Examining Masculinities and Femininity in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire

Examining A Streetcar Named Desire through the lens of Gender and Masculinity Studies is an academically enriching and intriguing pursuit. The play, first performed on Broadway in 1947, continues to captivate with its portrayal of the characters of Stanley and Blanche. Stanley’s aggressive masculinity is pitted against the frailty of Blanche, leading to her breakdown and her ultimate escape into the unreal world of fantasy. This study aims to identify different types of masculinities; from Allan Grey’s closeted identity to Stanley Kowalsky's toxic masculinity, and how each affects Blanche Du Bois. It is intriguing to explore whether her distraught emotional state is entirely due to Stanley’s bestial toxicity or whether she is also a victim of femininity which is synonymous with frailty, beauty, and obsession with eternal youth. R.W. Connell’s Masculinities (R. W. Connell, 2005) , and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 2001) have been used as a framework to evaluate the male and female characters in the play.


INTRODUCTION "A plea for an understanding of the delicate people"
The Pulitzer-winning iconic play, A Streetcar Named Desire, premiered in 1947 (Gibbs, 1947), but it continues to entice the imagination of playgoers and readers in the present times.In its review in 'The New Yorker', Wolcott Gibbs described it as "fine and deeply disturbing" (Gibbs, 1947).It is about the disintegration of society and that of a gently raised Mississippi young woman who invents an imaginary world to escape the hideousness of the world she inhabits.The same year, Brooks Atkinson, in a review, referred to the play as a "poignant and luminous story" (Atkinson, 1947) spun out of poetic imagination and compassion.Williams's plays are "pleas for understanding the delicate people" ("Kim Hunter | Interview | American Masters | PBS," n.d.), recalls the actor Kate Hunter in an interview on PBS.Deriving from his personal experiences, Tennessee Williams has created unforgettable characters who can be studied through various perspectives.This research aims to dissect multilayered meanings through Gender and Masculinity studies.
Theatre, the most public of arts offers the "opportunity of acting out anxieties and fears which are born in the conflict between private needs and public values" (Bigsby, 1984).Williams's characters are "so often destroyed because they offer love in a world characterized by impotence and sterility".A Streetcar Named Desire delineates the tragedy of a romantic soul trapped in the unromantic vulgarity of the world.Bigsby adds, "Williams was the protagonist of all his plays.For at his best, he turned to his own experience, reshaping it to come to terms with what he freely admitted the pressures of a life deformed by psychic confusions".He relied heavily on his personal experiences to sketch his characters.His sister Rose, who was institutionalized into a sanatorium, can be seen reflected in the pathos of Blanche and his alcoholic father in the brutality of Stanley.His homosexuality can be seen in the muffled gasp of Allan, Blanche's dead husband.There are traces of William's own tumultuous, tormented childhood and early youth in this very moving play.The lyricism and pathos of his plays reflect the playwright himself.
In a 1947 article titled "A Playwright Named Tennyson", compiled by R.C Lewis in Conversations with Tennyson (1986), the playwright is quoted as saying, "I have had a deep feeling for the mystery of life, and essentially my plays have been an effort to explore the beauty and meaning in the confusion of living" (28) (Williams, 1986).The drama was, for Williams, an effort to get in touch with the essence of reality through the medium of his artistic creation.A Streetcar Named Desire continues to captivate audiences even after seventy-six years, as its appeal lies in the psychological complexity of interpersonal relationships and in its depiction of the fragmented psyche of a woman who is a victim of displaced values.The play also serves as a cultural artefact to assess the post-World War and post-nuclear age impact on society.Williams represents the growing discontent of the average people, who, despite the affluence of the country, became victims of materialism and consumerism.The promise of the 'American Dream' had tragically failed.
It is compelling to explore the impact of cultural ethos on the characters' dispositions and relationships.The present study primarily entails an analysis of the characters.Stanley Kowalsky, Blanche's gay husband, Alan, and Mitch exemplify different types of masculinities as formulated in R.W. Connell's theory of 'Hegemonic Masculinity'.Traditionally, Masculinity has been associated with male aggression and brute force, as well as subjugation and control of women, while femininity has been associated with submissiveness and subordination.Judith Butler's concept of 'performativity' explicates the manufactured quality of gender differentiation, through which Blanche's turmoil as a woman can be interpreted.Her affected coyness, her denial about her fading youth, and her ambivalence about her abilities as a single woman are coupled with her inability to let go of the tragic loss of her husband and the old-world charm of Belle Reeve.This imparts a selfdestructive quality to her character.She is the quintessential vulnerable woman who bears the emotional scar of lost love, family, and livelihood.For her, the stark reality of life is like the glare of light, which she avoids with paper lamps.Her psychological trauma is magnified when her delicate sophistication is confronted with the hypermasculine toxicity of Stanley.

