Jamil Ahmed.docx

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Jamil Ahmed Khurshid Alam American literature 20-12-2017

Domestic Violence, Mental Disorder and American Women: A Feminist study of A Street Car Named Desire

This study focuses on female subjugation and loneliness in post-war American society. For this purpose, I will explore the female conditions in Tennessee William’s A Street Car Named Desire, and the social and political effects on women’s lives. This study also highlights the female psychological issues like male callous towards women, sexual exploitation, gerascophobia, claustrophobia and hysteria. By deploying the feminist theory all these issues will be addressed in this paper focusing on female subjugation in view of Gilbert and Gubar's and Simone de Beauvior. Feminist literary criticism is a part of a wide political movement that has been working against male dominance, woman subjugation, female alienation, inequality and female identity. According to Judith Fetterley in The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (1978) that the literature from Hawthorne to Hemingway and Mailer is not universal literature. This is because it does not deal with female characters equally. The very same thing can be observed by Gilbert and Gubar's in Anxiety of Authorship Depicts the precursor poet as a sister or mother whose example enables the creativity of the latecomer writer to develop collaboratively against the confining and sickening backdrop of forbidding male literary authority. Diseases common among ·.women in

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male-dominated, misogynistic societies include agoraphobia, anorexia, bulimia, claustrophobia, hysteria, and madness in general, and they recur in the images, themes, and characters of women's literature (N.P). The subjugation of women doesn’t issue of modern day life. The issue of female authorship has been an issue to debate for years. All nominated theorist like Beauvoir and Mill have countered it. In his, The subjugation of Women observes, according to traditions, the women average are less gifted, most eminent women are inferior to mediocre scholars, a few women are fit for highest intellectual functions. Mill argues by putting the example of female emperors who take over in too pathetic circumstances and argues that if the women are fitter for rule rather writing let them rule. These all examples maybe justify that the female authors have their specific literature. Binaries opposite between men and women are political, not natural. These binaries allow the male to subjugate the women. According to Beauvoir women is not born rather they are made. The word female is the signifier of hater and inferiority. They live the life of female rather the life of human being as Beauvoir observes. In the mouth of a man the epithet female has the sound of an insult, yet he is not ashamed of his animal nature; on the contrary, he is proud if someone sys of him: 'He is a male!' The term 'female' is derogatory not because it emphasizes "woman's animality, but because it imprisons her in her sex; and if this sex seems to man to be contemptible and inimical even in harmless dumb animals, it is evidently because of the uneasy hostility stirred up in him by woman ( Beauvoir 35).

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Thus the animality of the male brings a lot of psychological issues in a society. The rationale of this oppression is the female frame set up by the male. This frame tells them that they are vulnerable and fragile. According to Christian myth; the women is the sign of evil and the man is thrown out from heaven because of woman. In The Bible, Genesis, states that labour pain is a punishment for women because they mislead the man in heaven. Beauvoir counters all religious and traditional myths that go against women. Apparently, they are true in their argument. It is because in this paly we see the mentioned diseases like gerascophobia, claustrophobia and hysteria. How these diseases are represented by William’s A Street Car Named Desired and other issues related to women subjugation in the play. Discussion In the opening scene, when Stanley is to go for bowling, he throws meat from down stair towards his wife. How does he get the meat either he killed some beast in forest or bought from shop it is uncertain, but his behavior is strange and hostile. Later, when he takes wine and has a row with his wife, he fells upon her and smashes many pots. Stella comes back the very same night to sleep with him despite his savage behavior. “He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's even something- sub-humansomething not quite to the stage of humanity yet!” (78). Blanche asks her sister that if she come back after all. The question is that where can she go if she does not have a compromise with his husband. The husband brings all of his friends and play poker over there. There is no any separate room for playing and living. So there is no privacy and separate room for the woman and her sister. In the early scene, when Blanche comes, Stella worries how to hide the drink party and poker game from her sister.

