Gender Inequality
As the educator and activist Ziauddin Yousafzai once said “In most parts of the world, when a girl is born, her wings are clipped. She is not able to fly”. This quote yields true for many women in other countries such as the Middle East as well as women in major works of literature. Women are often perceived as being weaker than men and less capable. In both Antigone by Sophocles’ and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, gender inequality is a universal theme. Although derived from different time periods, gender bias is consistent with both works of Sophocles’ and Williams as well as many aspects of society today in the patriarchal Middle East.
In Antigone by Sophocles’, gender inequality is shown through the characters and what they say throughout the play. A character who portrays the theme gender inequality in its entirety would be Creon and his relationship with Antigone. Creon is the king of Thebes and Antigone, his niece went against his edict. He states “We cannot give victory to a woman. If we must accept defeat, let it be from a man; we must not let people say that a woman beat us” (). Creon shows he is against women having any sort of power and he will punish her accordingly. That is why when Antigone goes against his edict and buries her brother, he punishes her so severely. He does not want to be undermined by a women going against him in a society where women are not supposed to go against men at all.
In A Streetcar Named Desire by Williams, the theme of gender inequality is exhibited through the characters as well as the traits they possess. The relationship between Stanley and Stella Kowalski is a prominent example of two characters who exhibit gender inequality in A Streetcar Named Desire. Stanley is characterized as being domineering and sexual throughout the story. He always wants to be in control over the women in the story, Stella especially. Stanley hits Stella when she would not turn off the radio during the poker scene ( Williams 57). This shows Stanley in his animalistic domineering approach at controlling his wife. He gains control over women by abusing them which is a direct characterization of how Stanley’s character is. Stella, on the other hand, falls to Stanley and lets him abuse her because she feels he has the right to control her. When Stanley hits her she leaves him for only a little while then goes back down to him and sleeps with him because Stanley has taught her that ”there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark that sort of make everything else seem unimportant”(Williams 72). In this quote, Stella is creating an illusion that her reality is not as bad as it seems to Blanche. She is saying how Stanley hitting her is okay because their sexual relationship afterward fixes it all. That is a delusion but she chooses to make it her reality in order to get by and keep her husband. “What do you two think you are? A pair of queens? Remember what Huey Long said “Every Man is a King” is said by Stanley (Williams 81). Stanley’s character says this in order to demonstrate that he is a man and he is supposed to be the dominant one. From the very start of the play, Stanley is portrayed as beastly and animal like. He wants it to be clear that men are more powerful than women although he is insecure about how much power he actually has. He feels he needs to reinforce it by abuse and rape.
Although Antigone by Sophocles’ and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams were written in different time periods, they manifest the theme of gender inequality comparatively. The men, specifically Creon, from Antigone have more power over the women in the story. The same goes for the character Stanley from A Streetcar Named Desire. Creon and Stanley both are controlling and feel women have no place going against them because they are men. Even in society today women are treated differently simply because of their gender. Women are still faced with the burden of gender inequality in society today. An example of this is in Arabic countries in the Middle East. In these countries the dominant religion is Islam and in this religion, women are seen as inferior and even as a piece of property. In these countries it is said that women who are raped are a disgrace to their families and they must marry the rapist or be killed (Shalhoub 2). The men that raped them are not held accountable, the women who were raped are held responsible.
Also, several studies were done in Jordan, a nation in the Middle East, on wife beating. The studies showed that eighty six percent of women they surveyed agreed that wife beating is justified if the women denies the husband sex, goes against the man or “challenges his manhood” in any way (Haj 2). This shows how even women are going along with the patriarchal view in these male dominated societies and believe that their husbands have the right to control them. This pertains also to Stella from A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams because she lets Stanley hit her and then just goes running back to him. Stella does not want to be without a husband in a time where women were not accepted at her age without one.
Another example of gender bias in our world today is something called the “glass ceiling effect”. The glass ceiling effect is a sociological term that means a person moves up quick but then gets to a position where he or she can see the top but they are stopped by a “glass ceiling” or inability to move up any further (Pai). This effect is prominent in business world where women are able to move up but once they reach a point just below corporate, they cannot move up any further.
The disparity between men and women in Ancient Greece where Antigone was written and the 1940’s in New Orleans were A Streetcar Named Desire was written portray the gender bias happening in those societies at that time. Even though these stories were centuries apart they put emphasis on this theme. Gender bias is still present in the world today in many aspects of society such as the way husbands treat their wives in the Middle East in Palestine and Jordan. Also in the business world with women being able to move up in large scale companies. Both of these modern examples of the bias toward women in society are present in older works of literature such as A Streetcar Named Desire and Antigone as well.
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