This section contains 2,494 words (approx. 9 pages at 300 words per page) |
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Role of Gender in "A Streetcar Named Desire"
Summary: Essay discusses the representation of gender roles in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire."
Social upheaval in many senses was explicit through the beginning of the twentieth century; two world wars had - for a short time - shifted the balance of power between men and women. Women were increasingly employed to fill positions which had previously been considered masculine. This was not to last however, and by the fifties men had reassumed their more dominant role in society. People were finding new voices at this time by taking pre-existing forms and pushing the boundaries to re-voice established literary forms. Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire around the time this reversal was occurring in American society. Williams was a homosexual from the deep south of America, and his play is about physical, emotional and sexual conflict. We also see a discourse about the qualities of an Old South and a New America. It is an astute depiction of the continual metamorphosis...
This section contains 2,494 words (approx. 9 pages at 300 words per page) |
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