The concept of the American dream was radically individualized, emphasizing the virtues of freedom and financial success. It is the quintessential idea of a self-made man who achieves his dreams of prosperity through physical and intellectual hard work. It proposed the guarantee of sovereignty to people who were willing to make an effort, which made freedom one of the central ideas in the American dream. Even though the general understanding of the American dream was advertised to everyone, the idea was more applicable to the male members of the American society, which is reflected in Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.
The primary definition of the American dream does not explicitly say that the dream is inherently masculine; however, the context implies that success is achieved through hard work and commitment. During the rise of the American dream popularized by James Truslow Adams, the American society was highly gendered, where the role of a woman was reduced to a housewife supporting a working husband.
The factories required a strong working-class who could handle heavy machinery, opening more job opportunities for men and decreasing the labor market for women. Despite that, the success in the American dream definition is rather vague so that it can be applied to almost everyone; it was usually associated with financial prosperity. Women did not have financial independence in the first half of the twentieth century and could not open a bank account. Therefore, the American dream was deemed accessible only for men, who, in turn, had the power to share their success with women.
In Chopin’s story, the main character Louise Mallard receives the news of her husband’s death, Brently Mallard. Devastated at first, she finds solace in her newly acquired freedom: locking herself in the room, Louise reveals the unhappiness of her marriage while reminiscing about the husband. Her epiphany that she broke off from the chains of marriage can be interpreted as the female version of achieving the American dream. Louise’s strive towards individual freedom is reflected in the semi-spiritual experience she has in the locked room: “she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window” (Chopin 2). The space in the room extended beyond the walls, symbolizing the victory of liberation.
Moreover, the word “victory” appears in the story: “There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory” (Chopin 3). The victory represents authoritative power, independent in its essence. At this moment, Louise decontextualizes the notion of the masculine American dream – she managed to reach happiness and freedom without utilizing the hard work and intrinsically masculine attributes of the American dream.
However, the story’s ending snaps the heroine back to reality, reminding her and the audience that the American dream is, in fact, a dream out of reach for women. Louise’s husband did not die in the train accident, and to everyone’s surprise, returns home alive. Louise, realizing that the chance for her freedom is now shattered, immediately passes away. The story ends on an ironic note: “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills” (Chopin 3). The final sentence plays with the word “joy,” giving it a double meaning.
The first interpretation is that “joy” refers to Louise’s “excitement” to see her husband reaching the lethal extent. However, “joy” can also be evaluated in relation to Louise’s desired emancipation from her husband: she experiences the happiness the American dream promised her. However, this promise does not hold; moreover, it destroys her, punishing her for daring to leave her feminine role. The plot mocks Louise: a woman can never be detached from a man and be happy, and her hard work will not be rewarded by the same principle as her male counterparts’ work. Thereby, the extremely masculine framework remained the cornerstone of the American dream.
The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” also explores the theme of female freedom and the hardships of marriage. The main character, also the story’s narrator, is locked inside one room with the yellow wallpaper while her mental health rapidly deteriorates. Despite being utterly dependent on her husband John, the heroine spends most of the story in isolation: “And I am alone a good deal just now” (Perkins Gilman 7). She also explains the reason behind John’s constant absence: he is in town for work. John encompasses the ideal of an American man who achieved success in his field and gained financial prosperity and freedom.
The main character longs for freedom, too, trying to get better and spending more time alone. By distancing herself from others, she tries to regain control over her life, which serves to represent the individualism in the American dream. However, she fails to achieve both freedom and self-control. To some extent, the main character is free at the end of the book, finding solace in her insanity and “defeating” the source of her unhappiness, her husband who restricts her independence.
Nonetheless, the woman completely loses her sense of self, thereby lacking the bare minimum of authority that the American dream requires: the power over one’s mind and body. She both reaches the extreme of individualistic existence yet does not succeed in controlling her life. Therefore, the story notes that the female role cannot be inserted into the box of the masculine American dream because women were much more underprivileged than men.
Moreover, the figures she sees in the window and the wallpaper belong to women, and during the last third of the book, she tries to break them free. These figures are her reflections; she and many women across America are trapped in their marriages without the opportunity to gain control over their lives. Other characters constantly patronize her and her condition throughout the book, weaponizing her femininity against herself. Femininity becomes her main obstacle to freedom and self-prosperity, which highlights the impossibility of women adapting to the traditional interpretation of the American dream.
Finally, in A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the main characters, Blanche DuBois, also encompasses the faults of the American dream in providing happiness to women of American society. The book begins with Blanche arriving at the house of her sister Stella after losing her home and money. Suffering from the substantial financial loss, Blanche lives in denial throughout the whole plot, where she imagines she still has a chance of returning to the bourgeoisie lifestyle.
Blanche is portrayed as a luxurious, overtly feminine woman, as opposed to masculine, beast-like Stella’s husband, Stanley. Blanche can be seen acting flirtatious around all male characters in the play, utilizing her femininity as the weapon against the horrors of working-class life. For example, at the beginning of the play, she plays around with the dresses that she brought with herself from Belle Reve: “STANLEY: It looks like you raided some stylish shops in Paris” (Williams 33). The clothes become the last substantial reminder of her past life, the last bastion against the harsh reality.
Blanche refuses to acknowledge that she is no longer financially prosperous, and her femininity helps her support the illusions she believes in. Stanley realizes Blanche’s delusion: “You sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume […], and lo and behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile!” (Williams 138). Therefore, her expression of femininity symbolizes the lifestyle of people who achieved the American dream; however, it also keeps her from actually achieving it; Blanche feeds herself with illusions of freedom and success. Her femininity contrasts with everything that Stanley represents because he is the embodiment of the brutal and masculine working class. He is the character that the American dream was advertised for; he is a family man who works at a factory with the opportunity to become prosperous and self-sustained.
The American dream gives Stanley power that overwhelms him; throughout the play, he exercises his physical strength against women, Stella and Blanche. Moreover, Stanley reaches its peak of iniquity during one of the final scenes: he forcefully takes Blanche and rapes her. This represents the violent side of the American dream, the side out which women come out as victims. Even though Blanche tries, she is incapable of reenacting her feminine version of the American dream because it is inherently a masculine idea of success.
The inadaptability of femininity into the concept of the American dream is seen as a fixed trend from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. Both short stories by Chopin and Perkins Gilman demostrate the women’s situation during the late nineteenth century when women’s needs and interests were underrepresented. In 1920, suffragettes won the legal right to vote for women; however, the idea of the American dream was still not adapted to the more progressive society.
Only with the third wave of feminism, American women gained a better standing ground to achieve financial success; however, the concept of the dream itself has aged poorly, where hard work and commitment became not enough for prosperity. Williams’ work represented the instability of women’s status in the forties of the twentieth century, highlighting the lack of protection and security from the domestic violence.
Among many others, these three works helped me understand the historical context for femininity and the American dream in the first half of the twentieth century. Despite that legally women have acquired more rights during that period, literature illustrates many acts of injustice against women even after the first wave of feminism. The heroines of “The Story of an Hour,” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and A Streetcar Named Desire to criticize the notion of the American dream and symbolize the dream’s bias towards male self-realization. In conclusion, the American dream has failed women as a national ethos, emerging from the patriarchal ideology and giving more opportunities to men for self-achievement.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” 1894. Web.
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” 1892. Web.
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. 1947. Web.