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Rhapsodica's picture

One aspect of the play that

One aspect of the play that I found interesting was the way in which Monica's view of her body changes over the course of the play. At first, she feels like she must restrain herself... through the thought-speak, the audience knows that she wans to be with Everard as they're walking in the park, but she does not express this outloud. As she goes through numerous relationships, she begins to believe in "free loveism," and is not ashamed to say it out loud. When she becomes pregnant, she stands before the audience, looks down at her body as if it is some disgusting foreign object, and says that she hates it.

In the end, Monica's body ends up betraying her. She is the only character that dies in the course of the play (as far as I remember), but she is also the only woman in the play who chooses to listen to her body's urgings and commit "the sex act," as Alice calls it, freely. She chooses to exert her power through sexuality, unlike the other women, who find power in not having sexual relations with men. What kind of message does all of this add up to?

I don't have an answer as to whether I think this is a feminist play, because while it is certainly about feminist issues, I'm having a hard time deciphering exactly what message the play is trying to convey. I feel like saying everything will be resolved in thirty years is sort of a punch line, if anything. Obviously we haven't come as far as we'd like... though I suppose we've certainly come a long way. At the same time, though, I felt like a lot of the play also rings true for how men and women (and women and women) communicate with one another in today's world. We all think things that we feel we can't say. We all feel conflicted as to whether we should act the way we like, or the way that society tells us we should be acting.

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