ExtractAmy B. Hagenrater-Gooding Class was winding down after a productive discussion on characterization, specifically the animal imagery used to portray Stanley Kowalski and the use of lighting and water references to depict Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) . Stopping with the end of scene ten seemed logical, as I felt students needed to sit with the shocking violence and obvious rape to process it before our next class. But surprisingly, a tentative hand shot up right before dismissal. This student rarely spoke in class. She was a good student and I always enjoyed reading her insightful papers, so I was stunned when she proffered this observation: “But didn’t Blanche, in some ways, deserve what she got? ” In twenty years of teaching, I have rarely been rendered mute. Yet here I was, watching heads nod as young, seemingly progressive women had a hard time finding...