Chapter 4.
Tearing Down the Father’s House: Feminist Expressionist Revisioning in the Plays of
Marsha Norman and Paula Vogel
The history of expressionism in the theater concerns a long line of plays about a
man who must overthrow the father to claim agency. This “father” could be represented
by a literal head of the family, or he could simply be embodied within the figure of an
overbearing boss or a faceless government of oppression. As these male protagonists are
often destroyed in their already doomed attempts to improve their lot, female characters
play the roles of mere background noise or, at most, maniacal harlots, madwomen, or
oppressive domestic partners. While expressionist dramatists worked to throw off the
confines of what they perceived as an oppressive older generation in a push toward a
contemporary perspective, their failed depictions of a full human spectrum, e.g., their
continued hierarchical approach to humanity wherein woman falls below man, only
further reiterated the values of the former generation.
It would seem, then, that
expressionism is a flawed medium for feminist theater.
In the early twentieth century in Germany, the beginnings of expressionism in
drama erupted out of a need for a form that could theatrically refute capitalist values and
rail against a perceived overbearing authority, which is often personified in the plays as
“the Father.” Creating a theater of emotions—using a stream of consciousness narrative
on the stage—expressionist dramatists portray the subjective moods of characters that are
usually types rather than complex entities.
While the stage is highly stylized and
evocative of the intended mood, the dialogue is often spoken in metaphors, indicating a
96
character’s state of mind or state of being. The scenes are told in episodes know as
“stationendramen,” or “station plays.” Later making its way to America in plays such as
Eugene O’Neil’s The Hairy Ape and The Emperor Jones and Elmer Rice’s The Adding
Machine, the expressionist form further underscored the very things against which it
intended to react: the patriarchy and an accompanying capitalist model of success.
Though these playwrights succeeded in creating characters devoid of passion, fire, and
heat, thusly evolved from their subjectified positioning in a materialistic and tyrannical
society, these writers’ seemingly humanistic themes neglected to portray fully the state of
the woman’s role in this same world—a role that is, arguably, all the more degraded and
disenfranchised. Samuel Weber comments on the historical connection between the
depiction of the nuclear family and the growing strength of capitalism within modern and
contemporary society.
He writes, “The family, above all the ‘nuclear’ family, has
provided institutional support for a view of the world that would construe and portray
market relations as ‘natural’: buyers and sellers, producers and consumers confront each
other ‘in the market’ as independent, self-contained entities—an individualist view of the
world that the family seems to confirm.”1 Weber later supports his claims for the
dramatization of domesticity when he discusses the power of Oedipus speaking from the
stage about the incest that occurred within his own home.2 It would seem, then, that the
theatrical expression of domesticity and the effect of a male-helmed household on women
would be all the more dire. For it is twice as necessary to create a venue for the rarely
heard and less prominent voices of victims of capital and patriarchal legacy than it is to
Samuel Weber, “Family Scenes: Some Preliminary Remarks on Domesticity and Theatricality,”
South Atlantic Quarterly 98, no. 3 (1999): 356.
1
2
Ibid., 362.
97
keep placing preference on the voices of those that have ruled over or maintained this
same debilitating model for ages. If a man can be dehumanized in a patriarchal world,
then a woman can be devalued, raped, tormented, and confined by the same men who feel
victim to patriarchal standards themselves. Her story, because of her awareness that
sexual exploitation is always a possibility for the woman’s reality, is ever more subject to
cold namelessness and violation. Even in our contemporary era, women are valued less
as workers, are not paid for the domestic “labor” that is conducted twenty-four hours a
day and seven days a week throughout the year. Even those that do work are often
required to complete the same domestic tasks as nonworking women, thus making the
woman’s body an inevitable beast of burden that is undervalued, overworked, and
physically vulnerable. She is the true dehumanized “man” of expressionist lore.
To define feminist expressionism, one must first locate the contemporary themes,
settings, forms, and practices of feminist drama. The difficulty in writing about so-called
“feminist theater” is the work one must take to sift through the constant dialogue
concerning what denotes the term “feminism” in drama in the first place. For many
theorists, a feminist play must completely shuck the limiting and heavily signified forms
of previous theater genres. Others will claim it is necessary to focus the themes on issues
of women and gender and equality, but a complete turn from traditional forms is not
necessary. While both of these points are valid, I argue that revisionist works based on
traditional themes and forms can function to create an effective “feminist” theater. This
theater is one that both recalls traditional, male-dominated forms while reworking its
characterization to posit the female role as the ultimate defeated human. Refusing to end
there, however, these newly interpreted feminist expressionist works also create a much
98
more positive ending, in that the female survivors, despite their previous defeat at the
hands of their various “father” figures, do manage to find relief from the ruling thumb of
these same oppressive forces. As rationale for combining both expressionistic staging
with realistic, domestic themes, Dorothy Chansky’s study of American feminist theater
and performance finds that traditional forms, rather than experimental forms absent of
any link to previous genres, “appeal to those uninterested in high theory.” 3 This is
evidenced by the award-winning plays Getting Out by Marsha Norman and How I
Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel. While expressionist plays have been traditionally
concerned with the male protagonist’s search for self, both Norman and Vogel create a
female lead with an initially disjointed characterization who, through a painstaking return
to health and triumph over trauma, finds a way back to wholeness in the end. As Jill
Dolan notes the success of playwrights like Norman within a long tradition of male
playwrights, she questions the validity of women’s plays about a “mother/daughter
relationship” that make it to venues like Broadway, where plays are usually concerned
with male writers depicting “father/son relationships.”4 These plays not only achieve a
feminist revisioning of traditionally male-dominated forms within a venue used to
housing canonical works, but also magnify this theme of an overbearing “father” through
the more individualized portrayals of two females who were victim to a concerted assault
from the patriarchy: incest abuse.
For Linda Rohrer Paige, the difference is
perspective—that is, plays written by women about women’s experiences and from the
Dorothy Chansky, “Usable Performance Feminism for our Time: Reconsidering Betty Friedan,”
Theatre Journal 60, no. 3 (2008): 362.
3
Jill Dolan, “Bending Gender to Fit the Canon: The Politics of Production,” in Making a
Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women’s Theatre, ed. Lynda Hart (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1989), 321.
4
99
perspective of a woman deal with themes and situations that have, in some instances,
made many male audience members “bored” and “uncomfortable in their seats….”5
While these “uncomfortable” theater patrons are certainly not the norm—especially given
the critical success of both Norman’s and Vogel’s plays—it is worthwhile to note the
reaction when one adjusts a traditionally male medium to suit counter-patriarchal means.
Creating plays that use the expressionist form—sets staged as in a dream, a commenting
chorus or a deadpan societal voice, episodic plots, characters speaking around one
another, and a fledgling protagonist nearly dehumanized in a capitalist and patriarchal
world—Norman and Vogel rework the traditional format to portray a more inclusive and
progressive fashioning of the expressionist model.
Creating a classic, if gritty, story of triumph over adversity—a much more
optimistic end goal than that of the expressionist writers that came before her—Marsha
Norman’s play Getting Out marks an achievement in feminist expressionism that
effectively melds the old with the new. Norman was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in
1947. Before writing her first play, Getting Out, Norman worked as a journalist and
spent time teaching adolescents in mental hospitals, which is where she got the
inspiration for the character of Arlie in Getting Out. Norman’s local success with this
play eventually took her to New York, where Getting Out was produced in 1978 by The
Phoenix Theatre under the direction of Jon Jory. The play was later produced OffBroadway in 1979 again under the direction of Jory. It won the Actors Theatre of
Louisville’s
Great
American
Play
Contest
for
1977
and
later
won
the
Linda Rohrer Paige, “‘Off the Porch and Into the Scene’: Southern Women Playwrights Beth
Henley, Marsha Norman, Rebecca Gilman, and Jane Martin,” in A Companion to TwentiethCentury American Drama, ed. David Krasner and Molly Smith (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005),
394.