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This play was performed in 1947 very after World War II. Blanche comes to live with her sister in New Orleans. She had a big state, Bill Reve, now she does not have a single room to live, even she has been working as a prostitute. This shows the fall off old tradition to industrialization which deprive of the people from their states. When Blanche comes, Stanley searches out her trunk to find out the paper of her property and gives the reference to have share in her wife’s property, but the same man isn’t ready to provide a room for his sister in law. When he discovers that all the property has gone, he starts investigations against her. She does not want to live over there as she sates “I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again! Yes-I want Mitch ... very badly! Just think! If it happens! I can leave here and not be anyone's problem”(90 ). It means she is conscious that she is problem for her sister, but the question is still over there where does she goes neither have any job nor any home. The issue of agoraphobia presents in the play. Blanch fired from school having a relationship with a young gal. She works as a prostitute to earn her living. She does not want to go to public place even in the light. Now the question is that she sells her own body out. If the authorities do not provide her living, why do not they allow her to earn by selling her own body. What the reason behind it, she is sacred to mix with the people up. She never goes before 6 o clock with his boyfriend and always selects some dark place. When he asks about light and to see her in light she says “There is some obscure meaning in this but I fail to catch it” (William 132). We can say that the play raises some question here, on the darkness of human nature or on the modern civilization that is apparently illuminated but dark in reality. The concept of purity is the vital theme in all genre of American literature. The concept of purity haunts them on various grounds like social, political and religious. We can put the example of Miller’s Crucible and Hawthorn’s The Scarlet letter to justify this argument. In this

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play, the concept of the purity is used to subjugate the female character. Mitch wants to marry to Blanche. When he comes to know that she is not pure and has been spoiled by other men. He refuses to accept her saying this “you are not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother” (139). Blanche also says that next month is her birthday, under Virgo and when her sister asks what is Virgo she says “Virgo is Virgin” (84). The idea of

the virgin Merry is the

essence of Puritanism. There is no answer about her own purity or to get a new life and so on. Gerascophobia is a psychological disease in which the victim afraid of getting old. There is a number of social and political factors behind this. The issue of the gerascophobia is addressed in the play. Blanche comes to her sister. Maybe she has lost her heritage and there is no place to live. She tries to find herself a man to marry as Blanche states “when the girl is overthirty. They think a girl over thirty ought to-the vulgar term is-"put out."... And I-I'm not "putting out." Of course he-he doesn't know-I mean I haven't informed him-of my real age” (164). The stress on the phrase ‘put out’ shows that the women are not living being rather they are a commodity. The people can use them and cast off them after using.

There are two male characters, Mitch and Stanley she loves Mitch as she says that she wants to kiss him softly. We can argue that she says this because she has been used for sex as commodity as a prostitute to get her living. The second time she gets a person to love, but when he comes across with her past, he refuse to marry her raising the question on her chastity. The same man comes to use her for his sexual satisfaction in rough clothes. Stanley is her brother in law, he disgusts with her presence at her home. He not only realize her this but also investigates and tells her and as well as to her boyfriend about her past commenting that to marry her as if to jump into a tank full of sharks. He constantly haunts her as

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she says “I laid eyes on him I thought to myself, that man is my executioner” (104). He executes her by crushing her self-respect as he buys a ticket to send her back and search out her private documents including her love letters. In the final scene when Stanley is going to rap her, she tells him about the story of Mr. Shep Huntleigh and Texas millionaires to stop him. She also creates the stories about her beau to save her but all in vain. In the beginning of the play, we see the animality of the Stanley. The very same night she has to come back and sleep with her husband. Blanche says that she cannot live with her husband because there is only curtain between them. As she says “On the contrary, I saw him at his best! What such a man has to offer is animal force and he gave a wonderful exhibition of that” (75). This shows the savage nature of Stanley. She also says him swine along with Mitch. On the other hand Blanche is the antithesis of Stanley. We can support this argument by Stella’s speech. “I think Blanche didn't just love him but worshipped the ground he walked on” (115). So we can say that she is kind hearted lady who search for love and shelter but there is no room to save herself. Toward the end of the play, we see she suffers from mantel disorder. Rap is an element in her mental disorder but we cannot ignore when she says that she has “beauty of the mind” and “richness of the spirit” and “tenderness of the heart” but there nobody to understand her even her sister is unable to unearth the reasons of her disaster. She says that she will die on sea ship, her hand will in the hand of some beautiful doctor. The imagery of sea creates new questions which are still arguable.

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Work Cited The Second Sex by Simon de Beauvoir A Street Car Named Desir by Tennessee Williams Norton Anthology of literary theory, Anxiety of authorship by Gilbert and Gubar