Masculinity in A Streetcar Named Desire

I wrote this essay for my American Literature class last year. While reading “A Streetcar Named Desire,” I was struck by Stanley Kowalski’s overwhelming masculinity. This essay utilizes a three paragraph format with the first one serving as a thesis, the second as an anti-thesis and the third as a synthesis. 

Stanley Kowalski, the domineering husband of Stella DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, is portrayed by Tennessee Williams as stereotypically masculine. When the reader is first introduced to Stanley, the stage directions describe his tendencies toward women: “since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it” (25). Stanley loves women, specifically “pleasure with women.” Ever since he became a man, the focus of his life has been women, a very masculine interest.

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