5
100
Oppenheimer/Newsday Award and the John Gassner Playwriting Medallion awarded by
the Outer Critics Circle. Norman’s major success came with the 1983 production of her
best-known play, ‘night, Mother, which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The
original American Repertory Theater cast in Cambridge, Massachusetts, included actress
Kathy Bates in the lead role of Jessie. This same cast made its way to Broadway and
played at the John Golden Theatre, garnering four Tony Award nominations. Norman
has recently completed the libretto for the musical stage version of The Color Purple
(2005), and she currently serves as a professor at the Julliard School in New York City.
Set in contemporary Kentucky, Norman’s Getting Out is the story of Arlene who
has just been released from an Alabama women’s security facility where she has been
incarcerated for the last several years of her life for the second-degree murder of a taxi
cab driver. Her younger self, Arlie, who is shown in parallel scenes above and beside
Arlene on the stage, is always present and speaks but is never heard by Arlene (or by
anyone else in the present) until the end.
In a 1994 television version of the play,
Rebecca DeMornay played Arlene. DeMornay says of this role, “It illustrates a character
who has no voice, isn’t educated, has no money, who has no basis for self-respect, who
we see out of the corner of our eye in the street. I got to speak for someone who
ordinarily cannot speak for themselves and has to transcend the circumstances to have
any serenity in their lifetime.”6 This could be the description of any male expressionist
protagonist, yet Arlie carries the added burden of being the repeat victim of sexual abuse.
It is precisely this rationale that firmly cements Arlene’s role as part of a new tradition of
feminist expressionist drama, for where else could there be a venue for someone of her
Patricia Brennan, “‘Getting Out’…and Staying Out,” Washington Post, April 24, 1994, final
edition.
6
101
socioeconomic status to speak to and influence others in any capacity? Arlene’s lack of
education, her criminal past, and her income below the poverty level would, otherwise,
make her invisible in our society. Celie Wren poses the question, “What turned the
obnoxious juvenile delinquent into the quiet, tormented adult?”7 This mystery told in
expressionistic episodes—a push and pull of sorts between the protagonist’s current and
former self—creates the basis of a plot that eventually brings a survivor of sexual trauma
back to wholeness in the end.
Marsha Norman was in attendance at a September 2009 production of Getting Out
at Berry College in Mount Berry, Georgia. As an extension of the weekend’s Southern
Women Writers Conference, where Norman was a keynote speaker, the college’s theater
company performed under the direction of Dr. John Countryman. Prior to the production,
Norman spoke to a crowd of conference attendees about the process of writing a play.
She discussed “what a play is” and “what a play should do.”8 Norman commented that
“good characters have a name and you should show what it is before you start writing
them.”9 This seemed fair enough, as Arlie/Arlene is a complex entity with beyond blackand-white emotions and desires; though beaten as she is by the system, she is a survivor.
It was Norman’s next comments, however, that struck me: “There are several topics
people are never interested in on the stage…. One of those is incest.” 10 Not only is
Celia Wren, “A Bleak Prison Break: Getting Out Explores a Haunted Past,” Washington Post,
September 12, 2007, met 2 edition.
7
Marsha Norman, “What a Play Is/Does,” (keynote speech, Berry College, Mount Berry, GA,
September 26, 2009).
8
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
102
Norman’s Getting Out a play about a girl whose violent tendencies can be located within
her childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father, but, it would seem, the entire play
depends upon knowledge of this fact.
Before the play began, I briefly spoke with Norman outside of the theater. I
explained my confusion with regard to her admonishments about incest as a theme on the
stage, and she responded, “Stories of the theater have survival information in them. We
see incest in a flash—how the family dealt with it and the way they felt about it—but not
what the dad did.”11 She used the example of a sculpture she saw displayed in Paris. The
statue, at first glance, appears to be a little boy kneeling. It is displayed in such a way
that one sees, upon approach, the backside view of the figure. It is only after one’s
glance at the front of the object that one sees that this child kneeling is actually the figure
of Adolf Hitler.12 Norman explained that some topics were simply “too big for theater.”13
That is, some issues are so horrifying that, when confronted in too overt a manner, we
feel as if we cannot escape. As Norman puts it, “The audience sees no possibility around
and out of the situation.”14 As the play is titled Getting Out, Norman made incest a
reality but not an inevitability for the character. There is never a frank discussion of the
abuse that occurred between Arlie and her father, but we see, in a moment’s discussion,
that Arlene was subjected to incest abuse; then we move forward in the play toward
11
Marsha Norman, in conversation with the author, Berry College, Mount Berry, GA, September
26, 2009.
Further research revealed that this sculpture is Maurizio Cattelan’s “HIM,” which toured all
over Europe and the United States as part of a series of works where the artist juxtaposes various
aspects of the human condition and embodies them within the likeness of well-known historic
figures.
12
13
Norman, in conversation with the author.
14
Ibid.
103
Arlene’s rehabilitation. In an experiment on the use of drama as therapy for victims of
trauma, Penny Bundy finds that dangerous events cannot be recalled too explicitly when
acted in dramatic form, as they can “trigger flashbacks,” thus undermining the therapy’s
holistic course.15 Like that statue of Hitler, Norman’s depiction of the vile things that
people can do to one another speaks quietly to the horror of living but leaves room to
walk away from evil as the only route through humanity; thus, her play offers, in its
refusal to place incest at the forefront or to enact literally its initial inception, an escape.
Much like the deafening carnival sounds that create the background noise for
Rice’s American expressionist play, The Adding Machine, Norman’s Getting Out begins
with the sounds of the correctional facility where Arlene once was incarcerated. The
audience becomes a part of the mundane commentary on the institution, living the life of
a prisoner, as the opening lines of the play are spoken from an amplified and incorporeal
voice across the theater:
Frances Mills, you have a visitor at the front gate. Doris Creech to see
Mrs. Adams at the library before lunch. I’m sorry, that’s Frankie Hill, you
have a visitor at the front gate. Repeat, Frankie Hill, not Frances Mills,
you have a visitor at the front gate.16
Norman notes that, for the loudspeaker voice, a “droning tone is essential” (4). For
Patricia Schroeder, this announcement, which is delivered while the house lights are still
up, thus keeping the audience from sitting “comfortably in the darkness, watching as
outsiders,” forces us to “share the prisoners’ degrading lack of privacy and
Penny Bundy, “Using Drama in the Counseling Process: The Moving On Project,” Research in
Drama Education 11, no. 1 (2006): 11.
15
16
Marsha Norman, Getting Out, in Marsha Norman: Collected Works, Volume 1 (Lyme, NH:
Smith and Kraus, 1998), 4. All subsequent citations from the play are included within
parentheses in the text.
104
individuality.”17 Already one can see the sort of environment to which both Arlie and
Arlene are confined: a dehumanized and impersonal world where names and faces are
interchangeable—people are transposable—to the point where one need not distinguish
between prisoner Hill and prisoner Mills. The disembodied voice speaking in a flat tone
is remote since it springs from an inanimate amplifier—we do not see the face of the
person making the announcement—and since its blank tone does not reveal any
emotional inflection. The audience understands, through the lack of the personable and
emotional, that this world is one of unflinching despair.
The setting of Getting Out would seem to counter the notion of the very thing the
title suggests; the stage is often built with multiple layers, as it was at the 2009 Berry
College production, wherein a jail cell was placed on a platform overlooking Arlene’s
apartment in Kentucky. It is like a play within a play where, literally, the past is always
present. As Norman remarks, “The apartment must seem imprisoned” (5). Arlie’s cell—
which resembles a cage with a chapel steeple shape surrounding it—towers above
Arlene’s dingy and drab apartment, which Arlene discovers has bars on the windows (8)
like the cell that she just left. In a post-production discussion and question-and-answer
session with the audience, Norman commented that the jail is meant to be “real close,” as
if to say “I’ve got one foot out of it. It’s just not gone. It’s right there with me.” 18 The
audience cannot help but root for Arlene’s escape, as we, too, are part of the
imprisonment; so close is the action that one flinches at every scream of agony that erupts
Patricia R. Schroeder, “Locked Behind the Proscenium: Feminist Strategies in Getting Out and
My Sister in This House,” Modern Drama 32, no. 1 (1989): 106.
