Post 13: Gallantry Gone with the Wind?

It’s a bit of a used-up question, but when reading A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, a theme that I consider relevant in today’s world popped up: the disappearance of old chivalric values in men’s attitudes towards women. The main characters of the play are women (sisters brought up on a southern plantation, where they’ve been waited on by adoring men all their lives), Blanche and Stella. The lead male characters (particularly Stella’s husband, Stan Kowalski) are coarse and forceful. Typical Southern ladies, Blanche and Stella have much to get used to in New Orleans.

An example of a rude awakening for Blanche, the last sister to come to New Orleans: when Blanche and Stella return to Stella’s apartment to find Stan and his friends at a poker table, Blanche asks the men not to stand. Typically, gentlemen stand whenever a lady enters the room, and they only sit again once the lady is either seated or invites the men to sit. But Stanley tells Blanche not to worry; no one’s going to stand. Um, ouch. It makes Blanche’s comment about Stanley being a “survivor of the Stone Age” seem quite apt.

Further struck by Stan’s chauvinistic attitude and physical force used towards his own wife, Blanche cries out for the old romance, for the old values, for the old and familiar Southern qualities of a gentleman.

So my question:
Where did all the chivalry go? It’s accepted that the role of the gentleman has typically been to aid the damsel in distress; but what happens if all knights in shining armor suddenly decide to quit their dragon-slaying, let the ladies fend for themselves, and go off for a couple of kegs of ale at the tavern?

Bad things, that’s what.
The gallantry probably went out around the same time that women really started pushing for their independence and actually got something for their efforts. Women want independence from men? Fine! We’ll stop treating them like delicate flowers.
But men and women alike know that flowers don’t grow well in factory smoke and cramped, single-person apartments. The independence of a woman doesn’t change the fact that she has needs. And it really isn’t in the best interest for men to act like uncultured cavepeople. Men and women both like to be waited on, to have someone speak adoringly to them, to be shown consideration.

Hopefully our parents have taught us 1) men, never be rude to women, and 2) women, never take men for granted. But no matter what your sex, respect is the keyword here.
Men, it doesn’t matter if you like a particular lady or not: you must still open doors for her, be polite, and keep the sexist comments to yourself.

Women, it isn’t true that men are only polite when they are courting: even if you are capable, don’t look at men like they’re aliens if they try to be helpful, or they won’t try to help again. As this brilliant essay states, “The act of deferring to women is an act of celebration and not of derogation…the radical feminists who laid siege to chivalry also laid siege to the basis of respect between the sexes.”

Goodness. I realize that this doesn’t sound optimistic, but I’ll just repeat Blanche’s lament over the deaths of gallant knights everywhere and, therefore, the death of all the damsels in distress. While we’re at it, let’s set funeral pyres for the sacrifice of respect and valor for the cause of “female advancement”.

Is this what we want?