Hearsay

Will Landschulz
Am Lit. Per. 2
Mrs. LaMagdeleine

Ah, another meaty section, with information and backstory given out nearly willy-nilly.  Juicy gossip for everyone!  To recap: Blanche caught her husband with an older man, doing . . . "degenerate" things, Blanche called him out during a dance and he shot himself, Blanche creeped out the (jaded) management of the seedy Hotel Flamingo so much that they kicked her out, Blanche eventually attained notoriety by the way she got around, Blanche got "mixed up" with a 17-year old she was teaching "English" to, she later got fired because the boy's dad found out, and Stella's water just broke at the end of Scene 8.  Whew!  However, we had an inkling that Blanche had caused her husband's death, had been fired from her job,  and had gone to the Flamingo, so none of this is really surprising.  The really surprising things are that her husband was gay and that the Hotel Flamingo kicked her out because of how much of a playa she was.  More and more, Stanley seems to exist only to dig up dirt and throw it in Blanche's face.  Blanche could have been happy again with Mitch, as with her husband of old, but when Stanley told him about her tendency to drop a man after three dates, there is little to no chance of them getting together.  We both pity and are grossed out by Blanche (Blanche makes us blanch.  Haha.) because of her quaking demeanor and her (for lack of a better term) horniness.  However, she is most definitely the protagonist of the story, which makes Stanley her antagonist.