17
18
Marsha Norman, in a Getting Out post-production discussion, Berry College, Mount Berry,
GA, September 26, 2009.
105
from Arlie or Arlene’s mouth. Their position is so precarious that the cage looming over
Arlene’s apartment seems as if it might envelop the entire set in an instant; we can only
watch stunned and terrified that our own freedom will be engulfed.
Just like the confinement Arlie experienced in jail, Arlene is confined and under
surveillance by the forces that control her outside of the institution. As one looks out
across the room, there is a “cheaply framed picture of Jesus” (10). This god figure that
both represents the extension of another institution, religion, and the presence of a male
or father figure watching Arlene’s every move connects her experience in the outside
world to that of the confined Arlie, who is constantly creating chaos in the cage above
Arlene’s apartment. At the same time that Arlie is under the control of the men at the
prison, Arlene is subjected to the unwanted advances from the guard, Bennie, who drove
her up from Alabama to Kentucky. Though these male characters are all minor roles,
they have entire agency in the play; that is, they control the rules of confinement, release,
and rehabilitation. They decide what and when food will be consumed by the prisoners.
They dictate Arlie’s every action while keeping her under constant surveillance. They
each attempt to confine and control Arlie/Arlene through acts of physical and sexual
violence. While German expressionists created male protagonists living in a world of
unwanted patriarchal control, Arlie/Arlene illustrate the very degrading and doubly
debilitating position of a woman without power in a male-dominated world. As the play
continues, we witness attacks against both Arlie and Arlene from guards, former
boyfriends, and every man in between, who attempt sexually to exploit the women by any
means possible. While Arlie/Arlene create a complex protagonist, which is a bit of a
departure from the traditional expressionist form, many of the other characters—
106
particularly the male characters—are the stock puppets of the play. Norman notes, “The
guards do not belong to any specific institution, but rather to all the places where Arlene
has done time” (3). They are representative of a type rather than a discernible individual.
Their names or personal characteristics—undisclosed as they are—do not matter, but we
are meant to understand the sort of restrictive role they have played in Arlene’s existence.
When Arlene’s mother appears in the play, we learn why Arlie was such a violent
girl, but we also see the ways in which another woman has struggled within an unjust
society of patriarchal control. After Arlie endures years of molestation from her father,
Arlene’s mother refuses to acknowledge the abuse that was committed against her
daughter. Sally Burke writes in her in-depth study of Norman’s play that this split
personality is a way effectively to depict on stage the identity anxiety that is experienced
by a victim of incest.19 In many ways, Norman’s play works to combat this split-self that
Arlene suffers by allowing her to relive all of the ghosts of her past through Arlie’s
omnipresence until the final scene where the women merge and speak in unison: “Arlie,
what you doin’ in there?” (58). In the end, incest on the stage is still something only
hinted at, as the dialogue between Arlene and her mother will only move so far. As
Burke notes, accepting Arlene would only mean that her mother would have to accept the
reality of what happened to her daughter.20 Still, even with all of the veiled discussion
surrounding Arlie’s incest abuse, the audience intuitively understands that what
transpired between Arlie and her father is at the heart of the girl’s violent tendencies; now
Sally Burke, “Precursor and Protégé: Lillian Hellman and Marsha Norman,” in Southern
Women Playwrights: New Essays in Literary History and Criticism, ed. Robert L. McDonald and
Linda Rohrer Paige (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2002), 111.
19
20
Ibid., 109.
107
it is at the center of Arlene’s mistrust of all male members of society. A direct product of
an overbearing “father,” Arlene is subject to the heavy-handed rule of a world full of
patriarchal control. Her story is connected to the traditional expressionist protagonist
since she is devoid of human emotions and incapable of receiving or giving human touch.
While Arlene who is literally in her mother’s presence will not discuss the incest,
Arlie speaks openly like a little girl to her mother from outside the scene. Arlie exclaims,
“Nobody done this to me, Mama…Was…(Quickly) my bike. My Bike hurt me. The seat
bumped me” (14). At this point, Mother—whose stock character name is reminiscent of
the “types” utilized in expressionist drama—looks into Arlene’s closet, seemingly
unaware of Arlie’s comments, and says, “Filthy dirty” (14). While the child Arlie is
frustrated over her own attempts to cover the abuse, Mother can only respond with
something that she says to change the conversation. Yet, somehow her words effectively
convey her true feelings. The fact of her husband’s incestuous acts against her daughter
is filthy and dirty, but she certainly could not say this aloud. Instead, these words are
meant to work as description of the general state of Arlene’s apartment, which is quite
dingy and rundown, but “filthy dirty” also denotes the way that general society views
both incest abuse and its victims. Minrose Gwin writes that it is precisely the task of
women writers to discuss incest so that there will be a space where it is safe to talk about
the things of which we do not often wish to speak,21 something Arlene and her Mother
are incapable of doing even years after the fact. Seidel notes that contemporary Southern
writers have the tendency to focus on “the mother who is still caught in the myth of
Minrose Gwin, “Nonfelicitous Space and Survivor Discourse: Reading the Incest Story in
Southern Women’s Fiction, in Haunted Bodies: Gender and Southern Texts, ed. Anne Goodwyn
Jones and Susan V. Donaldson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 422.
21
108
Southern womanhood and its pejorative effects on her daughter in leaving her vulnerable
to the sexual desires of the father.”22
Arlene’s mother has bought into the Southern
honor code by allowing her husband to stake a claim over her daughter’s body. She
either chooses not to intervene or recognizes her own powerlessness as a lower-class
woman. In this way, both Arlene and her mother’s stories overlap; both are products of a
male-centered society that has no use for a “filthy dirty” victim of abuse or for the
working-class mother that failed to protect her daughter from that same violation.
This refusal to speak and therefore name the crime against her daughter is
Mother’s way of dealing without dealing with the issue. Mother feels guilt; this is
certain, for the conversation escalates to the point of her leaving in anger, but she cannot
allow herself to admit that she might in some way have played a role in her daughter’s
abuse. Arlie continues with her childlike disavowal of the act, stating, “Daddy didn’t do
nuthin’ to me…” (15). Mother continues to speak to Arlene: “Your daddy ain’t doin’ too
good right now. Man’s been dyin’ for ten years, to hear him tell it…” (15). Even as
Arlie’s outbursts become more insistent, Mother and Arlene’s discussion surrounds
Arlene’s hopes to regain custody of her son, Joey:
MOTHER: See, now you don’t have to be worryin’ about him. No kids, no
worryin.’
ARLENE: He just had his birthday, you know.
ARLIE: Don’t let Daddy come in here, Mama. Just you and me. Mama?
ARLENE: “When I git working,’ I’ll git a nice rug for this place. He could
come live here with me.
MOTHER: Fat chance. (16)
22
Kathryn Lee Seidel, The Southern Belle in the American Novel (Gainesville, FL: University
Press of Florida, 1985), 436-7.
109
Arlene’s situation is all the more dire because of her desire to reclaim custody of her
child. Her survival skills in lock-up have prepared her to take care of herself, but she is
not necessarily equipped to bring on the added weight of raising a child. Her mother, the
failed protector, further dashes Arlene’s hopes by making her feel as if the custody battle
is futile. Whether her fear that Arlene will try to find Joey is done out of love or disdain
is not clear, as Arlene’s mother has been quite cold and distant throughout Arlene’s life,
but we do know that Mother has had a difficult life working in a dead-end job, so she
already imagines the same confining situation for her daughter and grandchild should
they be reunited.
