A Victim Of Patriarchal Culture

Tennessee Williams, one of the literary giants in the twentieth century, reached an unprecedented height of play writing with the publication of A Streetcar Named Desire, which has gained him three major prizes in the dramatic world: the Pulitzer Prize, the Donaldson Award and the New York Drama Critics Award. The protagonist, Blanche DuBois, has aroused keenest attention and greatest admiration from scholars and critics through the years.This paper focuses on the analysis of the protagonist's (Blanche's) tragedy from a feminist angle. Blanche is a suffering woman: she is a victim of traditional moral modes, modern civilization and masculine autonomy. Misled by man's norms and mistreated by others around her, especially the antagonist, her brother-in-law Stanley, Blanche falls a victim of patriarchal society in modern times.There are six chapters in this thesis.Chapter one serves as an"introduction", which gives a general survey of Williams'life, his works and relevant literature reviews with a focus on A Streetcar Named Desire and the heroine. The author of this paper considers that the play is largely autobiographical. The main clash between the protagonist and the antagonist in the play imitates the real life of his noisy father and genteel mother. Moreover, to some degree, the heroine reflects some qualities of the playwright himself as well as his mother and sister. Criticism on Blanche together with that of Stanley can be roughly divided into three groups and the author of this paper agrees with the third one.Chapter Two,"Williams and Feminism", first observes Williams's great concern about women showed in the play, then points out that the purpose of patriarchal structure is to destroy the woman's consciousness about her own identity and affect her life options as a separate, independent self.