The Vagina Monologues 1

This post is about my opening reactions to The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler:

I think The Vagina Monologues is a brilliant play. Eve Ensler, the playwright, has managed to walk the line between funny, charming stories and side notes, to incredibly poignant tales. These are really eye opening, and in some cases, upsetting stories.

The Bosnian story, "My vagina was a village" specifically was shocking. It's position in the play, directly following two heartwarming stories about women finding love for their vagina, either due to a class or a man, was powerful, as it was so jarring and abrupt. From a happy home in the United States, you were dragged to another part of the world, and forced to witness horrible acts. This woman's vagina was turned from "green, water soft pink fields," to "a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line," (61-62). This is an incredibly powerful, and upsetting passage. This woman has lost a massive part of her. She lost something that, as described in the previous monologue is "who you are," (56). She has lost herself when she was tortured. She lost everything. She says that "My vagina a live wet watery village. They butchered it and burned it down," (63). She goes on to talk about how she lives somewhere else afterwards but "[She doesn't] know where that is," (63). Also, it is written in the most clever way. Jumping from the past to the present, only using italics to differentiate the two, there is the incredible sense of loss every time you go to another paragraph. Each time she begins to speak again in non-italic text, there is a slim chance of hope. A chance of reconciliation and peace. Then, it is quickly matched by more italic, upsetting text. Then, in the final few lines, she describes, in non-italic text, a finality to the destruction. It has happened, and this is the reality now. This process was incredible, and, sorry to be clichéd, took me on a journey with this woman.

"I was twelve. My mother slapped me" is a monologue about menstruating for the first time. This is a subject, that I, as an adolescent boy, was very unfamiliar with. I knew the generalities from health class; when it should start, what you should do when it does, etc. and what was actually, biologically going on. But, I had no idea about the physical, or personal impact that that event can have on young girls. That seems shortsighted and foolish now, obviously, it impacts your life, but I couldn't imagine it. I think that is why this monologue was powerful to me. It showed me a world about which, I was hopelessly misinformed. Some were funny and silly, the story of the girl thinking she was bleeding to death so she "rolled up [her] underwear and threw them in a corner. Didn't want to worry [her] parents," (39). It was a really interesting chapter, and, like Ensler says in the introduction, I too "got lost in the bleeding," (33). I think she wrote it well, because she didn't differentiate the girls, there was this overwhelming sense of repetition and shared experience. One woman was channeling all the others as the told these stories. This chapter illustrated how powerful this "coming of age", a shared experience for all women, was. I really had no idea.