Schroeder’s work on feminist strategies in theater describes Norman’s technique
as a way to show the parallel confines of class and gender that control both Arlie and
Arlene.23
Though Arlene is now technically free, her “freedom” is limited by her
desolate prospects for a respectable existence. Her former work as a prostitute will give
her more money, but her chance at gaining custody of her child is unlikely. Here, like the
expressionist’s model, Arlene is a protagonist limited by a capitalist society that places all
value on one’s ability to earn or create profit. Arlene’s fastest and easiest means to this
end include further solicitation of her already violated body. Because her mother could
not protect her from her father, she is quick to tell Arlene that children can only bring
trouble. She does not believe that Arlene will be able to do the thing that she could not
do: keep the child safe. Arlie speaks to an unhearing Arlene: “Wanna know what I know
about your mama? She’s dyin’. Somethin’s eatin’ up her insides piece by piece, only she
don’t want you to know it” (20). This “somethin’” that is killing Mother is her guilt, but
23
Schroeder, “Locked Behind the Proscenium,” 107.
110
before this can be revealed to Arlene, Mother pushes her daughter away and refuses to
invite her home for dinner. She leaves with the final line, “Don’t you touch me” (25), as
if the reality of Arlene’s touch would reveal the evidence of her abuse. Further, the
individual in the expressionist model cannot touch or be touched—that is, one cannot
make a physical, poignant human connection—in a world that is devoid of emotions and
intuition, as this patriarchal and capitalist society privileges the rational over the
emotional. Paige comments on the relationships of mothers and daughters in Norman’s
plays.
She writes that mothers who have an unsatisfactory marriage because of
father/daughter incest become “tangled in strained and tortuous encounters with
others.”24 In essence, Arlene’s mother cannot help but blame her own misery on her
daughter for the interaction with the husband/father that she was denied. Wyatt-Brown
remarks on the dissatisfaction of Southern mothers—regardless of class—who had no
way of seeing past their place as obedient daughter and then obedient wife; they knew
nothing else, so they had no reason to want more.25 There is indication that this is
precisely Mother’s problem. Living a life without agency or ownership—being owned
from the day of her birth—why should she expect anything more for her daughter who is
already “spoiled” by her abuse?
Norman’s tale of incest functions as a juxtaposition between the external effects
of the socio-political and the internal arena of domestic life. Mother arrives wearing her
cab driver’s uniform, and she is described as “strong but badly worn” (14). Her class has
not afforded her respect or power. Gretchen Cline writes, in reference to Arlene’s dismal
24
Paige, “‘Off the Porch and Into the Scene,’” 399.
25
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007), 126.
111
situation, that the “social order of Getting Out operates on the basis of male
domination.”26 The singular place where Mother might hold some dominion, within the
sphere of her domestic realm, has been removed by her failure as a mother and protector.
Their father has abused both Arlene and her sister, but she still has two children at home
about whom to think. She states, “Don’t want no bad example” (21). To her, Arlene’s
status as a victim of incest marks her as tainted goods, and this is an influence that she
worries will spoil her other children. Yet, she does not consider that they might already
be caught in the same cycle of abuse.
This cyclical abuse extends beyond the family home, as the play shows various
instances in which both Arlie and Arlene are subjected to the physical and sexual abuse
from the men in their lives. These passages often overlap, and it is as if Arlene’s presentday consciousness is being invaded by the voice of her past—Arlie’s thoughts. This
unconscious invasion of her former self is not only an effective technique to display the
haunting effects of trauma, but also it utilizes the expressionist medium of thought
patterning depicted on the stage. For example, prompted by a desire to get “outta bars,”
Arlie begins to light a fire in her cell overlooking Arlene’s apartment at precisely the
moment that Arlene lights a cigarette (10). Bennie, the predatory guard who has carried
Arlene back to Kentucky with hopes of procuring a sexual relationship with her, is
adamant that Arlene find a good location for the photograph of Jesus—the watching
Father. Overlapping this moment is Arlie’s experience with the guards, who want to get
her “fattened up,” so they say, because they have a “two-way mirror in the shower room”
Gretchen Cline, “The Impossibility of Getting Out: The Psychopolitics of the Family in Marsha
Norman’s Getting Out,” in Marsha Norman: A Casebook, ed. Linda Ginter Brown (New York:
Garland, 1996), 13.
26
112
(13). Timothy Murray calls the voyeuristic nature of this scene “libidinal spectacle.” He
notes, “First to her rapist father and uncountable Johns and then to her insatiable,
voyeuristic prison guards, Arlie is an image of consumption.”27 This instance where the
girl Arlie becomes a literal, sexual commodity is simultaneously linked with Arlene’s
discussion with Bennie that she is not hungry, though he leaves to buy food, locking her
in the apartment as he retreats (10). Though Arlie is incarcerated and Arlene is in the
“free” world, both are still locked into their positions, and this theme of consumption
while both are being consumed connects the alternate sides of the same woman’s
experiences. Both are still under surveillance and under the scrutiny of the guards that
intend to exploit them sexually. One feminist strategy for staging abuse, however, is
Norman’s use of a double plot, wherein Arlie’s abuse narrative is interrupted by Arlene’s
alternative conversation with Bennie, thus creating two unique storylines to illustrate the
various degrees with which the female body can be confined and exploited or divided and
destroyed.
While Arlie’s guards are explicitly out to abuse her, Arlene’s guard, Bennie, is
even more deceitful, as he pretends to help Arlene until he eventually attempts to rape her
(33). As evidence that Arlene has been violated and manipulated her whole life, she
narrates Bennie’s actions in anticipation of his abuse:
BENNIE: (Moving in.) Ain’t natural goin’ without it too long. Young thing
like you. Git all shriveled up….
ARLENE: All right you sunuvabitch, you asked for it! (She goes into a
violent rage, hitting and kicking him. Bennie overpowers her capably,
prison-guard style.)… This how you got your Dorrie, rapin’?
Timothy Murray, “Patriarchal Panopticism, or the Seduction of a Bad Joke: ‘Getting Out’ in
Theory,” Theatre Journal 35, no. 3 (1983): 380.
27
113
BENNIE: (Unbuttoning his shirt.) That what you think this is, rape?
ARLENE: I oughta know…. First they unzip their pants…. Sometimes they
take off their shirt…. But mostly, they just pull it out and stick it in. (33)
It is only after Arlene comments on a process she knows all too well, sexual abuse, that
Benny hears and retreats. Arlene’s words—the naming and speaking of the abuse—
protect her from his attempted violation. Because of her traumatic past, Arlene has
learned how to protect herself from abuse. Rather than the violent outbreaks that Arlie
used to save herself from the predatory guards, Arlene, older and wiser, knows she must
use the strength within her and her reasoning to fight against a man that is easily able to
physically overtake her.
In many ways, this scene illustrates an amalgamation of
expressionist values within feminist sentiment. There is a protagonist railing against an
oppressive father-figure—as Bennie pretends to be Arlene’s protector and mentor before
he attempts to rape her—but rather than succumb to his advances, Arlene combats his
abuse with street-smart insight and calm resolve.
Though everyone else in the play—Arlene’s mother, Bennie, and Arlene’s exboyfriend, Carl—cannot see the change in Arlene, she is determined to prove that she can
“get out” of this restrictive and limited existence. While others insist upon still calling
Arlene “Arlie,” and as she is still assimilated to the ritualistic maneuvers of her former
life in incarceration—Arlene jumps out of bed at the sound of a siren at the same moment
that Arlie is asking about her release from solitary confinement (38-9)—Arlene tries to
tell herself how to act like a citizen of the outside world. She says aloud after waking up
abruptly, “People don’t sleep in their clothes, Arlene. An people git up fore noon” (38).
Closing the window through which sounds of the city erupt and interrupt Arlene’s sleep,
114
we hear the noise created by machines and the catcall from a male worker below (38). It
is the cacophony of an industrialized and male-centered society mingling and making its
way into Arlene’s personal space. In essence, she cannot escape the outside world’s
rules, sounds, and activities even within her own domain. This scene is paralleled with
Arlie’s cries for her release from solitary confinement, which can only occur if she tries
to play by the rules of the prison system (39), which are not based on justice or
righteousness but, rather, centered on the animal desires of the males that run the
institution. Appearing as Arlie’s guard in a scene from the past, Bennie attempts to woo
her into submission with the promise of simple material goods like sugary drinks and
chewing gum. He says to Arlie, “Kool-Aid’s gone up, you know. Fifteen cents and tax.
