Domestic Violence and Silence of Women with Reference to the Broadway Drama by Tennessee Williams “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947)

Abstract

Early in the twentieth century the state of women in the society or in their household was very much peripheral. Choice of living was a myth that the so called modern society waking up from the Victorian norms was conferring to the women’s. Women were the weighing tool for the males to measure up their social standard by subjugating, abusing women physically or psychologically. For the sake of getting voyeuristic pleasure the males used to play with the females from their homes as a puppet without identity and any choice to escape patriarchal abuse. The present paper focuses how the female characters of A Streetcar Named Desire at the hands of the subjugating males suffered to the core, silence being their key fault. The contrasting form of dealing with male abuse by the two female characters Blanche and Stella are the main focus of the paper. ‘Silence’ that was considered to be ornament of women’s existence was also responsible for violence plotted against women. Blanche’s in the drama portrays how women who dared to speak up also gets knock down by the literal streetcar named desire of men.