Blog Post #3

Question 5:

I do not have a clear black and white response to this article. Although, I do tend to agree with Curry more so than disagree. It is hard to think of sexual harassment and think that the victim may have deserved what happened. In Oleanna, Carol makes the audience feel as though she does deserve the eventual attack by John. As Curry says, "The audience can not maintain sympathy for the character as her claims grow preposterous". In my opinion, though, she drove him to this. She bantered back and forth with him constantly and in the second act, she came back to his office with an agenda. You could tell by her actions and her words that she was out to get him and to get his book taken off this list. Once she reveals this to him, this is when he starts to get angry. Carol takes this one step further by personally attacking him when he is on the phone with his wife. Once she says, "Don't call your wife baby." all hell breaks loose. To me, she completely instigated him and I believe this was her plan all along. Finally all of her allegations were one hundred percent true. She is trying to gain complete and total power over him and the future of his career with this statement and she does. Although, she already had control over his career previously, this was her way of gaining control over his personal life as well.  

Curry says "As sexual harassment has historically functioned as an impediment to women seeking access to education or certain employment opportunities, legal and other restrictions on harassing behavior logically have the effect of making the university and other arenas more readily hospitable to women."  This statement could not fit this play better. Carol uses her position as an "innocent woman" to completely play John and take advantage of him. She uses sexual harassment as a way to sabotage John's career. She tries to play the victim and takes it so far to make him actual attack her. 

While I do believe that Carol drove John to this, I stand in the belief that there is no occasion where it is acceptable for a man to hit a woman. I think she knew exactly what she was doing, but I was slightly disappointed that John eventually gave into her games. I wish that he had possessed the control to be the bigger person and not give into her allegations. If he could just accept what she had done, he could walk away an innocent man and convince the ten-year board that nothing had actually happened because it was just her word against his and he was obviously a respected man at the university. I wish that Carol's devious plan was not successful and while I wish he hadn't attacked her, I do believe she had it coming.