Daily Archives: March 6, 2014

Intimate Apparel

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Questions:

  • what’s going on in Act 2 scene 3 when Mrs. VB kisses Esther, calls her a coward
  • why did she give the money?
  • Is Mayme a prostitute?
  • Did she end up with Mr. Marks?
  • What about Esther’s belly? If she is pregnant, what is that doing for the story?
  • what did you want to have happen?

Themes/issues:

  • self esteem
  • racism/bias
  • fidelity/infidelity
  • religion
  • economic issues\
  • social pressure
  • class relations
  • intimacy
  • profession
  • dream fulfillment
  • truth and less truth
  • literacy

Setting: in a boudoir=private, intimate, a space to be friends

Why this lesbian encounter?

Who was the coward? Esther for not giving in to emotions and desires? Mrs. VB because of how her husband treats her, doesn’t have her freedom, doesn’t fight against it. Also easier for her to take out her frustrations on Esther rather than dealing with her husband: Esther works for her, can’t fight back. Mrs. VB wrote the letters, so had the upper hand, literate, white, wealthy.

Where is the intimacy? with whom is Esther intimate?

With Mrs. Van Buren–not necessarily physically–emotionally, they confide in each other; costume also =intimacy when it’s underwear!

George: physical–on their wedding night, maybe after. Emotionally–trying to win him back? Or no, she’s intimate emotionally with the person she wrote to, not with the person who came.

Are Esther and Mr. Marks intimate? They share a passion for fabrics–that’s really important to both of them. A delicate man who is polite, like what she hoped George would be. Moment of intimacy: he lets her adjust the lapels of the gifted smoking jacket. forbidden intimacy.

With her child? if she is pregnant.

 

Why did Esther give him the money?

So he wouldn’t cheat

driven by love

wanted his affection

maybe she’s not strong enough to say no

to get rid of her past: it was a part of her life when she wanted a life with a husband and a beauty parlor, and now she wants a fresh start

she gave him a way out, to violate their relationship

a test to see if he would be true to his word or not

what was the money doing for her? she was saving it for her–it was a safety net, but she wouldn’t use it

 

intimate apparel

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In the play Intimate Apparel written by Lynn Nottage takes place in 1905. the protagonist Esther a African-American seamstress who lives in a boarding house for women and sews intimate apparel for women clients from different social class, from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. Esther’s dream is to open a beauty parlorĀ for African American women who will be treated as royally as the white women she sews for. And to find the right man she could spend her life with. Esther began to receive letters from a man named George who is working on the Panama Canal. Being illiterate shows how Esther never had an education because she started working at a very young age. so she had Mrs. Van Buren and Mayme to respond. Time has passed and becomes more and more intimate. George persuaded her to get marry. But Esther cannot because she feels affection toward Mr. Marks the shopkeeper but its complicated, because of his religion. Esther agreed to marry George. When George arrived to New York he turned Ā out not to be the man to be in the letters, and he took away with Esther’s savings and spend it on whores and liquor. Esther Deeply wounded by the betrayal. Esther returns to the boarding house determined to use her skills, gifted hands and her sewing machine to refashion her dreams and make them a new from her life’s experiences.

Lynn Nottage wrote the whole play with special details where we could actually visually see the scenes. started from a room in the and the direction of each character in the stage.Ā Nottageā€™s play depict a similar world for women because even today women are still being betray and miss treated when they deserve more for being hard workers. But the also come out more determine to keep onĀ their dream.

Intimate Apparel

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Everybody wants to love and be loved; so much so that one sometimes may invent love. IntimateĀ Apparel, by Lynn Nottage, is all about projecting feelings. That’s what happened to Esther, who convinced herself to marry a man she had never met before. If I had to summarize the play in one short passage, I would use Mrs. Van Buren line that says “I recall being in love with the notion of love.”

If the play had been a Disney production, Esther and George’s story would have had a happy ending. Nottage’s take is a more realistic one. Once the Armstrong couple started living as husband and wife, Esther saw that the image she had created of her spouse did not mirror reality. He was not the gentleman his letters’ cursive persuaded her into thinking he would be. She took snippets of what had been given and created a George of her own. How could she not be disappointed?

Aside from not being what Esther though her husband would be, he was the opposite to what she was hoping. She was Virginia Woolf’s “Angel in the room” for long enough to have George take advantage of her various times. She was, though, able to take action and leave him — being the exception to the rule of married women of the time (early 1900s).

Even nowadays it is possible to see men and women make the same mistake: to marry someone just because they feel they have to. Projections and expectations may blind a person into marrying somebody for the sake of not being alone. If asked, Esther would probably say you’re better off sewing undergarments.