You get out, you’ll learn all about that” (45). This is precisely the thing about which
Arlie will learn: that money is king in the outside world, and it is Arlene in the
accompanying scene who tries to budget what little she has merely to survive. Either
way, both women must learn how to follow the code of their world if they are to escape
their condition. Cline views this part expressionistic and part “psychodrama” play as one
that depicts Arlene as “an expression of subjectivity coopted and created by a social
unconscious that erects institutions that deny desire, and that turn the self into a thing, an
object.”28
Here, following the world’s codes means denying one’s own desires or
suffering just a bit more in order to follow the ways of society. Even in “freedom,”
Arlene is subject to the laws of a world where humans are mere spokes in an everrevolving wheel of industrialization and profit-making. She is unseen and unimportant,
save for her ability—because of her female sexuality—to satisfy physically those who
28
Cline, “The Impossibility of Getting Out,” 5.
115
create the laws by which she must abide. The reality, however, is that no matter how
much they try, the world is unmoved by both Arlie and Arlene’s efforts. Society has
turned Arlie violent, and the resulting aftermath is a cold, emotionless Arlene.
Still, when Carl, the father of Arlene’s child, Joey, and her former boyfriend and
pimp, returns to try and persuade Arlene to start prostituting herself again, it is clear that
she does not want to revisit her former lifestyle, though the alternative is an uncaring,
capitalist world that offers few job opportunities for a young ex-convict female with
limited economic and educational resources. When Carl arrives, he and Ruby, Arlene’s
friendly neighbor, engage in a dramatic dialectic, where he argues for the quick cash
offered by prostitution:
CARL: Say you stay here an finally find yourself some job…. An you git
maybe seventy-five a week. Seventy-five for standin’ over a sink full of
greasy gray water, fishin’ out blobs of bread an lettuce. People puttin’
pieces of chewed-up meat in their napkins and you gotta pick it out. Eight
hours a day, six days a week, to make seventy-five lousy pictures of Big
Daddy George. Now, how long it’ll take you to make seventy-five
workin’ for me?... Less than a night. Two hours maybe. (49-50)
In the midst of this conversation, Carl points to the picture of Jesus on Arlene’s wall and
asks if it is her “boyfriend” (49). This coupled with his remark about “Big Daddy
George” reiterates his assumptions that everything within Arlene’s life must return to
some fixed male reference point; Carl’s words link unintentionally capitalism to religion.
He cannot imagine that anyone would shun the instant gratification of monetary gain,
despite the self-degradation, for an alternative life on the fringe of money-centered
society, but this is precisely Ruby’s argument.
Ruby also struggles economically and is an ex-convict trying merely to survive
and stay out of trouble.
As feminist revisioning within a world seemingly full of
116
predators, Ruby attempts to help Arlene, and she does so without any ulterior motives. It
is through Ruby that Arlene learns her sister, Candy, who subleased the place to her, was
also prostituting herself to make a living (41). But unlike everyone else in Arlene’s life,
Ruby also acknowledges that Arlene is nothing like she was told to expect (42), which
points to her belief that Arlene’s position is not inevitable. She is positive, even about the
low prospects of her job as a cook, and she influences Arlene to take the hard route of
labor over the easy pay that prostitution (and Carl) offer:
Know what I hate? Makin’ salads—cuttin’ up all that stuff’ n floppin’ it in
a bowl. Some day…some day…I’m gonna hear “tossed salad” an I’m
gonna do jus’ that. Toss out a tomato, toss out a head a lettuce, toss out a
big ol’ carrot. (Miming the throwing and enjoying herself immensely). (43)
Ruby certainly does not idealize the life of a short-order cook, but she does, however,
find humor in even the bleakest of situations. While many see Ruby’s position as the
point where Arlene’s life is turned around—Susan Carlson calls it an ending with “warm
joy”29—the final assumptions about the sort of life Arlene will have are not that easily
drawn, as we never know if Arlene procures a stable job, if she regains custody of her
son, and if she finds a partner that does not attempt to exploit her. Ruby does remind
Arlene that, unlike choosing the route of a prostitute, thus working under the control of
Carl as her pimp, working as a cook will allow her to keep the money she does make:
“But when you make your two nickels, you can keep both of ‘em” (53). Norman shows
the diametrically opposed routes Arlene can choose, and though her options are limited
Susan L. Carlson, “Women in Comedy: Problem, Promise, Paradox,” in Themes in Drama:
Drama, Sex, and Politics, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985),
168.
29
117
either way, we are to understand that neither choice will bring about a clear exit strategy
from this real-world cage in which Arlene is confined.
Although Norman depicts the bleak reality of an uneducated ex-con in
contemporary society, she never tells us what path Arlene chooses in the end. In fact,
Norman’s comments during the post-production discussion revealed her belief that
Arlene could get her son back, though we never see this part of the story. 30 It is
interesting to note the playwright’s particularly positive visioning of Arlene’s ending,
though the play itself is quite bleak. Claudia Tatinge Nascimento mistakenly describes
Arlene’s character as another typical “helpless” female protagonist.31 Though Arlene’s
life is difficult, and getting out will take years of unfulfilling labor, and there is still no
guarantee that she will improve her lot, Norman leaves Arlene’s life decisions up to her.
Carl leaves, but he first offers money and a meeting point at which Arlene can claim her
role as a prostitute (52), which she, to the audience’s knowledge, never accepts. Bennie
returns and leaves his phone number for Arlene, but she burns the slip of paper (57). In
this final scene, we also learn that Arlene attempted to “kill” Arlie by stabbing herself
nearly to death with a fork while still incarcerated (54). Without anyone else’s help—and
after failed prayers to God to save her—Arlene makes the decision to change after this
“killing” of herself. She survives an attack against her body, she survives incarceration,
and she balks at both Carl’s and Bennie’s offers of an easier life under their rule.
Arlene’s life is certainly tough, but she is definitely not helpless. Fighting against a
legion of father figures in a world of economic hardship, Arlene’s survival story does not
30
Norman, post-production discussion.
Claudia Tatinge Nascimento, “Burning the (Monologue) Book: Disobeying the Rules of
Gender Bias in Beginning Acting Classes,” Theatre Topics 11, no. 2 (2001): 152.
31
118
unnecessarily rewrite her existence within a fairy tale framework, but, rather, it merely
returns the self to the self—or, as Norman called it, “A love story between Arlie and
Arlene.”32 At the end of the play, Arlene and Arlie finally speak in unison, stating,
“What you doin’in there?” (58). This existential and introspective comment forms the
question that will follow Arlene in every step of her future rehabilitation as she attempts
to reclaim the self that so many sought to steal from her.
Paula Vogel’s play, How I Learned to Drive, is similar in its staging of a splitself; we witness Li’l Bit, herself a victim of abuse at the hands of her uncle, as she works
her way through a personal narrative concerned with understanding, and healing from,
her past. Like Norman, Vogel does not give us an easy route to redemption. Through
episodic memories of her childhood to adulthood, Li’l Bit’s story is told through an
extended driving metaphor—her uncle being the man who taught her to drive and who
sexually exploited her under the guise of that same “teaching.” Jill Dolan explains that
the “geographical snippets, covered with interstates, route numbers, town names, and zip
codes that move in and out of sight, remind spectators how difficult it is to truly map the
territory of relationships, sexuality, and desire.”33 This is true, as Vogel’s portrayal of
Uncle Peck is one that has garnered much controversy—he is actually quite likeable—but
we see, in the end, that the first instance of abuse was the last day that Li’l Bit felt as if
she lived in her own body.34 This cements the work as a feminist, anti-patriarchal abuse
32
Norman, post-production discussion.
