Everybody wants to love and be loved; so much so that one sometimes may invent love. Intimate 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.