R.W. CONNELL'S MODEL OF MASCULINITIES: HEGEMONIC, COMPLICIT, SUBORDINATE, MARGINALIZED MASCULINITY
The celebrated Australian Sociologist, R.W. Connell, demystified the study of masculinity.One of her early works, Gender and Power (1987) offers insights into the category of gender as a concept born out of socialization.As opposed to biological reductionism, Connell mentions the framework of Sex Role Theory in determining masculinity and femininity.It refers to the 'enactment' of specific roles befitting a man and a woman.Family, school, and parents serve as the "agencies of socialization"(R.Connell, 2009) that are instrumental in forming personality.
However, the Sex-Role theory fails to explain the structure of power in gender construction, which involves the superiority of men over women and that of hegemonic masculinity over all other kinds of masculinity.Connell (1987) writes: The social difference of men as holders of power is translated not only into mental body images and fantasies but into muscle tensions, postures, and the feel and texture of the body.This is one of the main ways in which the power of men becomes 'naturalized, i.e., seen as part of the order of nature.It is very important to allow the belief in the superiority of men, and the oppressive practices that flow from it, to be sustained by men who, in other respects, have very little power.Gender roles become institutionalized through the family, the state, and, by extension, through popular culture on the street and media.Connell calls it an intricate "network of links" rooted in the body's reproductive function and the biological sex with which one is born.It becomes "stabilized to the extent that the groups constituted in the network have interests in the conditions for cyclical rather than divergent practice".
In Masculinities (R. W. Connell, 2005), Connell defines masculinity and femininity as 'configurations of gender practice', which are not homogeneous constructs but have layers of myriad identities within each.To elucidate this further, she devised a model that includes four types of Masculinities: "Hegemonic", "Complicit", "Subordinate", and "Marginalized" (R. W. Connell, 2005).Connell's model provides a very useful framework that can be used as a tool to interpret the male characters in the play, A Streetcar Named Desire (Gibbs, 1947).Describing 'Hegemonic Masculinity', she writes: Hegemonic masculinity can be defined as the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women… Hegemony relates to cultural dominance in society.Within that overall framework, there are specific gender relations of dominance and subordination between groups of men.The group of men who do not fall into the mainstream dominant segment, yet "gain from its hegemony, since they benefit from the patriarchal dividend, the advantage men in general gain from the overall subordination of women" falls into the "Complicit" category.Oppression and homophobia situate homosexual men at the bottom of the gender hierarchy among men."…From the point of view of hegemonic masculinity, gayness is easily assimilated to femininity".Such men belong to the group of "Subordinate" masculinity.Connell explains that "Marginalized" masculinity constitutes those men who are products of "the interplay of gender with other structures such as class and race".
Violence, aggression, and exercising the power of control are generally associated with masculinity.Connell asserts that there are two "patterns of violence".Violence inflicted on women includes the following: Intimidation of women ranges across the spectrum from wolf-whistling in the street to office harassment to rape and domestic assault to murder by a woman's patriarchal 'owner', such as a separated husband.Physical attacks are commonly accompanied by verbal abuse of women (whores and bitches, in recent popular music that recommends beating women) …(men) usually feel they are entirely justified, that they are exercising a right.They are authorized by an ideology of supremacy.The other pattern involves "terror as a means of drawing boundaries and making exclusions, for example, in heterosexual violence against gay men.Violence can become a way of claiming or asserting masculinity in group struggles".
The embodiment of hegemonic masculinity contributes to hypermasculinity and toxic masculinity, which is exhibited by the character of Stanley in the play.He plays poker, indulges in domestic violence, is loud and vulgar, demands his entitlement as the husband of Stella, is sexually virile, and rapes Blanche to silence her and deprive her of agency.He traumatizes her to the extent that she totally loses contact with reality at the end of the play.Mitch is an embodiment of "complicit masculinity".Unlike Stanley, he is gentle, warm, and responsive towards Blanche and takes care of his invalid mother, but Stanley influences him and unquestioningly accepts his superiority.Blanche's gay husband, Alan suffered social exclusion which led him to commit suicide.According to Connell's model, he fits into the "subordinate masculinity" category.He is a poet, a delicate dream-like lover of Blanche, who, despite being a man, does not exhibit any of the stereotyped traits of masculinity.His homosexuality, which had been closeted, gives him a sense of guilt on being discovered by Blanche.In the heterosexual framework of society, he feels displaced, and this leads him to commit suicide.