Jill Dolan, “Performance Review: How I Learned to Drive,” Theatre Journal 50, no.1 (1998):
127.
33
34
Paula Vogel, How I Learned to Drive (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1997), 58. All
subsequent citations from the play are included within parentheses in the text.
119
narrative, but the play’s expressionist roots are underscored by a variety of traditional
expressionist themes and techniques: episodic scenes that are punctuated by projected
slides and accompanied by music that represent the jumps in the protagonist’s memory
bank; sparse but evocative staging and metaphorical driving language that delineates the
sexual learning Li’l Bit encounters along the traumatic route of her development; and a
constant thematic struggle for agency in a world that controls women through an
institutionalized set of rules that define and limit female sexuality.
Paula Vogel was born in 1951 in Washington, D.C. After receiving her M.A.
from Cornell University in 1976, she became a prolific playwright, first gaining notoriety
with her play The Baltimore Waltz. The play deals with AIDS—the disease that claimed
the life of her brother, Carl, in 1988—and it won the 1992 Obie Award for Best Play.
Other major plays that followed include Hot ‘N Throbbing (1994), The Mineola Twins
(1996), and The Long Christmas Ride Home (2004). Vogel went on to win the 1998
Pulitzer Prize for Drama for How I Learned to Drive (1997) and the 1998 Susan Smith
Blackburn Prize. The 1997 production of How I Learned to Drive premiered March 16,
1997, Off-Broadway at Vineyard Theatre and was directed by Mark Brokaw. The role of
Li’l Bit was portrayed by Mary-Louise Parker. The play later moved, in April 1997, to
the Century Theatre in New York City, where it ran for four hundred performances. In
2004, Vogel was the recipient of the Award for Literature from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters, but she is also known for her decades of playwriting instruction at
Cornell University, Brown University, Yale School of Drama, and Yale Repertory
Theatre. Vogel is married to prominent Brown University professor of Biology and
120
Gender Studies, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and she is currently the Chair of the Playwriting
Department at Yale School of Drama.
Li’l Bit narrates her story directly to the audience—often stopping the action to
explain the situation further. We learn that her name originates from a family ritual of
nicknaming one another after the appearance of their genitalia (12), thus offering an
indication of the already problematic sexual positioning within Li’l Bit’s family clan.
Other characters include Peck, Li’l Bit’s uncle by marriage, and the three Greek Chorus
characters—Male, Female, and Teenage—who play a revolving cast of family members,
school mates, and various industry workers. They are representative of the voices of
society, often engaging in debates concerning the role of women and men, sexuality, and
marriage, but they also function as live ventriloquist’s dummies puppeting the voices of
Li’l Bit’s remembered conversations with others.
Vogel’s opening notes comment that the young girl enlisted to play the Teenage
Greek Chorus should be of “legal age” [one] “who can look as close to eleven as
possible…. If the actor is too young, the audience may feel uncomfortable” (5). This
component becomes important at the end of the play when the Teenage Greek Chorus
speaks the actions of abuse that are depicted by the adult playing Li’l Bit’s role. None of
these instances that could potentially induce discomfort within the audience are literally
acted—molestation, physical interaction between Peck and Li’l Bit, and nudity—but they
are, instead, pantomimed in an effort to avoid misrepresentation of the abuse as
scintillation. Coupled with this careful staging of the abusive acts, Vogel’s dramatic
negotiation hinges upon the use of humor to lighten the heavy themes of the play; her
production notes suggest various early-60s songs to play along with the projections; for
121
example, Vogel writes, “As for music: please have fun.…any music that sounds like a
Laugh-In soundtrack. Other sixties music is rife with pedophilish (?) reference: The
Beach Boys “Little Surfer Girl,” the “You’re Sixteen” genre hits; “Come Back When
You Grow Up, Girl,” Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s “This Girl is a Woman Now,”
etc.” (6). As Vladimir S. Buoan remarks, “The play bravely refuses to indulge in the
tabloid sleaziness of its subject…. Vogel chose to tell a story of survival…. [and]
significantly uses laughing-out-loud humor to dress the play.”35
Rather than creating an overly heavy portrayal of an already disturbing topic,
Vogel, instead, stages a tongue-in-cheek but frank dialogue about the events that occurred
from age eleven forward in Li’l Bit’s life. Bertolt Brecht, though himself somewhat
critical of expressionist dramas, although he had written several himself, notes the role
that music played within the genre:
…the introduction of music meant a certain break with the dramatic
conventions of the time: the drama was (as it were) lightened, made more
elegant; the theatre’s offerings became more like virtuoso turns…. the
manic lop-sidedness of the expressionists were to some extent offset by
the use of music, simply because it introduced variety. At the same time,
music made possible something which we had long since ceased to take
for granted, namely the “poetic theatre.”36
The music not only elicits within the audience the same memories of that era that we are
meant to remember along with the protagonist, but also helps to lighten the mood where,
otherwise, one might be tempted to escape a potentially uncomfortable staging. The
pedophilic themes of the music from that era serve as bitter irony for the situation that
Vladimir S. Bunoan, “A Drive Through Life’s Dark Roads,” Business World, January 28, 2000,
Weekender, 46.
35
36
Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. John Willett
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 84-5.
122
accompanies the soundtrack, while the shifts in memory are made clearer by the changing
background sound, thus making the stream-of-consciousness theater closer to audible
semblance. Vogel’s feminist strategies also extend to her ability to both create the portrait
of a complex female lead that is, at the same time, handedly representative of the
multitude of concerns faced by women in our society: misogyny, sexual abuse, career
aspirations and/or limitations, education, and agency within one’s own life. Vogel not
only writes a play of survival after abuse, but also creates a multitude of dialectical
dialogues that reach beyond a mere two-sided wrong-or-right debate.
Like Norman’s Getting Out, the play begins with the announcement of the first
driving metaphor, which is spoken in a droning, educational, and flat voice: “Safety
first—You and Driver Education…(Then the sound of a key turning the ignition of a
car…)” (9). In many ways, the audience is all set to take this trip through Li’l Bit’s
memory with her. Jodie Ann Kelsey comments that Li’l Bit’s use of the pronoun “we”
and her direct address to the audience create a connection to those watching Li’l Bit’s
story; these devices offer them a spot in her travels through years of memory. 37 We are a
part of the entire experience—sound, sight, and feeling—as Li’l Bit’s character steps into
the spotlight and introduces us to the suburban Maryland setting of the play. As if she
conjures something we might have heard straight from Peck’s mouth, Li’l Bit comments
on the landscape surrounding her, stating, “This countryside was once dotted with
farmhouses—from their porches you could have witnessed the Civil War raging in the
front fields…. I sit beside a man old enough to be—did I mention how still the night is?”
(9). In this opening scene, Li’l Bit remarks about the ways in which her town has
Jodie Ann Kelsey, “A Function of Direct Address in Recent Broadway and West End Shows,”
Text and Presentation 22, no. 4 (2001): 93.
37
123
changed. When she conjures this image of the Civil War, she is essentially embodying
the same retrospective longing that Peck has throughout the play. It is as if she has
chosen his words here instead of her own. Where she trails off and stops just short of
calling Peck someone old enough to be her father, there is an overwhelming realization
that Li’l Bit chooses to leave unspoken. That is, she knows that the interaction she has
with Peck is both taboo due to the familial ties and illegal because of her age, but she is
not yet ready to confront the reality of the situation. Here is an instance where the past
comes to the present, and this father figure beside her seems always to be near. This
theme will continue until the final scene, where Peck appears in Li’l Bit’s rearview
mirror, as if the legacy of his abuse is always near and will follow her.
