violence and marriage
... The play selected for the oral presentation called A Streetcar Named Desire, which is written by Tennessee Williams, portrays the two different attitudes towards marriage. On the one hand, the first one is performed by Stella and Stanley Kowalski; a marriage in which a submissive wife, at first, starts to reveal against her authoritarian husband. On the other hand, the relationship between Mitch and Blanche far from being a relation based on love, it is a courtship based on self-interest. Whereas Mitch is looking for company, once his mother is about to die, Blanch tries to escape from a cruel and fateful world, that is her past. Nevertheless, Blanche’s real hope is to stay close to her sister in order to be respected and treated as a queen. So, with respect to what we are dealing with, it is striking to note the connection between marriage and violence in this play. First of all, as regards marriage the most important instance of it in this play is the one featured by Stella and Stanley Kowalski. Stella is twenty-five years old and she has grown up in a rich family. She represents the prototype of wife who obeys her husband. She tries to satisfy all the people around her and we have a clear instance of what we say when Blanche arrives to Stella’s home and she is always meeting to Blanche. (page 120) On the one hand, one of the main features of Stella is that she is always quite and she is also able to adapt to circumstances and we have the evidence from the text when she decides to leave the luxurious Belle Reeve and goes to the humble New Orleans. On the other hand, quite the opposite is her husband, Stanley, who is also a young man who comes from a Polish family, so they are immigrants. Another aspect that is very important to comment is that Williams writes a very good description of him on page 128. Stanley’s main feature is aggressiveness in the sense that he is always shouting. He is the leader, the bowling team captain, and the husband and, as he says on page 195, he is also “the king of his home”. As individual human beings, Stella and Stanley are completely different, but as marriage they are complementary because while he assumes the role of the leader, she accepts the role of servant. Another important feature of this marriage is love. Although they have some problems because of Stanley’s aggressiveness, she loves him and he loves her (requited love) and we have the evidence of it on pages 125, 154 and 162. As regards the second marriage, Steve and Eunice Hubbel, they are Kowalski’s neighbours. If we analyse those characters individually, they are not important at all, but the importance of them lies on marriage. They have common features with Stella and Stanley. Steve is also a hard working and Eunice also works at home. But Eunice is different from Stella because she stands up to her husband, as for example on page 128. Despite this, the most important scene may be when Steve hits Eunice and she forgives him. This situation may be an influence to Stella. With respect to the last instance of couple consisting of Blanche and Mitch, it is important to say that although they are not married, we have to take into account numerous facts that make them different from the other couples. In this case, we got two people who belong to different social classes but with something in common à they both have similar pasts. On the one hand, Blanche fell in love with a young poet, but he passes away. On the other hand, Mitch was with a girl who will die later as well, so they are alone and in need of love now. As regards what we are dealing with, we have great evidence on pages 149 and 183. This would not be considered as a relationship based on love, but a courtship of convenience. Mitch’s mother is about to die, so when this happens he will not have anyone left, and Blanche is in her thirties, she is beautiful, but she has a dark past behind her. She has no money, anywhere to go and she needs someone who cares for her. As regards this we have the evidence from the play on page 184. As regards the last point is this section, man’s power, we could say that, undoubtedly, this play shows the supremacy of the man over the woman in two respects. The first one is man’s physical and mental authority and the second one is that they put the woman in a stereotypical place. As regards what we are dealing with, we have two other examples that can clarify what we say. One of them is the change of the wife’s surname. At the beginning of the play, we can see how Stella has changed her surname, Dubois, to that of her husband’s, Kowalski. With respect to it, we have the evidence from the text on page 118, when Blanche arrives at Elysian Fields and asks for Stella Dubois. Another important instance is the Napoleonic Code, a law come from Louisiana that says the following: “Whatever belongs to the wife belongs to the husband and vice versa. We have an evidence of it on page 133. With respect to our second topic, violence in marriage, we can see at the very beginning of the play that most of the marriages consist of fighting. Eunice and Steve have a very important scene in the play in the page 165. In this scene, the marriage is fighting because she thinks that Steve is unfaithful to her with a blonde. Then, Eunice throws something at him and he smacks her up. Later on, she goes out and threatens him to call the police, but when Steve goes to apologize to her, she forgives him and they go home. We have an evidence of it on page 168. As regards what we are dealing with, it is striking to note that Stanley and Stella have some fights too. The first one takes place when Stanley and his friends are playing poker. Stella says to him that the play has come to an end, so he hits her. Then, Blanche turns the radio on, and he turns it off. Ten minutes later, Blanche turns on the radio again, so he takes the radio and throws it out ...