Bubb - Presentations of Masculinity

‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Williams is, among other things, a rich and complex study of the issue of gender. While there is a great deal to discuss about the portrayal of femininity in Williams’s presentations of Stella and Blanche, it is the male characters who particularly interest Simon Bubb.

• In staging Masculinity: Male identity in Contemporary American Drama, Carla J McDonough states that A Streetcar Named Desire:

‘offers perhaps the best example of the complex of male positions that Williams creates. The ‘sensual brute’ Stanley, Blanche’s young husband Allen, and the naive Mitch together epitomize the conflicting masculine identities available in Williams’ stage world.

Ghosts from the past

• As the play unfolds, we see that Blanche played a part in her own downfall, but it is also suggested that she has been the victim of the misdemeanours of the men in her life.

• Allan, is presented as a desperately tragic figure, a young man unreconciled to his own sexuality.

• The metaphor of him being ‘in the quicksands’, reflects a person entirely at odds with himself, sinking into despair and suicide.

• We may feel deep sympathy for him, but this is a man defined through his weakness, and we perhaps detect here Williams’ ambivalence about his own sexulaity.

• Stanley - the ‘handsome and sensual brute’

• McDonough quotes that:

‘Stanley Kowalski is the Other; he is what Williams is not but would have liked to be.’

• Although Stanley is ultimately shown to be a physically and sexually abusive villian, there is a hint of admiration in the terms used in his initial presentation to us.

• Stanley is bold, strong, forceful, dynamic, all qualitities traditionally thought thought as ‘manly.’

• Stanley is carrying a ‘bowling jacket and a red-stained package from a Butcher’s'. We are to view his character as athletic and as embodying a primeval masculine type - the hunter bringing home his kill.

• Stanley’s sentences are punctuated by exclamation marks and he is described as ‘bellowing’, ‘booming’. This adds to the impression of a person who is vigorous and commanding.

• Williams frequently describes or presents Stanley with reference to animals. These connotations serve to display Stanley as bestial, driven more by instinct than by rational thought.

• The most surprising animal reference is when Stella says he was as ‘good as a lamb.’ Lambs are associated with vulnerability, and he shows this by speaking ‘humbly’ to Eunice and ‘shuddering with sobs.’

• But is that a display of weakness? We can see it as an admirable quality, revealing that Stanley is not just a ‘handsome and sensual brute’ as Sarotte calls him, but also a sensitive and passionate romantic.

• McDonough however, sees this episode as evidence of a deep insecurity of Stanley.

• McDonough views his embrace of Stella as him grasping ‘at her like a child clings to a mother after waking from a bad dream.’

• In the end, Stanley is very far from being an idealised version of manhood.

Mitch

• The description of the poker players in scene 3 sugests that Stanley’s ebullient masculinty is not unique. He is representative of a type:

‘men at the peak of their physical manhood, (…) coarse and direct and powerful.

• Mitch is seen as a more admirable version of masculinity.

• Superficially, he represents hope - he is corteous to Blanche, she immediately identifies him as being ‘superior to others’ and he is familiar with poem.

• However, from the start there is something negative in Williams description of Mitch. He cares for his ‘sick mother’, might be a sign of his compassionate nature, but culturally we often derisive of grown men who live with their mothers.

• The stage directions present him as a man who isn’t certain of himself: ‘awkward’, ‘shuffling nervously.’

• Ironic as he turns out to be just as cruel as Stanley in scene 9.

• His anger due to being deceived may be justified, but the harshness of his words aren’t

‘you’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.

• Instead of offering a positive alternative to Stanley’s insensitive, bullish masculinity, Mitch has ended up imitating it.

• He is a picture of impotence: ‘sagged’, ‘dissolved’ ‘ducks his head.’

• Mitch’s softer version of masculinity is ultimately revealed to be weak and ineffectual and he is denounced as a ‘cry-baby’ by the triumphant Stanley.

Tragedy and the lack of ‘good’ men

• Mc\donough sums it up well:

‘In Mitch resides the only possibility in the play for a masculinity that does not fall into the stereotypes of either weak homosexuality (Allan) or brutal heterosexuality (Stanley), yet Mitch cannot break through the sexual code upheld and policed by Stanley.

• In this play there is not a single male character to whom we can look for a truly positive embodiement of masculinity.