Temple Drake is a fictional character created by William Faulkner. She appears in the novels Sanctuary (1931) and Requiem for a Nun (1951). The 1962 play Requiem for a Nun and the films The Story of Temple Drake (1933) and Sanctuary (1961) also feature the character. In the two films she is played, respectively, by Miriam Hopkins and Lee Remick. Plot In the first novel, she is a University of Mississippi student who is kidnapped and raped by a criminal, Popeye. Corrupted by her experience in a house of prostitution, she lies in a court, resulting in an innocent man being lynched for a murder. In the second novel, she plans on leaving her family and going back to a criminal lifestyle until her maid kills her child to return her mind to clarity. In the first film, Temple instead tells the truth on the witness stand and reveals her sordid past. The second film uses elements of both novels, though she does not attend a court hearing in that one. Development According to Elisabeth Muhlenfeld of Florida State University, who wrote "Bewildered Witness: Temple Drake in Sanctuary," initially Temple was not the primary character, but this was changed in a revision. E. Pauline Degenfelder of Worcester Public Schools argued that Temple, Popeye, and lawyer Horace Benbow were all main characters even though the work presented itself as mainly being about Temple. Characterization Degenfelder wrote that the author mainly gave a "flat" characterization to Temple in the novel. The reviewer added that "Faulkner sees woman as the instrument who instigates and perpetuates this pattern of evil" and that the use of Temple was "attacking the chivalric code of the South". Degenfelder wrote that her characterization in the first film differs from that of the novel version, and that the film gives her a "dual nature" of a dark and light aspects. Gene D. Phillips of Loyola University of Chicago wrote that she is "better" morally than the novel character. Miriam Hopkins stated : "That Temple Drake, now, there was a thing. Just give me a nice un-standardized wretch like Temple three times a year! Give me the complex ladies, and I'll interpret the daylights out of them." Allan R. Ellenberger, author of Miriam Hopkins: Life and Films of a Hollywood Rebel, stated that of the characters Hopkins played, Temple was a "favorite" of hers. In Requirem for a Nun and