Though all three characters are men, they demonstrate different personalities and 'masculinity', and each influences Blanch leading to her tragic disintegration and institutionalization into a sanatorium.

THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE AND PERFORMATIVITY
Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, originally written in 1963, became synonymous with "the problem that has no name" (Friedan, 2001).The author identified the problem to be the accepted social idea of femininity.Anna Quindlen, in its publication in the year 2001, wrote in the introduction that the book affected millions of women "who jettisoned empty hours of endless housework and found work, and meaning, outside of raising their children and feeding their husbands".Household chores, children, and husbands summed up the existence of women.Friedan's book, first published in 1963, is relevant for this research because it captures the sociocultural ethos and the position of women in the middle of the twentieth century.As a contemporary of Tennessee Williams, she gives useful insights pertaining to women's minds.She writes: Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity… They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights-the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for… All they had to do was devote their lives from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children.
Friedan writes that fifteen years after the Second World War, this mystique of feminine fulfilment became the "cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary American culture… Nobody argued whether women were inferior or superior to men; they were simply different.Words like "emancipation" and "career" sounded strange and embarrassing; no one had used them for years".Women's existence was defined through marriage and their families alone.Though the outward façade continued to shine, the inner core of women had begun to develop cracks.There was a 'problem that had no name' being faced by countless women.As the vacuity within women's consciousness came to be recognized, Friedan puts on record the growing number of women who complained of symptoms of depression and mental illness.She writes in detail: In 1960, the problem that has no name burst like a boil through the image of the happy American housewife… Of the growing thousands of women currently getting private psychiatric help in the United States, the married ones were reported dissatisfied with their marriages, the unmarried ones suffering from anxiety and, finally, depression.
The underlying problem manifested itself in symptoms like loss of appetite, insomnia, depression, and angst faced by women.The Feminine Mystique echoed the malady of women across the globe.It was translated into multiple languages and triggered the second wave of feminism with renewed vigour.Though the author was criticized for not taking cognizance of the intersectionality of class, colour, race, and sexual orientation, her daring insights do give a picture of the dismal emotional and mental state of women.
By the 1990s, Gender studies had begun to gain academic prominence, Judith Butler made a phenomenal contribution by theorizing about the creation of male and female stereotypes through her concept of performativity.Butler's Gender Trouble has become one of the founding texts in feminist theory and queer studies.It highlights the 'performative' aspect of gender.She rejected the biological determinism associated with gender roles and attributed it to cultural and socialization processes that operated primarily within the heterosexual framework.Butler reiterated that the gendered self is produced "by the regulation of attributes along culturally established lines of coherence" (Butler, 2006).This regulatory quality is acquired by gendered bodies through a series of performative acts, thus making gender not a noun, but a verb."Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being".The repetition of stylized acts creates a hallucinatory effect of normativity and becomes common practice.Femininity and masculinity are hence replicated in each culture through "performativity".
Blanche du Bois is an embodiment of stereotypical femininity.She seeks fulfillment and self -actualization through marriage, family, husband, and children.She hopes to marry Mitch, is emotionally moved to discover that Stella is pregnant, and is shocked to see the vulgarity of Stanley's crudeness and brutality.Her dream conception of marriage and family is at odds with the mundane sordidness of Stanley and Stella's marriage.Unlike Stella, she is incapable of shedding the pretentious femininity that was inculcated in them as young girls at Belle Reeve.She tries to recreate the "magic" of 'feminine mystique through performativity.Stanley embodies hypermasculinity through his acts of violence, verbal and sexual abuse, and aggression.The careful portrayal of his physicality and machismo also emphasizes his masculinity.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: EMBODIMENT OF 'MASCULINITIES' AND 'FEMININITY 'IN THE PLAY
"Ravishment of the tender, sensitive, the delicate by the savage and brutal forces of the society" (Greta & Smith, 2014, p. 273), is how Williams described the play.In her book Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights (Adler, 2012) the actress and acting instructor gives her analysis of the characters.Adler says, "Stanley represents the seductive, destructive male force, born of primitive instincts.Blanche represents the aristocracy of mind, clinging to her strength in judgment" (Adler, 2012).She does not want a vulgar word spoken."Her mask of gentility is a necessary defence against the outside world's opinions of her.Placed opposite the vulgar Stanley, she feels superior and looks down on him".Stella Adler's analysis of Blanche echoes the ideas elucidated by Friedan and Butler discussed above.Adler writes: Blanche puts two thousand years of culture into the performance she constantly lives.It is a way of sustaining herself and entertaining others, even at Stanley's house-an entertaining feminine way with all her things around her, and la-di-da-da!She never stops playing the role of the delicate one, even when her tongue is very sharp.Initially, Blanche flirts with Stanley but later confronts him for his crude ungentlemanly behaviour.Stanley displays toxic behaviour in the company of his male friends.They play poker and indulge in a drunken brawl.Stanley yells at Stella and Blanche and throws the radio from the window in a fit of rage.His hypermasculinity further manifests when he beats up his pregnant wife.
