Literature has often played the role of instigator, mediator, and mirror for discussions on pressing issues in society. Many researchers in Literary Didactics have emphasized the democratic potential of literature reading in and out of school (Sundström-Sjödin, 2019; Hultin, 2005; Alkenstrand, 2016; Thavenius, 2003). Still, there is a need for more empirically informed scientific knowledge about the conditions for students' identity formation and agency when reading literature, as well as on the students' engagement with critically informed dialogue where concerns of the current state of the world and awareness of power structures in society might be addressed. Our aim with the paper is to investigate, from a female students’ perspective, in what ways literature reading can be realized in literary encounters in line with the principles of radical aesthetics (RA) (Thavenius, 2003) as a way for students to reason, problematize, and reflect on pressing topics. The study’s empirical material consists of a group interview with four eighteen-year-old female students from a Swedish upper secondary school selected because they have chosen Literature as an extra-curricular subject. The results show that that the students experience their literature education as being managed, controlled, and even restrained. These students do comply with educational expectations, and they do well in school. The students experience that they are seldom invited into more overarching discussions about the literature they read in school or about the choices of books; they express frustration over the fact that they are not allowed to discuss burning societal issues in relation to the literature they read at school. Finally, these results are discussed in relation to the complexity involved in literature teaching, for instance institutional factors as curricula demands and teaching traditions, as well as in relation to the possibilities for change that the students’ whishes for engagement and agency hold.