Female is Not a “Female”

           Gender inequality is a common social problem.  Plays are derived from lives, and they are the portrayal of lives.  Gender inequality is receiving different treatment based on gender, and it is a constant problem for women.  Women are looked upon.  Nowadays, there is a feminist movement, but in the old society, this phenomenon that women were treated unfairly was more serious than now.  In the Antigone by Sophocles and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, there are often various descriptions to show gender inequality themes.  The two plays were written in different times.  Antigone was written in 441 BC (Sophocles 1164), and A Streetcar Named Desire was written in 1947 (Williams 1238).  They are more than two thousand years apart, but gender inequality still exists.  However, regardless of the past or the present, gender inequality is a serious issue in society, because women receive unequal social status, treatment, and benefits.

            In Antigone by Sophocles, the social status for women is very low.  The background of Antigone is the ancient royal family.  There, only men had the right to inherit the throne, and women are expected to be completely obedient to men.  As Ismene says, “You ought to realize we are only women not meant in nature to fight against men, and that we are ruled, by those who are stronger, to obedience in this and even more painful matters” (Sophocles 1131-1132).  Besides, Creon, the ruler, controls the life of Antigone.  When Antigone breaks the law that was published by Creon, she would die because Creon felt Antigone disdained his words.  Creon thought Antigone learned from her insolence, when she broke the established laws, but there is still another insolence in that she boasts of it, and laughs at what she did (Sophocles 1143).  He felt that his rights were challenged by a woman, and this is clear when he says that “I swear I am no man and she the man if she can win this and not pay for it” (Sophocles 1143).  Moreover, for a man, they thought women were weak.  It is shameful if men yield to a woman.  Creon is one of the men who most despised women.  Therefore, he did not accept the persuasion of his son, Haemon, when he said, “so we must stand on the side of what is orderly; 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” (Sophocles 1147). 

However, the oppressed people usually want to go against the tyrant.  Antigone was the first rebel.  When Creon published the law that she was not allowed to bury her brother, Polyneices, she wanted to break the law and bury him.  In fact, she did it, and did it twice, because sentries brushed off all the dust that lay upon the dead man’s body (Sophocles 1141).  The sentry denounced her to Creon, “when she saw the body stripped of its cover, she burst out in groans, calling terrible curses on those that had done that deed; and with her hands immediately brought thirsty dust to the body; from a shapely brazen urn, held high over it, poured a triple stream of funeral offerings; and crowned the corpse” (Sophocles 1141).  Finally, she was caught by Creon, and hid in a rocky cavern.  From the beginning to the end, she did not succumb to Creon, and she did what she thought was right, even if the result is death.

Two thousand years later, in A Streetcar Named Desire by Williams, there was unequal treatment to women.  This was a story about the Kowalski couple – Stanley and Stella, and her sister, Blanche.  At the beginning of this play, men think women should not appear when they are playing poker.  In the third scene, during the poker night, which is the pastime of men, but not women, Blanche propose to join the game, but she is rejected.  “You could not. Why don’t you women go up and sit with Eunice?” (Williams 1185).  Stanley suggested, and was very disgusted with the women bothering them, and wanted the women to stay aside quietly.  These men repeat, “Poker shouldn’t be played in a house with women” (Williams 1190).  Besides, Stanley would treat them brutally when they did not obey him.  Stella disrupted the poker cards, then Stanley was angry and even beat her.  “There is the sound of a blow, Stella cried out” (Williams 1190).  Stanley was chauvinist, he could not tolerate a woman who is not obedient, which was the reason he hated Blanche.  In addition, women and men were treated unfairly in sex.  Blanche was going to get married to Mitch, but Mitch abandoned her in the end, because Stanley found out the truth about Blanche, which was that she had been dating a lot of men in the Flamingo hotel.  Stanley tells Stella what he listened from others, “they got wised up after two or three dates with her and then they quit, and she goes on to another, the same old line, same old act, same old hooey!  And as time went by she became a town character.  Regarded as not just different but downright loco – nuts (Williams 1214)”.  Stanley also tells Mitch about this truth, and Mitch leaves Blanche, because they think Blanche is sordid, and she is a hooker.  Therefore, Stanley raped Blanche finally, who was his sister in law.  However, there was no one publishing Stanley, and they just thought Blanche was not lily-white.

            For A Streetcar Named Desire, there were two women who were oppressed, but they were overcoming in their own way.  Blanche was eager to love, so she was looking for her lover in life.  She dated a lot of men, and she thought it was equal to love.  When she met Mitch, she loved him, and she pursued him.  She dated Mitch, and she did not care about others views, and she did not thought women should be reserved.  Stella was also a beave woman.  She abandoned her family to live with Stanley.  She did not succumb to men, because she dared to resist Stanley.  When she found that Stanley did something sorry to her, she wanted to leave Stanley.  “I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley” (Williams 1232).  But she is a woman, and she does not have a job to earn money, and she can only depend on Stanley.

            Turning to the present, there still gender inequality exists, especially in economic benefits.  There are some occasions where men are worth more than women.  In job posting, there are some companies advertising that they accept men or do not accept women for certain positions.  For some majors in college, it is common that men are more prevalent than women, or there are no women in a classroom, such as mechanical engineering technology.  The most gender inequality is found in workplace.  Most of the upper-class jobs belong to men, and the wage is still unbalance between men and women.  Women earn 16 percent less than men across the organization for economic cooperation and development, and the wage gap table shows women receiving 38 to 33 percent less than the median wage of men (Matanle 472).  However, gender inequality is shrinking, as “female empowerment is a prerequisite for a just and sustainable developed society.  Overall, gender equality in the developed world is advancing, with the UN Gender Inequality Index showing an average reduction of 30.71 percent between 1995 and 2011” (Mantanle 472).

Gender inequality is a serious issue in society, because women have an unequal social status, treatment, and benefits.  However, rebellion against inequality has always existed.  There are a lot of women who want to overcome oppression.  Antigone could break the law, Blanche could pursue her lover, and Stella could against and leave her husband, but they did not win finally.  With the time passing, society is always on the move, and gender inequality continues to narrow down until there is equality.    

Work Cited

Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. 

W.W. Norton & Co., 2011. Print, pp. 1129-1164,1165-1238.

Matanle, Peter, Kuniko Ishiguro, and Leo McCann. "Popular Culture and Workplace Gendering

among Varieties of Capitalism: Working Women and Their Representation in Japanese Manga." Gender, Work & Organization, vol. 21, no. 5, Sept. 2014, pp. 472-489. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/gwao.12050.