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49 pages 1 hour read

Eve Ensler

The Vagina Monologues

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1996

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Themes

Feminine Community and Empowerment

Content Warning: The source text and this study guide feature graphic depictions and discussion of rape, sexual assault, suicidal ideation, and domestic and systemic violence against women.

The Vagina Monologues purports to promote a culture of agency through naming and sharing experiences and building community. Because the text is a compilation of interviews, the speakers represent a multitude of voices speaking to both common experiences of womanhood and those specific to geographical locations, points in history, and even age. This effect becomes a tool to empower women to share their own experiences, counteracting the culture of silence that surrounds topics related to women’s bodies and their violation.

In the Introduction to the 2018 edition, V recounts her experiences after performing the play in the 1990s: “At the end of each show of The Vagina Monologues there would be long lines of women who wanted to talk […] they were lining up to anxiously tell me how and when they had been raped, or assaulted, or beaten, or molested” (xiv). These responses support her premise that there is power in breaking the silence surrounding women’s sexual experiences, thus contributing to the sense of community that The Vagina Monologues began to ignite.

Empowerment functions as an antidote to shame in the play. Frank discussions of how vaginas look, smell, and function, for instance, serve as reassurance for women who—due to silence stemming from cultural norms—aren’t sure what’s “normal.” The monologue “I Was Twelve. My Mother Slapped Me” details the range and depth of fears women feel when experiencing menstruation for the first time, establishing the detrimental effects of the lack of space in which to talk about normal bodily functions.

The play itself features women sharing their pleasure in exploring their vaginas and the sense of empowerment this kind of community brings. This is especially evident in “The Vagina Workshop,” wherein the narrator describes her vagina as a beautiful flower and shell and says that she “learned this from a woman who runs vagina workshop […] who really sees vaginas, who helps women see their own vaginas by seeing other women’s vaginas” (33-34). This quote encapsulates the larger result of V’s play and the many women who contributed to the final text and continuation of the play; by saying “vagina” and naming the experiences that surround each woman’s, other women can feel seen, see themselves, and embrace a community where their experiences can be shared and celebrated or understood and healed.

The community built by The Vagina Monologues continues today through V-Day and One Billion Rising. By giving voice to a multiplicity of experiences held by women all over the world, The Vagina Monologues has aimed to empower women to begin saying what has, in many cases, remained unsaid, evoking change from both men and women who are looking toward a more liberated future for women.

Patriarchal Systems Perpetuate Violence Against Women

The Vagina Monologues explores systemic violence against women on both a personal and global scale to shine a light on experiences that are either silenced, ignored, or condoned by or erased from history. The 2018 edition includes a statistic that the play itself explores in myriad ways: “One in three women on the planet will experience physical or sexual violence in her lifetime” (171). Though this statistic is more recent than the original production of The Vagina Monologues, the play extends human voices to these numbers and is a testament to the magnitude of violence women experience and the cultural systems that perpetuate it.

For example, in “Crooked Braid,” a woman of the Oglala Lakota Nation marries a man who beats her ruthlessly and later recounts her son beating his own wife despite and because of the violence in which he grew up. Of her husband, the narrator says, “His dad was vicious to his mother” (114). The narrator later speaks of a phone call with her son: “[H]e didn’t mean to beat his wife. He didn’t mean to batter her. He’s suicidal. He knows what his mother went through. But he can’t stop—my son” (121). The end of the monologue indicts not only the men who perpetrate domestic abuse but also the violence of colonialism, which the narrator implies incited the generational trauma that contributes to such a reality in this woman’s domestic life: “They took our land. They took our ways. They took our men. We want them back” (121). This passage denotes just one of the larger patriarchal systems that result in interpersonal violence between people and that is largely aimed at women; because of a systemic removal of resources, beginning with land, this narrator experiences violence that she otherwise might not.

V details multiple instances of violence against women throughout the play, all of which are connected to larger systems: war, misogyny, religion, bigotry, or military or militant power. For example, the monologue “They Beat the Girl out of My Boy…or so They Tried” analyzes the violence trans women experience. The narratives that recount the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the dearth of government support that followed, also demonstrate the way systems contribute to the violence women face—and sometimes it’s violence through sheer neglect. The play aims to hold accountable the many perpetrators responsible for violence faced by women across the globe and, in doing so, brings awareness to the systems of power that create an array of oppressive circumstances for women.

The Power of Art as Activism

A long-time feminist slogan, “the personal is the political,” becomes the lived experience of not only V but also the women she interviewed and the people who perform, witness, or read the play. By bringing global violence and oppression faced by millions of women to the fore through anonymous speakers and personal stories, The Vagina Monologues is at once a piece of art and a movement intended to uplift, celebrate, and protect women.

Following the production of the play, The Vagina Monologues ignited movements like V-Day and One Billion Rising, as well as the City of Joy. Annual benefit productions of The Vagina Monologues are performed each year on V-Day, and the nonprofit has raised over $100 million dollars to fund safe houses, fund rape crisis centers, and save lives. These results demonstrate the power of giving voice to this violence and are tangible examples of the power of art and the communities it can build. In the section on V-Day, Susan Celia Swan and Purva Panday Cullman write, “The Vagina Monologues reminds us with each performance that the personal is political, that speaking out can be an act of resistance” (171). The play resists silence, secrecy, shame, and isolation, instead aiming to foster community among women who share with each other their experiences, fears, pleasures, and pain. The Vagina Monologues, then, is a tool of resistance and revolution toward a world where women are free to live without abuse, rape, and shame.

Several monologues give specific voice to the power of resistance and call for direct action in response to violence against women. “Over It” indicts rape culture, calling for an end to being “polite about rape” and calling for women globally to “OCCUPYRAPE”—a reference to other mass movements, such as Occupy Wall Street. “My Revolution Begins in the Body,” a monologue written in verse, goes a step further. While the speaker is not calling for a literal violent revolution, she says, “My revolution is willing to die for this” and it “does not shy away from the dangerous edges” (155-56). These monologues, both Spotlight pieces, represent a confrontation with violence that is less apparent in the original monologues, suggesting a renewed sense of urgency in their calls to action.

V wrote the play in response to her own fears about the repression of women, the lack of knowledge of their own bodies, and the rampant rape culture that women still face today. The Vagina Monologues operates as a piece of art containing both the joys and horrors of feminine sexual experience, but it is also a tool for change, as demonstrated by the cultural ripples the play made after its initial production—ripples that are still being felt today.

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