In Toxic Masculinity (Whitehead, 2021), Stephen Whitehead documented that in 2018, Oxford Universities Dictionaries included the word 'toxic', as the word of the year (17).Whitehead first used 'toxic masculinity, in his book Gender and Identity (2013), making it a part of the academic lexicon."It has exploded into global consciousness, contributing to a new political awareness about male behaviour" (Whitehead, 2021).He further describes: It is a devastating critique, a recognition that not only is "something is not quite right" with many males, but that a significant percentage of the global male population has acquired a form of masculinity which is misogynistic, self-destructive, deadly and damaging to all of us, even to the planet itself.
Whitehead reveals that despite being in the spotlight, toxic male behaviour has acquired the alarming proportions of a "global pandemic" because it is not merely confined to a few aberrant males but is deeply embedded in the human psyche."Through nothing less than the brutal application of physical force, men have declared themselves rulers since societies first formed, and every time they ruled, they made rules over women".Stanley Kowalsky exercises power over women as well as other male characters.He embodies "hegemonic masculinity", and his toxicity manifests itself in his abusive behaviour, aggression, violence, and rape of Blanche.He displays no gentleness and becomes vindictive towards Blanche after he overhears her conversation with Stella about himself, whom she calls a savage "Pollack".Stanley exposes her past to Mitch, destroying her last hope of survival, he later rapes her while Stella is hospitalized for the delivery of her baby.Stella ignores his animality.Regarding Stella's acceptance of Stanley Adler says: Stella avoids being shipwrecked by compromising-by marrying Stanley.She has the ability to satisfy herself with him and with their common gratifications.In that respect, marriage Examining Masculinities and Femininity in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire (Manjari Johri) is gratifying for ordinary people who share an inclination for the commonplace way of life.They are very fortunate (Adler, 2012, p. 310).Mitch is empathetic towards Blanche and hopes to marry her.They spend a pleasant evening knowing each other, but he is influenced by Stanley who does not want his friend to associate with a woman of loose character.According to R.W. Connell's model, he could be placed in the category of "complicit masculinity".Adler's assessment of his character is interesting She writes: The thing that Mitch understands in women is what Blanche finds attractive … But later, after Stanley exposes her past, Mitch comes stumbling in, drunk and angry, and he's an altogether different person.He wants to have his way with her and see her face in bright light.He says he wants her to be "realistic."When Blanche says she wants magic, not reality, Mitch laughs at her.He says she lied to him.She says she never lied in her heart.He says she's not "clean" enough to enter his mother's house.Blanche's dead husband, Allan Grey never appears in the play, yet is present all along, like the Varsouviana Polka tune that is used as one of the symbols in the play.She told him how he disgusted her for being gay, while they were dancing to the tune.He shot himself soon after.Being a homosexual in the 1950s was not uncommon, but it came with immense social stigma.Allan is an embodiment of "subordinate masculinity", he is a man, who displays none of the stereotyped traits of masculinity.In an article, 'Queer Subversion in A Streetcar Named Desire', Francisco Costa writes that in the play, Williams adopts a double performance, a highly heterosexual and a homosexual one.The latter is richer in terms of interpretations, but it is hidden in the sub-text "behind the doors of the white straight America of the 1950s" (Costa, 2014, pp. 77-85).Allan is symbolically present in the play and is one of the causes of Blanche's destruction.She shares with Mitch her most sacred and painful past: He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl.When I was sixteen, I made the discovery-love… There was something different about the boy, a nervousness, a softness and tenderness which wasn't like a man's, although he wasn't the least bit effeminate lookingstill -that thing was there ...Then I found out.In the worst of all possible ways.By coming suddenly into a room that I thought was empty-which wasn't empty, but had two people in it ... the boy I had married and an older man who had been his friend for years ... (Gibbs, 1947, pp. 108-109) He is described by her in terms of masculinity.Though Allan was not effeminate, he had a nervousness, softness, and tenderness, not like that of a man.She is guilty about her homophobic reaction and regrets that she could not help him or find out how would she have adapted to him after his sexual identity was revealed to her.
