Gender Roles In A Streetcar Named Desire And The House Of Bernarda Alba

In the plays, A Streetcar Named Desire and The House of Bernarda Alba, gender roles are discussed often. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche, Stella, and Stanley display the exaggeration of gender roles in order to criticize them. Blanche’s character is so over the top that her display of gender roles makes the audience question the necessity of the gender roles in place. Stella and Stanley are near perfect models of gender norms and the extreme nature of their problems displays clear reasons for why the gender norms in place are absurd. In The House of Bernarda Alba, the mother of five daughters, Bernarda, is very strict about gender roles and enforces them upon her daughters. Bernarda firmly believes that men and women have different roles …show more content…
Women aren’t supposed to be strong and powerful, they’re supposed to be soft and delicate. In the 1940’s, the ideal woman was supposed to be soft and delicate and Blanche is demonstrating this gender norm. Blanche wears a lot of white, and the color white represents divineness (Williams, 5). Blanche’s name itself translates to white in French. White also represents purity, and women are supposed to be pure. Blanche is displaying the gender norm that women are supposed to be pure and saints. Women in the 1940’s are supposed to do no wrong and be the purity to the men’s uncleanliness. Women’s purity is also displayed in Stella during her interactions with Stanley. When Stanley gets home from work, he throws a large package of meat at her, showcasing that she must catch the meat and make sure it doesn’t land on the ground or else it would’ve ended up on the floor, ruining that night’s dinner and making the house dirty (Williams, 5). After Stanley has his anger outbreak and hits Stella, Stella still goes and cleans up after him (Williams, 75). Stella even complains about cleaning up after him proclaiming, “Look at the mess in this room! And those empty bottles! They went through two cases last night! He promised this morning that he was going to quit having these poker parties, but you know how long such a promise is going to keep. Oh, well, it’s his pleasure, …show more content…
During this period in Spain, they were in the midst of the Spanish Civil War and were fight for their rights. Thus, it only makes sense for Adela to wish to have freedom and independence from her mother. Adela isn’t allowed to leave the house and she certainly isn’t supposed to interact with men. However, Adela falls in love with a man, her older sister’s lover, and she leaves the house to be with him at night. Adela experiences freedom by falling in love, leaving the house at night, and by disobeying the rules of her mother. Adela is so desperate for freedom that she would rather end her life than be stuck in the entrapment of gender roles that her mother enforces upon her (Lorca, 169). When Adela expresses her discontent with her current life and dreams of living with Pepe el Romano, she states that, “there’s no way out of this.” (Lorca, 169). Lorca is criticizing the roles that is enforced upon women during this time. He does that by: having only women speak in the play by giving them a place to voice their thoughts, having Bernarda appear as something that’s not in her right mind and someone that people don’t enjoy, and by showing that the life that women are forced into causes them to find a way out and in Adela’s case that’s