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.