Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues is a play that focuses on a subject left untouched by most performers: vaginas. Including a diverse array of backgrounds, Ensler has interviewed hundreds of women to explore what their vaginas mean to them; she aims to discover the stories behind having a vagina, which often leads down a road of very serious discussions, including self-acceptance, body image, and sexual trauma. While being able to adapt something that may come across as entirely humorous into stories with depth and meaning, the monologues introduce a socially taboo concept with comedy, easing into more cryptic messages. For example, the monologue The Flood is told hilariously in character, but addresses the social construct in place that …show more content…
Explaining she’d always hated her vagina, she admitted that the story of accepting herself wasn’t though the ideal self enlightenment one would hope for. After Bob became captivated by her vagina and spoke of how beautiful and deep she was, the woman eventually started seeing those attributes herself. She discovered that self acceptance through a man that saw her beauty immediately. I enjoyed this monologue a lot because it talks about self acceptance in a way that’s different, and a little haphazard. Not everyone can come to love themselves in such an unreasonably expected, as she said “politically correct” way. Throughout the performance, a lot more blatantly tragic and disturbing stories were acted out. My Vagina Was My Village was told about a Bosnian woman who went though horrifying experiences at a rape camp during war. The torture she went though was unthinkable. Ensler used her play to bring to light something not easy to digest and humorous at all, and bringing that attention to it is why I think The Vagina Monologues is an amazing play. The monologue about a young girl who was raped also takes on a very serious topic, and ends in a woman finding self acceptance through the love of another
She‘s trapped by a man and is tired of being told what is right and wrong, as well as what she should and should not do. The women realizes that she is strong as everyone
According to Sherrie A. Inness, “The Captive was hauled by critics as the first play on the American stage to deal openly with what one reviewer called a “repulsive abnormality.” Ten years prior, God of Vengeance was scorned for offending rabbis, Jewish men and women’s religion and abusing the significance of the Torah. Critics and reviews failed to deliver their remarks on the intimate lesbian love, but in The Captive, the lesbian undertones are concealed and carried out in a strategic fashion, yet these moments were censored and triggered. Due to these moments where the acts of lesbianism were not apparent, it was deemed with obscurity, causing the play to fall short overall. Similar to God of Vengeance, The Captive was confronted with “obscenity charges in the United States, and after a run of less than five months, the play was raided and closed down by police” (Inness 304). With this framework in mind, my case study is not diminished by the greater public opinion, rather Edouard Bourdet’s strategic approach to lesbianism and the way in which is portrayed in society juxtaposed the emergence of lesbianism in the United States in the early part of the twentieth
her journey toward self realization. She is forbidden to marry because of a long held
The tragicomic Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, is generally considered one of the most important pieces of the modern LGBTQ canon of literature. The graphic novel tells the story of Alison Bechdel’s attempt to find the truth about her father’s sexuality and what lead him to possibly commit suicide. Along the way, Bechdel finds her own sexuality. Bechdel’s choice to write about her and her father’s simultaneous journey to finding their sexuality was revolutionary at the time. Very few authors were writing openly about their own sexuality, and something even more revolutionary that Bechdel addressed was mental illness.
Virginia Woolf once said,“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” These insightful words, of English modernist and feminist writer, seem a perfect summation of the enduring oppression and silencing of women in society. A paramount theme and notion present in fellow feminist playwright, Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. Glaspell’s 1916 one act play explores notions of gender, justice, and freedom; through her command of the English language and rhetoric.
Butler, Judith. Ed. Case, Sue-Ellen. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution." Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
As the women narrate the harm caused by men, they lose track of the beings that they once were and become different people in order to cause a reaction in others. These women are hurt in ways that cause them to change their way of living. The Lady in Blue becomes afraid of what others will think of her because a man impregnated her: “i cdnt have people [/] lookin at me [/] pregnant [/] I cdnt have my friends see this” (Shange, Abortion Cycle # 1 Lines 14- 16). Instead of worrying about the life of her child, she worries about how her...
Susan Glaspell uses literary elements that show the readers the feminist theme in the play. The use of characters in this play really shows the feminist theme the most. Men in this play clearly demonstrates how men wer...
Virginia Woolfe's "Orlando" uses both humor and tragedy to observe humanity's often absurd and eccentric superficial constructions, both of class and gender. Woolfe creates the distinctions between male and female but continuously shatters them to reveal the illusions we create about gender.
"The Woman Who Cried" exemplifies the womanhood in post modern times. She is here searching her "self" which is sadly broken into pieces.Man has a new defin...
woman she once knew. Both women only see the figure they imagine to be as the setting shows us this, in the end making them believe there is freedom through perseverance but ends in only despair.
... However, through the narrators partial freedom she more importantly finds a new compassionate/humane path on her journey to womanhood. Also, this new path in itself acts as a sort of self-healing for the grief experienced by the narrator. Though only partial freedom was found and cultural boundaries were not shattered, simply battered, the narrator’s path was much preferable to that of her sisters (those who conformed to cultural boundaries).
Being a women artist, displaying such an installation was not possible years back. Contrary to the opinions of many students new to the study of feminist literary Criticism, many feminists like men, think that women should be able to stay at home and raise children if they want to do so, and wear bras. Bringing such an art piece, reflection of her inner experiences or having sex in bed after having bad relationship could not be possible before. The main female characters are stereotyped as either “good girls” or “bad girls”. These classifications suggest that if a woman does not admit her male-controlled gender role, then the only role left her is that of a monster. Yet Emin’s confessional art- with its confidences of pregnancy, being raped, destructiveness of guilt, emotional stress- has become much common nowadays with feminist consciousness while in early generation, sharing such experiences lead to the destruction of women’s life. Her unmade bed, surrounded by such bric-bracs tells a story of a depressed, emotionally stressed women artist who asks for a sympathetic shoulder from the viewers by being a transparent soul. “For her British critics it [My Bed] expressed Emin’s sluttish personality and exemplified the detritus of a life quintessentially her own; it was, above all, confessional”, Cherry observes. Emin has limited the word ‘feminist; art practices have been the concerned of an early generation. This point seems to be confirmed by Emin herself, who declares to the discerning nature of her work in which she says that she decides to show either this or that part of the truth, which isn't unavoidably the whole story but it's just what she decides to gives us. As a self-motivated set of influences, feminism no longer titles a unitary or merging project infact it is now being the transformation just as feminist biases are perpetually subject to change. Whereas, looking at Tracey’s other work, Tent “Everyone I Have Ever
Throughout Tennessee Williams’s life, his struggle with gender identity and sexuality altered his perception of others claiming “people are complex.” Williams’s plays reflect his own life by creating characters who are neither good nor bad but have a certain complexity that baffles the audience. These intricate characters, like Williams, struggle with his/her own human nature and are coaxed by the temptations of immoral desires. In Tennessee Williams’s two plays, Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Williams develops the significance of the two titles by generating themes such as desire, mendacity, and sexuality.
"(326) I applaud Nelson for the work and research he put into his essay; and I'm not saying that just because a play is a comedy, it can't have underlying feelings of repression or other factors involved in its creation. It's just on general principal then, having read Goldsmith's play and enjoyed it for itself while noting possibilities for his commenting on social/class order or the differences between city and country life, that I set aside Nelson's criticism of the play and leave it as it stands, untouched by Freudian ideology. Works Cited Goldsrnith, Oliver. She Stoops to Conquer.