Trapped Between Traditional and Modern: Gender Roles in Tennessee Williams’ Plays a Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Trapped Between Traditional and Modern: Gender Roles in Tennessee Williams’ Plays a Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Summary/Abstract: The plays of Tennessee Williams reflect a specific period in development and understanding of gender roles, though his characters occasionally cross the bounds of traditional and challenge the position of women in the mid-twentieth century America. This paper focuses on two of his most well-known plays, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and their central female characters – Blanche DuBois and Maggie the Cat, respectively. These characters’ actions highlight the performative nature of gender, and challenge the traditional gender roles of the 1950s. Introduced into feminist theory by the philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, the notion of performative gender indicates that gender is a social construct which is created by the very action of performing it. It follows, then, that gender roles are conditioned by sociohistorical circumstances, which are subject to change. Both Blanche and Maggie manage to play with their assigned role, and subvert it to an extent. Because of this they exceed the limits of traditional, but due to their environment, never quite reach modernity, which ultimately makes them trapped in-between.

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