The Unfit Female Characters in two Tennessee Williams' Plays: A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie

Resumo

Two female characters were chosen to be analysed in this essay: Laura and Blanche from the plays The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire respectively written by Tennessee Williams (1911-83), an American playwright born in Columbus, Mississipi. There are many essays about these two plays but we decided to write ano ther one because we, like the author, feel sympathetic towards these two characters and writing about them is the way we found to trying to understand why their fate is so tragic and sad. We came to certain conclusions: the two women failed to succe ed because the personal features of their personality (tenderness, shyness, romanticism, restraint) contradict the objective and material characteristics of a society in which individualism, Social Darwnisim and competitiveness prevail. And although the two plays portray the American society in the late ‘30s and in the‘40s the author, through the characters’fall, criticizes our social "praxis" that was, and still is, based upon the lack of humanity and friendship.