Female Issues in Streetcar and Hedda - Movie Review Example

She fabricated lies to make herself look good and hide her weakness. She presented herself as someone with breeding and educated background although in reality, she was an alcoholic and a former prostitute who had a penchant for seducing younger men. Her husband committed suicide when she insulted him after her discovery of his homosexuality. She seemed to believe her delusions to be the truth because the lies gave her the life she dreams of living. She was desperately looking for someone who would shower her with kindness and end her loneliness.

Stella's husband, Stanley, though, despised Blanche's phony glamour and affectations and discovered her checkered past. He wanted to put her in her place and he confronted her with the truth when they were left alone. In the battle of wills and passionate rage, Stanley raped Blanche. This finally brought Blanche over the edge and deep into madness. Hedda Gabler Tesman (Hedda Gabler), daughter of an aristocratic general who belongs to the suburban, middle-class family at the turn of the century (1890's) was a strong-willed woman who would get what she wanted.

She projected the image of a much-admired lady and was presumed to be an ideal housewife for the academician George Tesman. Although she secretly despised the passive George, she married him on the belief that he would be able to provide her with a comfortable and luxurious life based on his future expectations as a University Professor. George's coveted position though was threatened by the arrival of a colleague, Ejlert Lovborg, who was also romantically involved with Hedda in the past. Lovborg unleashed the inner passions of Hedda but she turned him away because he represented everything that was against her ideals of a husband.

To add injury to the insult, Lovborg had a turnaround with the influence of Mrs. Thea Elvsted whom Hedda has hated since their school years. Hedda held a deep-seated jealousy of Thea's comfortable and natural femininity. The much hyped about publication of Lovborg's latest work was presumed to give him the boost to overtake the promotion of George Tesman. Thea was helping Lovborg in the publication of his work. Lovborg, however, during one of his drinking sprees, lost the manuscript. Hedda deceptively got hold of them and burned them.

Lovborg confessed to Hedda about the lost manuscript and Hedda, the manipulative lady, played on Lovborg's disturbed state of mind and gave him the pistol which he later used to kill himself. In Hedda's mind, Lovborg death would give her the freedom to enjoy the beautiful life she so desired. However, she was jolted back to reality when she was told by Judge Barack, a sinister man who had hidden desire for Hedda that Lovborg did not die of suicide and hinted that he knew where the pistol that Lovborg used came from.

This was the final blow to Hedda's dreams and she committed suicide. The two films had depicted the struggles of the two women heroines to reconcile what they thought would become of their lives (their dreams) with what they had become