Tennessee Williams gives a whole spectrum of masculinities through the male characters; each affects Blanche in a destructive way.However, her final and total disintegration can also be attributed to her stereotyped notions of femininity.Blanche comes across as a prototype of women described by Friedan in her The Feminine Mystique, who ascribed purpose to their lives only through their families, household work, children, and husbands.She became a victim of her romantic fantasy that rendered her incapable of being resilient and self-sufficient.Blanche admits to Mitch, "I don't want realism.I want magic![Mitch laughs] Yes, yes, magic!I try to give that to people.I misrepresent things to them.I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth.And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it".She confesses to him about the comfort she got through her intimate relationships with men.Despite trying to fit into the ideal feminine role, she also comes across as a rebel who claims selfhood and explores her sexuality through these transient affairs.She reveals her past to Mitch and is rejected by him for not being fit to live with his mother.Blanche daringly confesses: Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers.After the death of Allan intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with ....I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection-here and there, in the most-unlikely places-even, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy but somebody wrote the superintendent about it-"This woman is morally unfit for her position!".Her last lines to the doctor who escorts her to the mental health facility are heart-wrenchingly tragic.She says, "Whoever you are -I have always depended on the kindness of strangers".Stella sobs, and the play ends with Stanley comforting her, as his fingers reach out to her blouse.She mutely accepts him, revealing the helplessness of a wife who depends on her husband for financial security and loves him despite his ill-treatment of Blanche and herself.

CONCLUSION
The characters in the play subscribe to the socially constructed norms of gender and identity.Those who deviate from the normative scale are doomed to a tragic end.Blanche and Stella are both feminine characters who subscribe to socially accepted gender roles; Stella, the young subservient wife, finds Stanley's savagery curiously attractive.She is advised to ignore Blanche's rape by Eunice.For them, marriage has a social premium and should be preserved at all costs by women.Blanche seeks support from Mitch as her last resort.When that too fails, she tragically utters how she has always depended on the "kindness of strangers".Her social, emotional, and financial dependence makes her vulnerable.She creates "magic" in real life, to escape the brutal ugliness of reality.Blanche's excessive obsession with her appearance, advancing age, and desire to look pretty and be attractive to men reveal her insecurities as a woman.Through the character of Blanche, Williams represents the impact of social validation on the emotional well-being of women.The male characters range from the toxic Stanley to the self-conscious, guilt-ridden, and confused Allan.The homosexuality of Allan does not fall into the accepted notions of masculinity, and he faces rejection from Blanche, whom he loved deeply.His deviation from the 'normal' leads to his suicide.
The hegemonic model of Masculinity offers valuable insights into deciphering the complexity of Stanley, Mitch, and Allan.It highlights the fluid nature of their identity.The concepts propounded by R.W. Connell in Masculinities (R. W. Connell, 2005) liberate men from getting stereotyped into unidimensional roles.The three leading male characters in the play have a catastrophic impact on Blanche.Still, her total identification with the self-limiting notions of femininity can also be attributed to her tragic disconnect from the real world.She has been socially trapped by the misleading charms of being a woman, as described in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 2001).It finally leads her into the illusory labyrinth of her imagination, where a make-believe gentleman delivers her from her loneliness and suffering.Socially constructed notions of masculinity and femininity lead humans to subscribe to performative behaviour, thereby circumscribing them into predetermined templates, which, as in the case of Blanche and Allan unmistakably leads to psychological turmoil and heart-wrenching tragedy.
Though written and presented in 1947, Tennessee Williams (Williams, 1986) classic play remains relevant even in the present.There have been phenomenal advancements in areas such as gender studies, women's rights, mental health issues, and notions of beauty and age.Growing academic interest has been coupled with social awareness and activism, which has led to more inclusivity in society.This has empowered both men and women, and the scale of gender identification has become more fluid.The play is a landmark text in the English Language, which is an essential part of American Literature in Universities and Colleges, and it is worthwhile for the readers to read it through the lens of gender and women's studies.It allows us to contextualize the text in the modern intellectual climate and identify how different types of masculinities operate in contemporary social situations and how women have been empowered by breaking the glass ceiling.