The Vagina Monologues: Expressing the Female through the Female Body - Book Report/Review Example

The Vagina Monologues: Expressing the female through the female body The Vagina Monologues: Expressing the female through the female body Written in 1996 by Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues is a play that consists of one woman who embodies a series of characterizations that express the female experience. The play was first performed at the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village, but its popularity since that time has launched into translation into 45 languages with performances in over 130 countries. In 1996 Ensler was awarded the Obie Award for best new play. It is suspected that Eve’s father abused her as a child, leading her to explore the meaning of being female and to study feminist theories. Prominent actresses who have participated in various productions of the play include Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Idina Menzel, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Marin Mazzie, Cyndi Lauper, Mary Testa and Oprah Winfrey (Upcoming Events and Things to Do 2011). One of the things that occurred due to the popularity of the play was that V-Day emerged, which is a global movement in which 14 February is designated as a day to raise funds for groups who fight against violence against women. This specification of a day in which to give attention to this vital issue has become a rallying point through which to raise awareness (DeLuzio 2010:219). The concept of the play is to celebrate what it means to be female, the play a product of interviews with over 200 women used to create the dialogue that occurs. In celebrating what is female, the play has created a public discourse on the gender of women that has inspired issues that are related to the plight of women to be given greater awareness (Deluzio 2010: 219). In even greater importance, the play is a political tool, a way that women have come to support their independence from oppression and the celebration of their gender. The first V-day event occurred in 1998 with celebrity women performing the monologues in a sold out performance with 2500 seats with the proceeds going to antiviolence groups (Ensler 2007: 197). The Vagina Monologues is a series of character driven pieces that are expressed almost as if they are poetry, each revealing a different experience associated with the female gender and including topics on sex, love, tenderness, embarrassment, cruelty, pain, sexuality, and pleasure. As the popularity of the play developed, the work began to be explored through ensemble groups, more than one actor involved in creating the production. The play attracts politically active theatre groups as well as college campuses that use the opportunity to explore the content in meaningful productions that explore the social issues involved in the work (Ensler 2007). Ensler (2007:xl) discusses in the preface to the 2007 copy of the play how her examination of the vagina begins because as a little girl she was raped. Her feelings about the part of her body that defined her sex as female was confused in the way that it affected her ability to understand her gender as female. She had had no realconnection to her vagina as a part of her female design. She state that “I had essentially lived most or my life without my motor, my centre, my second heart” (Ensler 2007: xli). The exploration in the play includes monologues that discuss the vagina, through sex, rape love menstruation, mutilation, birth, orgasm, masturbation and the many names that have been used for this part of the body. Ultimately, the greatest time in the play is spent on the theme of the vagina as it is a source of female empowerment. In opening up the dialogue between women about their vagina Ensler was able to explore the experiences that had formed how women perceived themselves through their sex (Ensler 2007: xlii). The difference between the concept of sex and the concept of gender creates a foundation for the way in which the play explores the body and the idea of the female. Through the interviews, Ensler found that many of the stories that she heard were violent, yet had never before been heard. The stories had been locked away and only revealed because for the first time someone had bothered to ask (Ensler 2007: 10). In these stories she sees that the biological is not a part of the social influence that these events have on the woman involved. The difference between sex as defined by biology and gender which was subject to acculturation and socialization is a core concern for feminist theorists. Social construction of gender, to some theorists, is independent to biological category. Butler (2001) discusses the distinctions between gender and sex and states that gender creates such an affect that sexual differences are influenced by social conventions of gender. Traditionally, feminists find gender to have little to do with biological category. The play removes the barriers to discussion so that the problem of violence against women can be more fully explored. As suggested by Butler (2001: 72) sex is not “a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies”. In coming into a relationship with the vagina, the play allows for the idea of the body to be constructed as a part of gender, the physical form a manifestation of social construction in a reinterpretation of the meaning of being female. The play provides a forum in which to marry the physical and social being of female so that in understanding and opening up the physical notion of female, the social construction of female can be given a stronger format. According to Tartre (2011) “The Vagina Monologues is phenomenal, effective art”, which quite easily sums up the political strength and potent content of the work. The work helps to identify the female in relationship to both her socialized identity and the creation of the body, sometimes through humor and at other times through that which is disturbing. Through a discussion about the most intimate aspect of the sexual being of the female, the socialized oppressions and violence that is often a part of the gender life of the female can be more fully explored. The little Coochie Snorcher that could The monologue of the Little Coochie Snorcher is about a girl who remembers her childhood from the age of five to thirteen, reliving the traumatic sexual events that tormented her until she comes to a space in which she experiences ‘positive healing’. The girl of thirteen cannot relate to boys and is having a difficult time finding her sexuality until she meets an older woman who helps her to find the pleasure of her sexuality. Ensler (2007: 79) writes as she describes the girl’s point of view on her vagina that “My coochie snorcher is a very bad place, a place of pain, nastiness, punching, invasion, and blood”. She is disconnected from the joy of her sexuality until she meets a woman who helps her find a way to connect without the pain brought from men. The problem with this passage is that even though the girl believes she has found relief from the need of men, it plays into the idea that lesbianism is created through a hate of men. This is an extension of the separatist form of feminism in which the need for men has been rendered moot, women not needing them for any aspect of their life. Furthermore, the separatist feminist denies the need for sex as it relates to a male oriented activity. Separatist feminism places “Freedom, agency, power and pleasure…under the microscope to be examined for the faint line between socially constructed desire (what feminists should disallow) and reconstructed sexuality (a state feminists should achieve – our behaviours, fantasies, and longings lining up smoothly with our political ideals) (Johnson 2007: 6). It also suggests the statutory rape as acceptable, but Ensler has said that this is someone’s story as they experienced it, which may not include framing the event as a bad moment in their life. The line “If it was rape, it was a good kind of rape” was eventually taken out of later versions because the line seemed in conflict with the political intent of the work (Maufort and De 2008: 253). The controversy of this section has led to many to see it as incongruent to the overall tone of the work. In approaching this character, it is likely that the girl’s hatred for men where her vagina is concerned began when she was seven and Edgar Montane punched her in her vaginal area, creating terrible pain and a hysterical lecture from her mother about letting anyone touch her there. This was further exacerbated when she was raped at the age of ten, the incident ending with her covered in blood from her father shooting the man. While he had defended her, he was removed from her life. Men had done nothing but bring her pain and cause her to feel bad about her body. The woman brought to her an understanding of pleasure, even though she was a part of the overall abuse this girl experienced at a young age. She would have been vulnerable to this type of adult inappropriateness through the isolation her experienced would have brought as she felt different from other children. References Butler, J. Selections from bodies that matter. Eds. D. Welton, (2001). Body and flesh: A philosophical reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. DeLuzio, C. (2010). Womens rights: People and perspectives. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO. Ensler, E. (2007). The vagina monologues. New York: Villard. Johnson, M. L. (2007). Third wave feminism and television: Jane puts it in a box. London: Tauris. Maufort, M., & De, W. C. (2008). Signatures of the past: Cultural memory in contemporary Anglophone North American drama. Bruxelles: P.I.E. Peter Lang. Tartre, M. (3 March 2011). The vagina monologues: A debate. The California Review. [online] accessed at http://californiareview.net/2011/03/03/the-vagina- monologues-a-debate/ Upcoming Events and Things to Do. (2011). The Vagina Monologues. Yahoo, Inc [online] accessed at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/8500306/CO/Westmin ster/The-Vagina-Monologues/73rd-Avenue-Playhouse/ Read More