Essay Comparing A Streetcar Named Desire And The World's Wife
Explore the similarities and differences in the presentation of female characters in A Streetcar Named Desire and ‘The World’s Wife
The presentation of female characters plays a very significant role in both A Streetcar Named Desire and The World’s Wife and though these texts express similar ideas about women, there is also substantial differences. Tennessee Williams’ ASCND, tragic first produced in 1947, sets his female characters within the patriarchal society of post Second World War New Orleans society. Williams’s uses his female protagonist Blanche Dubois to explore the female repression that was present in the late 1940’s before radical feminism made an impact in the 1960’s. In contrast, Carol Anne Duffy’s TWW published in 1999 is …show more content…
However, creating a different identity to fit in was very common in her poems. In ‘’Mrs Quasimodo’, Mrs Quasimodo feels a lot of self disgust as she feels like she needs to change herself in order to be loved. This poem reinforces the fact that Blanche also thought that she needed to create a fake identity to cover the truth, as it would ruin her future. Just like Blanche, Mrs Quasimodo feels like one needs to be “perfect, vulnerable and young” and “to be slim, be slight” have your “ slender neck quoted between two thumbs”, be “beautiful with creamy skin, and tumbling auburn hair” in order to attract likewise to Blanche who doesn’t like being seen in the light. However, the contrast between Duffy’s poem and Williams’ play is that in Duffy’s poems, women always fight back and retain their poetic voice. Mrs Quasimodo destroys what she loves, not just as an act of empowerment but as an act of destruction. In ‘Mrs Quasimodo’, the female character ended up depicting female independence when she ‘pissed’ on what she loved in the sense that it’s over forever, whereas in ASCND, Williams’ characters had no choice but to obey male figures in a male dominated time
The presentation of female characters plays a very significant role in both A Streetcar Named Desire and The World’s Wife and though these texts express similar ideas about women, there is also substantial differences. Tennessee Williams’ ASCND, tragic first produced in 1947, sets his female characters within the patriarchal society of post Second World War New Orleans society. Williams’s uses his female protagonist Blanche Dubois to explore the female repression that was present in the late 1940’s before radical feminism made an impact in the 1960’s. In contrast, Carol Anne Duffy’s TWW published in 1999 is …show more content…
However, creating a different identity to fit in was very common in her poems. In ‘’Mrs Quasimodo’, Mrs Quasimodo feels a lot of self disgust as she feels like she needs to change herself in order to be loved. This poem reinforces the fact that Blanche also thought that she needed to create a fake identity to cover the truth, as it would ruin her future. Just like Blanche, Mrs Quasimodo feels like one needs to be “perfect, vulnerable and young” and “to be slim, be slight” have your “ slender neck quoted between two thumbs”, be “beautiful with creamy skin, and tumbling auburn hair” in order to attract likewise to Blanche who doesn’t like being seen in the light. However, the contrast between Duffy’s poem and Williams’ play is that in Duffy’s poems, women always fight back and retain their poetic voice. Mrs Quasimodo destroys what she loves, not just as an act of empowerment but as an act of destruction. In ‘Mrs Quasimodo’, the female character ended up depicting female independence when she ‘pissed’ on what she loved in the sense that it’s over forever, whereas in ASCND, Williams’ characters had no choice but to obey male figures in a male dominated time