Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

Physical beauty is passing. A transitory possession. But beautyo f the mind and richness o f the spirit and tenderness o f theheart— and I have all o f those things— aren’t taken away, butgrow! Increase with the years! H ow strange that I should becalled a destitute woman! W hen I have all o f these treasureslocked in my heart. 28With Stella in the hospital having their baby, Stanley rapesBlanche.Stella cannot believe Blanche and keep living with Stanley,so Stella does not believe Blanche.Not being believed breaks Blanche’s already fragile holdon reality.Stanley has Blanche taken away, institutionalized as mad, inthe world of Tennessee Williams the worst consequence ofsexual knowledge, the worst punishment, crueler than death.Because Stanley has no interior life of feeling, he has no remorse;the rape is just another fuck for him. It takes a humanconsciousness, including a capacity for suffering, to distinguishbetween a rape and a fuck. With no interior life of humanmeaning and human remorse, any fuck is simply expressiveand animalistic, whatever its consequences or circumstances.Blanche pays the price for having a human sexuality and a humanconsciousness. She has been raped; she knows it. There isnothing in the text of the play, despite the way it is sometimesstaged, to suggest that she wanted it all along. In fact, there is apronounced and emotionally vivid history of her wanting itsopposite— a sexuality of tenderness and sensitivity. She is takenaway, locked up, because she knows what happened to her.The madness that becomes the only refuge left on earth for heris not a merciful madness, one that will soften the harsh colors,