A Streetcar Named Desire Theme/Topic/Subject

A Streetcar Named Desire is a call to action for all women in the late 1940s early 1950s in an attempt to have women become independent and able to support themselves without the help of a man. During the time period that the story was written our country was just coming out of the Great Depression. This meant that money was still tight for most American households and aside from that there were still limited opportunities for women in the work force and in athletics. In Blanche's last line of the play she says "Whoever you are-I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Her inability to provide for her self meant that she had no choice but to use her body as a means to get her by and relied on the constant men she gave it to for satisfaction. Throughout the story Williams tried to show the consequences of Blanche's dependence on these men till eventually her slow decay led to her ending up in an insane asylum. This was a sort of wake up call for the women of that time as it showed what could ultimately become of them as well (although I don't think many of them would have ended up in an insane asylum.) Do you think the women of that time period received the message?

A Streetcar Named Desire Untold Story

A Streetcar Named Desire is the untold story of the struggle women went through in the late 1940s late 1950s especially when it came to depending on men to make a decent living with Blanche DuBois being a prime example of that. The Untold Story of Blanche DuBois is a tragedy. Blanche tried her best to keep her untold story a secret but once Stanley found out and told her love interest Mitch it completely ruined what relationship they had. In the past Blanche had a young husband who was secretly homosexual. When Blanche found this out she told him he disgusted her which led him to commit suicide and she felt that she has pushed him to the edge and was the reason he took his own life and lived with that grief ever since. This led to her becoming an alcoholic to cope with the pain and she started having sexual intercourse with many a young men which was also how she ended up being fired from her teaching job after she was caught having an affair with a student. Without her family mansion and her being kicked out of the motel she moved into Blanche had no choice but to move in with her sister. The steady decline of Blanche highlights the effect that losing her husband had on her life as a whole.Without her husband Blanche became helpless which might also be the reason besides sex that Stella wouldn't leave Stanley. Without him she would have no money, without him she would have no place to stay, and without him she would be lonely just like Blanche. Are woman just as dependent on men to live a middle class lifestyle today as they were back then?

A Streetcar Named Desire Changing Elements

In our society today we are starting to bring to light the issues of double standards. A double standard by definition according to Merriam-Webster.com is "a set of principles that applies differently and usually more rigorously to one group of people or circumstances than to another; especially: a code of morals that applies more severe standards of sexual behavior to women than to men". During the course of the story A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche DuBois the main protagonist ended up getting raped by her brother in law whom is also the main antagonist Stanley. All the meanwhile her sister was giving birth to her nephew in the hospital. Although when Blanche told her sister Stella of the rape she refused to believe it  claiming "I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley."What would have happened if it was the other way around? What if Blanche raped Stanley instead? You probably don't have an answer to that because to us as people it is unfathomable to imagine a big strong man being taken advantage of by a small woman and this is where we start to see the double standard kick in. I would like to believe that although usually when a woman reports rape it is believed to be true with no questions asked, however in this story it is the complete opposite, if Stanley had said Blanche raped him his wife Stella would have most definitely believed him. This would mean that Blanche would have been kicked out immediately rather than being taken to an insane asylum so regardless of what happened Blanche was fated to meet a not so happy ending. What do you think would have happened to Blanche if she raped Stanley would Stella refuse to believe it all the same or would she take Stanley"s word for it?

Girl

Don’t be a slut, whatever you do don’t be a slut, you simply cannot be a slut. In “Girl” a mother tries her absolute best to make sure her daughter does not become a slut and tries to teach her how to behave as a woman via society’s standards. “Try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming.”, “This is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming.”,” And this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming.”  It is always the woman’s job to cook, clean, and take care of children… or at least that’s what society believes. Today women are doctors, lawyers, police officers, and basically whatever the heck they want to be. But we still haven’t overcome the stereotypes that woman belong in the kitchen, the man is supposed to make more money, and the woman is supposed to watch after the kids. “Girl” is a testament to that. It is essentially a mother teaching her daughter how to do everything to keep her man happy such as “This is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease.” and “This is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard.” But what happens if she doesn’t keep her man happy, what if after all her mother teaches her she can’t keep her man, “but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you really are going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?” Congratulations… you have become a slut.

The Danger of a Single Story

In “The Danger of a Single Story” author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains what a so called “single story” is and the effect it has on people. A single story is what you get when you use what information you have without looking furthermore into a person or topic and from that you decide that that is all there is to it. An example Adichie used to prove this is was when she reminisced about her single story about her live-in domestic helper whose name was Fide and his family in Line 42 claiming “All I heard about them how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.” Most often we as people create single stories of others but not by choice, just out of habit. A single story is a little bit different than an assumption because to make an assumption you must use more than just the information you have at hand and they are not misconceptions because for the most part they are usually true. Single stories are subtler than both of those altogether because single stories are what we get when we are given information but are too lazy to discover the rest. What was ever stopping the author from asking her mother about Fide’s family, what was stopping the author’s roommate from learning more about Africa rather than just believing what she had heard and had been portrayed by the media in Line 64, what made a story authentically African according to the authors professor in Line 83? I’ll tell you what it was. It was the inability to care. Do you think it’s possible to stop people from manifesting single stories or are single stories just apart of human nature?