In American culture, gender discrimination has been presented on many occasions. By analyzing A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee Williams and A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry, two strong cases of discrimination based on gender are brought to the surface. With A Streetcar Named Desire being produced in 1947 and A Raisin in the Sun in 1959, the discrimination that is documented against women goes back over 70 years just within these two pieces of work. Blanche and Stella and Beneatha Younger are used to display the severity of discrimination. Women are subject to many discriminatory acts solely based on their gender and this is seen in both A Streetcar Named Desire and A Raisin in the Sun.
Women, historically, have been inferior to men and with this inferiority comes dependence on men. Written in the book Culture and Diversity in the United States: So Many Ways to be American written by Jack David Eller it is stated that “…men and women have historically been judged as somewhat or highly unequal, with women occupying a status of inferiority and dependence.” (Eller, 116). For example in A Streetcar Named Desire, Stella returns to Stanley, who gets violent with her while she is pregnant and excuses his behavior as seen in scene four, “In the first place, when men are drinking and playing poker anything can happen… He didn’t know what he was doing…” (Williams, 73). It could be argued that Stella’s dependence is because she is married, but Blanche is not and still looks to a man for help. This is seen in scene five when she reaches out to Shep Huntleigh, a millionaire, for money. In opposition to Blanche and Stella, there is Beneatha who turns down the love from a rich man because she is not dependent on a man as seen in Act I, Scene I, “As for George. Well. George looks good — he’s got a beautiful car and he takes me nice places and as my sister-in-law says, he is probably the richest boy I will ever get to know and I even like him sometimes — but if the Youngers are sitting around waiting to see if their little Bennie is going to tie up the family with the Murchisons, they are wasting their time.” (Hansberry, 49). In saying this, Beneatha is stating that she wants to care about the man she is going to marry and not just for money which is unlike the lives Stella and Blanche are leading. As stated in class, “Mama and Ruth do not understand her ambivalence toward George, arguing that she should like him simply because he is rich” (Miles, 4/27/19). Mama, Ruth, Stella and Blanche all look to men to complete themselves. Mary Beth Norton states in A People and a Nation, “…women’s independence was limited; they usually accompanied a husband or father and seldom prospected themselves.” (Norton, 479). Beneatha is the opposite of this because she does not need neither want to be accompanied by a man. From both A Streetcar Named Desire and A Raisin in the Sun, it is shown that the dependence on men is a major theme in American culture but a theme is not as major is the independence of women.
Once women were given their freedom they became less dependent on men meaning they were not itching to get noticed by men in order to get married; A woman’s focus became herself. In A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry, Beneatha was an educated woman and this was making her a less ideal woman. In Act II, Scene II, Beneatha and George had just returned from an evening out. Beneatha wanted to talk but George did not like the idea of that as seen on page 96, “…I want you to cut it out, see—The moody stuff, I mean. I don’t like it. You’re a nice-looking girl… all over. That’s all you need, honey, forget the atmosphere. Guys aren’t going to go for the atmosphere—they’re going to go for what they see. Be glad for that.” (Hansberry, 96). George tells Beneatha that because she is educated she is already becoming less ideal, so she needs to rely on her looks to get attention from men. Similarly, Blanche is worried about no longer being beautiful enough or ideal enough for a man to want to marry her, “…When people are soft–soft people have got to shimmer and glow–they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings and put a– paper lantern over the light… It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I-I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick.” (Williams, 92). The idea of ideal womanhood is brought up here. To be young, beautiful and simple is to be ideal and both Blanche and Beneatha are losing that for different reasons. According to Jack D. Eller in Culture and Diversity in the United States: So Many Ways to be American, “… the traits expected of and taught to a woman were ‘a little knowledge of human weakness,’ ‘softness of temperament,’ ‘outward obedience’… in a word, women were advised ‘to turn ourselves into gentle domestic animals.”(Eller, 125). Women were to be groomed to be soft, pretty and quiet similar to how humans treat dogs. In our class notes we discussed that Blanche and Stella were considered ideal women because they proved to be helpless and dainty. (Miles 2/11/19). To obtain the look of an ideal women according to A People and a Nation, “Petite prevailed as the ideal: the most desirable waist measurement was eighteen to twenty inches, and corsets were big sellers. In the early 1900s, long hair tied up behind the neck was the most popular style.” (Norton, 519). A specific look was necessary in order to be desirable but this was not the same for men. Men who had money were ideal men but there was no “look” they had to go for. Men did not face this same type of discrimination but they still had an image to uphold.
Men are seen as protectors and providers for their families. This is seen in both A Streetcar Named Desire and A Raisin in the Sun with Stanley, Walter Lee and George Murchison. In Culture and Diversity in the United States: So Many Ways to be American, Jack David Eller states, “… the new ideal of masculinity was the ‘self-made man,’ who was free and autonomous, self-sufficient and mentally and physically equal to any other man who might cross his path… this image evolved into the ‘effective man’ in urban settings where a true man took an interest in civil affairs and contributed his time and energy.” (Eller, 133); The ideal man according to the textbook and Walter Lee Younger is a man who builds himself up and is the breadwinner for his family. This exemplifies the type of man Stanley is, as he is a factory worker who is “… roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes.” and is “A Master Sergeant in the Engineers’ Corps…” (Williams, 18). Stanley is unlike George in terms of George being an educated man who is more likely to be white-collar. In A People in a Nation, Mary Beth Norton brings up the Crisis of Masculinity, “… masculinity diminished by white-collar work or a suburban, family-centered existence, the nation’s future was at risk. At the same time, however, men who did not conform to current standards of male responsibility—husband, father, breadwinner— were forcefully condemned, sometimes in the same magazines that preached the crisis of masculinity.” (Norton, 846). This exemplifies Walter Lee; He is undergoing the Crisis of Masculinity as he is not the breadwinner of his family and he does not work with his hands. The only way he does feel like he is becoming the ideal man is when “Mama gives Walter Lee the money because she wanted him to be the man of the house because Walter Lee wasn’t doing anything with his life and she wanted him to feel confident and through this he feels he has achieved scribe status” (Miles, 4/12/19). It is only when he is handling the money, does he feel that he is a real man. Walter Lee has this idea to start a liquor store with some friends and in order to pay for it, he plans to use the money from his father but when he finds out his mother uses it to purchase a house, “The explosion comes from WALTER at the end of the revelation and he jumps up and turns away from all of them in a fury” (Hansberry, 91). Walter continues to feel like he is not a man because he is not achieving some greatness by either working with his hands or building himself up.
In the American culture, gender discrimination has been presented on many occasions and by analyzing A Streetcar Named Desire written by Tennessee Williams and A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry, it is easy to see examples of it. Both men and women face some sort of conflict due to gender however they are not both viewed as discrimination. The female characters Blanche, Stella and Beneatha faced a different severity of discrimination than the male characters Stanley, George and Walter Lee. Women are subject to many discriminatory acts solely based on their gender and this is seen in both A Streetcar Named Desire and A Raisin in the Sun. However men are subject to feeling like they are deserving of a woman’s attention as well as the ability to be the sole dependent in a woman’s life.
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