhouse, our group leaders gave us some points about the characteristics that the plants should have. These included that the plants should be easy to grow, require low maintenance, have common ph values and temperature requirements and should require less lighting. These could also be backed up by any other advantage that these could bring to the greenhouse if they had any. 

After spending a lot of time