Ferdinand & Stanley Kowalski

Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, and Stanley Kowalski stand as embodiments of toxic masculinity and patriarchal violence across three centuries. Ferdinand represents aristocratic male anxiety--his obsessive fixation on his sister's sexuality, possible incestuous desire, and descent into lycanthropy (werewolf madness) reveal early modern patriarchy's psychological pathologies. Stanley embodies working-class masculine aggression--territorial, physical, sexually entitled, he enforces domestic dominance through violence and rape. Both men view women as property to control, both employ psychological torture before physical violence, and both reveal the intimate connection between masculinity and cruelty.

Yet their differences are equally significant: Ferdinand's violence stems from aristocratic paranoia and ends in self-destructive madness; Stanley's stems from "normal" masculine entitlement and goes unpunished, his brutality absorbed into everyday life. Webster's villain is exceptional and receives poetic justice; Williams's is disturbingly ordinary and thrives. Their comparison exposes how patriarchal violence evolved from spectacular aristocratic tyranny to normalized domestic abuse.