Religion is the first institution with which sex is linked in the play, and is
pervasive throughout the text. In the opening “driving scene,” the only props on the stage
are two folding chairs, or, as Vogel writes, “…or a Buick Riviera, if you will” (10), and
the vehicle whizzes past “one-room revival churches, the porno drive-in, and boarded up
motels” (9). The two chairs indicate a broad notion of a vehicle, while, in the following
moments—the first indications of a sexual relationship—neither of the characters ever
touch, but they pantomime and emote from their faces what sexual actions the audience is
intended to understand as they sit in the “car” looking straight ahead. It is a somewhat
general staging of what could be any car abuse scene, yet we are not subjected to
watching the literal act itself. While Peck mimics the fondling of a currently seventeenyear-old Li’l Bit’s breasts by rubbing the empty air in front of him, “sacred music, organ
music or a boy’s choir swells…” (11). Later, we learn that Li’l Bit’s grandmother, who
was married at a very young age, believed in “all the sacraments of the church” but never
124
believed in an “orgasm” (26) because she had never experienced pleasure from sex. This
same grandmother told her daughter, Li’l Bit’s mother, to find out about sex by visiting
the priest. Mother, through the voice of the Female Greek Chorus, says, “What does an
eighty-year-old priest know about love-making with girls!” (30). What ensues is a debate
about the kind of sexual information that is appropriate for females. These instances
illustrate the ways in which institutionalized religion is often used to set the standards for
appropriate sexuality while highlighting—for example with the juxtaposed churches and
porno drive-ins—the overtly hypocritical nature of religion and sex. That Grandmother
knows nothing about sexual pleasure and merely bows to the desires of the man she
married while still a child herself speaks to her belief that the best person to teach her
daughter (and her granddaughter) about sex is a father figure himself—the priest. This
time, the oppressive Father of expressionist form is representative of a ruling body that
aims to control female sexuality.
This religious ruling entity dictates the rules of
appropriateness and purity while maintaining a standard of sexual sacrifice, wherein this
family contains women who have been exploited by the men and father figures in their
lives for decades. One indication, however, that Li’l Bit is stronger than this limited
visioning of religion and of a god is her belief that “God’s going to be a beautiful black
woman” who has the ability to deny Li’l Bit’s misogynistic grandfather’s entrance into
heaven (14-15). In some small way, this indicates Li’l Bit’s rebellion against the longheld beliefs of her overbearing, patriarchal family structure.
Sexuality in the play is also linked with numerous economic metaphors and
devices. For example, Grandmother explicitly remembers the Depression where she
could not afford to buy a “decent bra” and is now crippled at the shoulders from the lack
125
of proper support (13). Literally, if the bad economy is difficult on men, then it is
physically disfiguring for women.
If in Li’l Bit’s family an appealing physical
appearance is the most important asset a girl can have, then Grandmother’s abilities and
options were limited by her economic inability to protect the appearance of her female
sexuality. As Grandfather states about Li’l Bit, “What does she need a college degree
for? She’s got all the credentials she’ll need on her chest” (14). As the head of the
household, Grandfather sees no value in educating women, nor does he view his own
wife’s job as anything that extends beyond her ability to “have the table set and the bed
turned down” (26). Li’l Bit’s decision to attend school and educate herself is in direct
revolt against the Father figure of her household, thus establishing her rebellion against
the traditional order of her clan.
But as it is the desire of the male that eventually leads to Li’l Bit’s abuse,
sexuality is ultimately linked with something indelibly all-American: the automobile.
Peck assumes the role of the father that Li’l Bit never had by teaching her about life,
dating, and, eventually, how to drive. The titles that appear projected across the stage are
loaded with sexual connotation when coupled with the ensuing scene. These titles or
episodes mimic the stages of Li’l Bit’s abuse, and they serve to introduce the jumps in
her memory of the years that she spent with Peck. At one point, Li’l Bit announces the
scene, “The Initiation into a Boy’s First Love,” which is accompanied by “slides of erotic
photographs of women and cars: women posed over the hood; women draped along the
sideboards; women with water hoses spraying the car; and the actress playing Li’l Bit
with a Bel Air or any 1950s car one can find for the finale” (32). This clear connection
between an “advanced” and industrialized nation—the country’s love affair with the
126
vehicle being very much linked with staunch individualism and rebellion—is eerily
connected to society’s strategic association between the female body and the car. Li’l Bit
says to the audience, “Long after a mother’s tits, but before a woman’s breasts…. After
the milk but before the beer…. Long after he’s squeezed down the birth canal but before
he’s pushed his way back in: The boy falls in love with the thing that bears his weight
with speed” (32). This last line is a double-entendre for the intended submissive position
of a woman during sex. This connection is ever more clear when Peck calls his vehicle
“she” because “when you close your eyes and think of someone who responds to your
touch—someone who performs just for you and gives you what you ask for—I guess I
always see a ‘she’” (35). This is precisely what the men in Li’l Bit’s family, but
particularly her pedophile uncle, want from the women in their lives: performance,
submission, and glamour. If the automobile is directly linked with the subjectified form
of the female as a vehicle toward rugged American individualism and rebellious escape,
then it is meant to be the object of this ideal for men alone. Vogel’s rerouting of this
theme places Li’l Bit behind the wheel, though it is her abuser who, ultimately, teaches
her the rules of the road.
It is the complicated and multifaceted nature of Peck’s characterization that has
created the most controversy in the play. Peck willingly takes on the role as the father
figure in Li’l Bit’s life; though Peck mentions that the relationship is in-law and not by
blood (15), the abuse is still incestuous for his own insistence that he is the guiding male
force in Li’l Bit’s life, as he alternately chastises and seduces her. In more than one
instance in the play, Peck says, “I have loved you every day since the day you were born”
(44). During one driving lesson, he directly compares Li’l Bit to the child he never had.
127
Peck states, “I don’t have any sons. You’re the nearest to a son I’ll ever have…. I want
to teach you to drive like a man” (34-5). Despite his sexual exploits with Li’l Bit,
however, Peck has moments where he strategically seduces the audience into believing
he is a good man. Teaching Li’l Bit to “drive like a man” is one way in which,
unconsciously, he shows his victim how to fight back against his advances. Vogel’s
description of Peck as an “Atticus Finch” type (5) means that he is likeable and
handsome, and it also points to his Southern roots, which shape much of his beliefs.
Constantly longing for his old life in South Carolina, Peck uses his Southern heritage as
rationale for the inappropriate out-of-town dinner and drinks date to which he treats the
currently fifteen-year-old Li’l Bit: “In South Carolina, like here on the Eastern Shore,
they’re… (searches for the right euphemism.)… ‘European.’ Not so puritanical. And
very understanding if gentlemen wish to escort very attractive young ladies who might
want a before-dinner cocktail” (18). While his sly and smooth genteel nature makes him
the perfect villain—for how else could he lure an increasingly more aware Li’l Bit?—it is
his sometimes likeable qualities that set him apart from the overbearing grandfather for
which Li’l Bit holds much disdain. Dolan notes that the “nonchronologically” structured
play “allows the playwright to build sympathy for a man who might otherwise be
despised and dismissed as a child molester.”38 This is true, as information is revealed
piece by piece, seemingly building a case against our anticipated disgust for Peck. The
case for his humanity is depicted in increments long before the final evidence of his
status as violator is revealed. For example, not only does Peck support Li’l Bit’s decision
to go to college, but also he willingly assists with the domestic tasks, stating, “I think
38
Dolan, “Performance Review,” 127.
128
men should be nice to women. Women are always working for us. There’s nothing
particularly manly in wolfing down food and then sitting around in a stupor while the
women clean up” (46). Even his wife, Mary, says that Peck is a “good man,” ultimately
blaming Li’l Bit for the interest her husband takes in his niece (44). Oddly, critics often
locate anti-villainous properties within Peck’s Southern heritage; N.J. Stanley comments,
“Wisely, Vogel gave Uncle Peck South Carolina roots. He speaks with a Southern
accent, and his inherent genteel nature complicates our feelings for him.” 39 This is odd
given the violent history of the Southern United States, but it seems to be the shared
rationale for several theorists. We learn at one point that Peck may have, himself, been
abused. Li’l Bit says, “Now that I’m old enough, there are some questions I would have
liked to have asked him. Who did it to you, Uncle Peck? How old were you? Were you
eleven?” (55). Alanna Maclean comments that the play, then, becomes a survival story
on several different levels, as Peck survived both the war in which he fought and the
possible abuse in his own childhood.40 Far from acquitting Peck of his indiscretions,
however, this information only reiterates the need for more frank discussion of sexual
abuse—whether it violates the male or female body—as there is some evidence that
Peck’s abuse of Li’l Bit was a reflection of the abuse he himself endured.
