✧A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE A LEVEL MASCULINITY ESSAY
PLAN-✧
HOW DOES TENNESSE WILLIAMS PRESENT MASCULINITY IN A STREETCAR
NAMED DESIRE?
Paragraph one:
● In the tragic play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams presents masculinity as a
holistic, violent and animalistic force
● After the war, in 1950s America, masculinity was expressed not through fighting in wars
but through the attainment of pleasure and sexual desire; sex is power, power over
women and power to display to other men.
● Williams uses Stanley as an embodiment of high masculinity, portraying him as brute-like
and physically dominant, which as sex is power, means that he is highly sexually driven.
● Stanley’s high masculinity and violence are presented through William’s use of plastic
theatre, predatory animalistic stage direction, and Blanche’s descriptions of him.
● In our very first introduction to Stanley, he hurls a red package of meat at Stella. Red has
connotations of both passion and desire as well as of anger and violence. The meat
itself is a sexual innuendo- in hurling it at Stella, Stanley states the sexual property he
holds over her, and Stella's delight in catching it signifies her sexual infatuation with him.
The concept of the man being the food provider reinforces primitive, gender roles. This is
a presentation of how things ‘should’ be in society according to the social construct of
masculinity.
● In the Poker night scene, which Williams considered so important that he was going to
name the play ‘The Poker Night’, Williams creates a motif of passion and violence
through a ‘picture of van Gogh of a billiard parlor at night’. Van Gogh described the
post-impressionistic piece as “an attempt to express the terrible passions of humanity by
means of green and red.
● The use of the contrasting green and red continues in the watermelon slices on the table
representing women and sexual desire- the fact that they are on the table shows that
they are merely objects, free for consumption, and when Stanley “tosses some
watermelon rinds on the floor,” this represents how easily women are discarded and hurt
once they have been used by this masculinity endorsed in men.
● This is then supplemented by William’s use of plastic theatre, where he uses contrasting
colors to foreshadow the clashing conflict later on. The use of color carries on through
the costumes-
PLAN-✧
HOW DOES TENNESSE WILLIAMS PRESENT MASCULINITY IN A STREETCAR
NAMED DESIRE?
Paragraph one:
● In the tragic play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams presents masculinity as a
holistic, violent and animalistic force
● After the war, in 1950s America, masculinity was expressed not through fighting in wars
but through the attainment of pleasure and sexual desire; sex is power, power over
women and power to display to other men.
● Williams uses Stanley as an embodiment of high masculinity, portraying him as brute-like
and physically dominant, which as sex is power, means that he is highly sexually driven.
● Stanley’s high masculinity and violence are presented through William’s use of plastic
theatre, predatory animalistic stage direction, and Blanche’s descriptions of him.
● In our very first introduction to Stanley, he hurls a red package of meat at Stella. Red has
connotations of both passion and desire as well as of anger and violence. The meat
itself is a sexual innuendo- in hurling it at Stella, Stanley states the sexual property he
holds over her, and Stella's delight in catching it signifies her sexual infatuation with him.
The concept of the man being the food provider reinforces primitive, gender roles. This is
a presentation of how things ‘should’ be in society according to the social construct of
masculinity.
● In the Poker night scene, which Williams considered so important that he was going to
name the play ‘The Poker Night’, Williams creates a motif of passion and violence
through a ‘picture of van Gogh of a billiard parlor at night’. Van Gogh described the
post-impressionistic piece as “an attempt to express the terrible passions of humanity by
means of green and red.
● The use of the contrasting green and red continues in the watermelon slices on the table
representing women and sexual desire- the fact that they are on the table shows that
they are merely objects, free for consumption, and when Stanley “tosses some
watermelon rinds on the floor,” this represents how easily women are discarded and hurt
once they have been used by this masculinity endorsed in men.
● This is then supplemented by William’s use of plastic theatre, where he uses contrasting
colors to foreshadow the clashing conflict later on. The use of color carries on through
the costumes-
