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✧A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE A LEVEL MASCULINITY ESSAY
PLAN-✧
HOW DOES TENNESSE WILLIAMS PRESENT MASCULINITY IN A STREETCAR
NAMED DESIRE?

Paragraph one:
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In the tragic play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams presents masculinity as a

holistic, violent and animalistic force
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After the war, in 1950s America, masculinity was expressed not through fighting in wars
but through the attainment of pleasure and sexual desire; sex is power, power over
women and power to display to other men
...

Stanley’s high masculinity and violence are presented through William’s use of plastic
theatre, predatory animalistic stage direction, and Blanche’s descriptions of him
...
Red has
connotations of both passion and desire as well as of anger and violence
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The concept of the man being the food provider reinforces primitive, gender roles
...


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In the Poker night scene, which Williams considered so important that he was going to
name the play ‘The Poker Night’, Williams creates a motif of passion and violence
through a ‘picture of van Gogh of a billiard parlor at night’
...

The use of the contrasting green and red continues in the watermelon slices on the table
representing women and sexual desire- the fact that they are on the table shows that
they are merely objects, free for consumption, and when Stanley “tosses some
watermelon rinds on the floor,” this represents how easily women are discarded and hurt
once they have been used by this masculinity endorsed in men
...
The use of color carries on through
the costumes-

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The men are dressed in colored shirts, and “they are men at the peak of their physical
manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colors”
The comparison of the role of men in society to primary colors paints them as the holistic
center of society
...


Stanley’s masculinity is presented as animalistically brutal through actions in the stage
directions such as ‘stalks fiercely’ and ‘charges’, after Stella and then strikes her,
resorting to physical violence, and making him seem like an animal in his fulfillment of
this masculine role
...
Blanche likewise is scared of him, she says “There’s
even something- sub-human -something not quite to the stage of humanity yet!” here,
the use of only exclamation marks and scripted non-fluency by Williams in Blanche’s
description of Stanley reveals her fear and desperation of this violent and animalistic
masculinity
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● Masculinity is presented as a societal construct that is practiced in some
people and disapproved of in others
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William said that Blanche is his self insert character, as indeed he shares many traits
with her, such as the tendency towards alcoholism, the charming nature, the slight
hysterical tendencies, the lying about their age, the tendency to be immersed in a world
of make-believe (for blanche this is her pretending things aren't as they really are, for
Williams this is his playwriting) and finally and most crucially, the manner of their desire,
which is frowned upon by society- both homosexuality and women trying to own their
sexuality was seen as outrageous- and, indeed, in the initial productions, both the
references to homosexuality and to Blanche’s implied prostitution were removed
...
The play is a tragedy because its protagonist suffers an unfortunate fate

and is fundamentally destroyed and lost at the play’s end- and Blanche is driven
to her end by masculinity
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● Allen’s homosexuality and effeminate manner are the two factors that lead to his
death, his ‘softness and tenderness which wasn’t like a man’s,’
● Blanche’s insubordination and boldness in the face of hedonistic masculinity is
what leads to her incarceration in the mental asylum, following her late husband
to the end of the Aristotelian tragic arc
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The social construct of masculinity was so relevant at the time that the first time that A
streetcar named Desire was performed, people clapped to see Blanche’s rape, to see
the ultimate animalistic triumph of masculinity over femininity, to see Blanche be put into
her place, so to speak, ironically displaying the same problem that Williams was trying to
critique
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when Stanley hits Stella, his cohort of friends speak quietly and lovingly to him’ other
men, who are lower down the hierarchy, endorse and even approve of Stanley’s
animalistic violence
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” here, he laughs at her view of the situation as serious, and patronises
her, telling her her fears are foolish
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Even Blanche, who is the direct opposition to Stanley’s brutishness, being a
representation of progress towards civilization, of ‘such things as art- as poetry and
music- such kinds of new light’ resorts to victim blaming, saying to Stella “ And you-you
let him? Didn’t run, didn’t scream?” Additionally, Blanche, whether she knows it or not, is
infected with masculine ideals of what a man should be, proven by her disgust at the

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homosexual nature of her young husband, Allen Grey, which is a view that was widely
held by the same people who perpetrated the ideals of holistic masculinity
...
) anything
can happen
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● Perhaps most importantly, Stella, a woman, is the very person who condemns Blache to
the Aristotelian tragic downfall, through this very same destructive masculinity- saying
she “couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley,” instead choosing to
condemn her raped sister to a mental asylum
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