falafel-rofl

A title which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this post. Moving on.
Today I took a slightly later bus, and got to campus just in time for the rare books library to open. Then I spent a few hours doing really really fun research. I'm not even kidding. I found this German book that has an amazing catalog of tons and tons of statues in the Egyptian Museum. The only problem is, it's in German. But that is really just an extra obstacle. I can read enough German to figure out whether something is a limestone statue of a husband and wife or not. I think.
Then it was time for class to start, and I went to Dramatic Lit, where the professor cunningly steered all discussion away from the more controversial topics of Streetcar, and we mostly talked about the boring character of Mitch.
After lunch I tried to go to my Egyptian Lit class, but the professor just didn't show up. So that was a complete and total waste of my time. When it was finally apparent that the professor just wasn't going to show up, I went with a friend to the campus book fair, where I bought two books that I didn't need, and have no idea what I will do with when I need to move. Oh well. They should be entertaining for a while, at least.
The bus ride home seemed longer than usual, but I met a nice girl from Kenya who is studying at AUC who I sat next to.
The rest of the night was fairly uneventful, except for a brief half hour period where I looked up and memorized a Japanese tongue twister to upload onto youtube for a project Hank Green is doing. I hardly ever participate in stuff like that, so I'm really glad I did today.

a streetcar named desire

Have you seen it? Read it? Watched the movie? If you haven't, this blog post might not make much sense. I'm sorry.

I'll try not to get too spoiler-y, but it's a pretty well known story, I think, so I'm warning you now, just don't read this if you really really care.

So, Streetcar (by Tennessee Williams) is about a woman named Blanche, a woman who is so caught up in the lies she's wrapped herself in that she's drowning. She can't leave her past behind, no matter where she goes, her family's problems and the spectre of her dead husband haunt her.

She goes to New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella and Stella's husband Stanley. In her mind, Blanche imagined that the Elysian Fields, the sector of the city where Stella lives, is just as much of a paradise as it's name indicates, but she was wrong. It's a dump, maybe a charming dump, but still, not paradise.

She lives there for a while, stuff happens, et cetera et cetera et cetera, until one night a confrontation with Stanley comes to a head in a bad way. Here is exactly what happens in the play:

Stanley corners Blanche. She tells him to get away and leave her alone, but he won't. She breaks a bottle and threatens him with the sharp edge. He still won't leave, and she slashes at him with the bottle. He grabs her wrist, yells "Tiger! Tiger!" and doesn't let go. Blanche cannot fight him, moans and falls to her knees. Stanley picks up her limp body and puts her on the bed and the lights go down.

The next time we see Blanche, she's out of her mind, creating fantasies and not able to connect with the real world, and Stella and Stanley put her in a mental hospital.

What do you think happened in between? I agree with the consensus of my Dramatic Lit class: it's pretty clear that she was raped.

What I don't agree with my class about is the circumstances of that rape. Some of the arguments I heard today:

'She gave in. She let him.'

'She was asking for it from the beginning.'

'Look how she acted around him.'

'She stopped fighting.'

'She wanted it to happen.'

I couldn't believe I was hearing this, and moreover, that I was hearing it from the other girls in my class. Only one girl was on my side, completely bewildered that anyone could even try to make these arguments rationally. It was honestly upsetting to listen to. I wanted to sit with them and talk outside of class. Maybe yell a bit.

No one ever asks to be raped. No one wants it to happen.

No matter what you wear, no matter how you act, it does not give anyone the permission to violate you.

If you can't fight, you can't fight. That doesn't make what happens your fault.

It is never your fault.

And that's what happened today. I'm really looking forward to Dramatic Lit again on Sunday.