Her most frequently known quote summarises this idea that gender is socially constructed: “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman” (Beauvoir S. 2011, p.330). This means that women unconsciously assimilate certain roles because society and social traditions push them to do so. In the same way, society imposes certain roles on men that they have to perform in order to be the dominant sex. Tennessee Williams mirrors these stereotypical gender roles that Beauvoir criticizes in his plays A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie through the male and female characters. In both plays the main characters are representatives of the stereotypical gender roles that the society imposes on them, where the male characters are the breadwinners