Still, the final scene returns to a clear conclusion: What Peck did to Li’l Bit is
wrong. It is abuse and thus a violation. Despite all of his good traits, the fact is that
Uncle Peck is a pedophile. He takes on the role of a protective and instructive father
N.J. Stanley, “Screamingly Funny and Terrifyingly Shocking: Paula Vogel as Domestic
Detective,” Staging a Cultural Paradigm: The Political and the Personal in American Drama, ed.
Barbara Ozieblo and Miriam Lopez-Rodriguez (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2002), 360.
39
40
Alanna Maclean, “Disturbing Play a Success,” Canberra Times, October 1, 2002, final edition.
129
figure, and he uses his charisma to exploit underage family members sexually. Several
theater critics have lambasted Vogel for what they perceive as a soft portrayal of Peck.
Marty Clear writes, “The victim…seems somewhat to blame for encouraging the
advances. The molester…seems like a pretty decent guy, if you can overlook that he’s a
pedophile.”41 Clear goes on to criticize Vogel for seemingly finding “joy in presenting
distasteful topics for no apparent reason…. Vogel seems more interested in seeing what
she can get away with than in trying to affect the audience.”42 The notion that there is
“no apparent reason” to discuss sexual abuse is precisely the argument for why writers
must discuss and depict this topic: is the destruction of a child’s innocence and the
systematic and cyclical abuse within a family not worth the general population’s
attention? Further, Clear’s comments seem to mirror those of Michael Toscano, who
writes, “One assumes that a play about a sexual relationship between a middle-age man
and his teenage niece—especially one written by a courageous feminist, lesbian
playwright—would take a strong position and that the predator would clearly be evil.
But that’s not the case here. In fact, it’s not even perfectly clear at all times who is
preying on whom.”43 To be clear, Peck, himself, is a likeable character, and perhaps this
is even more terrifying, as he is otherwise a seemingly decent man. He is the very
embodiment of those “strangers with candy” about which we were all warned. He is the
perfect villain, as everything about him—his handsome face, his kind demeanor, his
Marty Clear, “Tripped by Its Own Intentional Distaste,” St. Petersburg Times, December 9,
2006, local and state.
41
42
Ibid.
Michael Toscano, “Ambiguous ‘Drive’ Takes Audience for a Muddled Ride,” Washington
Post, February 5, 2004, final edition.
43
130
willingness to teach—draws Li’l Bit nearer to his seductions. The abuse to which he
subjects Li’l Bit for seven years of her life, however, is clearly wrong. Vogel, while she
refuses to create the portrait of the violator as an obviously “bad” villain, does indicate
that what Peck does to Li’l Bit is unequivocally disgusting and degrading. This abuse is
all too evident where he convinces a thirteen-year-old Li’l Bit to pose nude for him in his
basement (40), or where, near the end of the play, he sends creepy correspondences to
Li’l Bit, who is away at school, with a letter-by-letter “countdown” to her eighteenth
birthday, at which point he can have sex with her without fear of prosecution (49). There
is even indication that Peck may have molested a young boy, Cousin Bobby, while back
home in the South (24). If these examples, however, are not sufficient evidence for
Peck’s status as victimizer, then the final scene’s depiction of the initial abuse cements
Vogel’s mission. Li’l Bit’s memory of her eleven-year-old self taking an out-of-town trip
for the first time with her uncle culminates in his molestation of her in the car. As the sex
and driving metaphor comes full circle, Peck asks the child Li’l Bit if she would like to
take the wheel. She exclaims, “But it’s against the law at my age.” Peck responds, “And
that’s why you can’t tell anyone I’m letting you do this” (57). This scene is spoken
through the voice of the Teenage Greek Chorus, but it is acted by the adult Li’l Bit who
realizes, while an imagined Uncle Peck peers into her present-day rearview mirror, “That
day was the last day I lived in my body. I retreated above the neck, and I’ve lived inside
the ‘fire’ in my head ever since” (58). Stanley notes that we are “assured” in this final
scene that it was all Peck’s fault that the abuse occurred 44—contrary to both critics’ and
society’s interpretations of many acts of sexual abuse, where blame is often linked back
44
Stanley, “Screamingly Funny,” 363.
131
to the victim—and Vogel uses a “deft theatrical trick to shelter us in a way, but more
important, to sharpen our focus and help us understand why this scene must be present in
the play.”45 This moment alone speaks to the weight of sexual abuse and to the
omnipresent nature of Peck’s violation over Li’l Bit. Would we say that an eleven-yearold is “to blame” for his or her molestation? Would we say that a man that touches a
child sexually is clearly not “evil?” Unfortunately, some of the critical commentary
about Vogel’s play serves to uphold a tradition of victim blame and to further the concept
that complex constructions of family, relationships, and sexuality can be easily explained
away with limited “right” and “wrong” signifiers.
But to return to the expressionist nature of this play and to this theme of a father
that must be overthrown, Li’l Bit’s hard-won agency speaks to her ability to survive even
the most confusing and traumatic sexual encounters with her uncle. Even the traditional
German music of Wagner that plays during one particularly pedophilic scene (21-2)—
Wagner, himself, known for his staunch nationalism and for his association with
controversial racial ideologies—is, if not consciously, a lucid nod to the expressionist
theme. Perhaps Peck’s aggressive driving strategies prepared Li’l Bit too well, because
she eventually creates the rules of the relationship. She says, “You’ve got to let me—
draw the line. And once it’s drawn, you mustn’t cross it” (47). After Li’l Bit refuses
Peck’s marriage proposal and makes the decision never to see him again, he lies alone on
a hotel bed nearly curled into a “fetal position” (54). The “father” has become the
defeated “child.” We also learn that Peck lived a pitiful existence, slowly dying until he
drank himself to death. As this only occurs after Li’l Bit gets the courage to halt all
45
Ibid.
132
contact with Peck, it is understood that she defeats the imperious force that has controlled
her for seven years. Li’l Bit reclaims her agency, and by ignoring a tradition of women
in her family who fell under the “rule” of a domineering male, Li’l Bit shuns family
tradition and finds her way in the world, despite her traumatic years of abuse. Kelsey
comments, “The story is not the important factor, but rather the living-to-tell-it aspect
that gives credence to the story. Audience members are on edge because the actor has
his/her guard down as a result of the ultra-personal direct address.”46 In the end, Li’l Bit
is triumphant, if not wholly healed. Vogel’s words speak to the apt vehicle of drama for
the depiction of complex topics—such as incest, sexual abuse, and pedophilia—when she
says, “A novel when you write it remains that way forever…. A play changes every
night. This play doesn’t belong to me anymore, it belongs to the cast that is rehearsing it
right now.”47 That is, all of the representations of Li’l Bit culminate into a shared
visioning of what it means to be abused—or, even more complicated, what it means to be
abused at the hands of those meant to protect one from harm. One thing remains: Li’l
Bit’s survival endures production after production, night after night.
In both Norman’s and Vogel’s plays, we witness a world where characters exploit
one another for economic, social, and sexual gain. At the center of this exploitation, the
female body contains the most oft used and controlled form of “capital.” Those bent on
upholding a clear hierarchal division between male and female—with the male
functioning as the rule-maker or teacher and the female subjected to these rules and
lessons—move between the role of clever villain and brash violator, but, in the end, their
46
Kelsey, “A Function of Direct Address,” 95.
47
Susan Archdall, “Driven to Cross the Line,” The Advertiser, July 1, 2000.
133
power is dismantled and undermined. These oppressors are overthrown by a fighting
female protagonist unwilling to submit to their sexual and social tyranny.
134