Compliance And Subversion

Tennessee Williams(1911-1983)is one of the most prominent playwrights in the twentieth century American literature.Being the most awarded play of Williams' s prolific oeuvres,A Streetcar Named Desire(1947)enjoys the most popularity both in public as well as critical concern and therefore is regarded as his most representative work.This thesis intends to probe into the acts and changes of gender performances of the main character Blanche DuBois with the guidance of Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity combined with textual analysis of her interpersonal relationship.In doing so,we can have a detailed clue of Blanche's gender performativity and conclude that Blanche experiences a transformation from compliance to subversion that deviates from her contextual background and leads to her final destruction.The thesis includes three parts,namely the introduction,the body and the conclusion.The introduction provides information about Tennessee Williams and his work A Streetcar Named Desire,along with a comprehensive literature review and a general introduction to Judith Butler's concept of gender performativity.The body of this thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One discusses Blanche DuBois' s gender identification as a Southern belle waiting for gentlemen callers before she moves to French Quarter,where Blanche shows her compliance with her gender role that her society casts upon her.Chapter Two interprets her ambivalence in the construction of a suitable gender identity.The loss of Belle Reve as well as her encounter with Stella and Mitch whose shocking attitudes and changing notions toward sex contribute to her growing confusion in genderidentification,which gradually pushes her to mental desperation.Chapter Three examines the motifs and factors that drive Blanche into subversive performances against her compulsory ordered gender identity in the shadow of Stanley's retaliated scheme and ex-husband Allan Grey's homosexuality.She is dependent on and tragically destroyed by the kindness of strangers.The thesis therefore comes to the conclusion that the tragic fate of Blanche DuBois is largely due to her confusion and failure in the construction of gender identity in her experiment of gender performances under the context of her limited social milieu,which externally and internally destroys her recognition in practicing a flexible gender role.