Category Archives: Homework Responses

Are You Sure This Time?

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The story “There Was Once” by Margaret Atwood is mainly about a disagreement between two speakers, speaker A and speaker B , respectfully. Speaker A is the storyteller and speaker B is the listener, however you’ll soon find out he does more then listen. To his best ability, speaker A tries to retell the story of Cinderella, but speaker B keeps on interrupting his story to throw his two cents in and makes corrections to what he sees fit. At first I thought speaker B was interrupting on purpose just to be annoying, but I was wrong. He was trying to send us a subliminal message. He felt that the story was too fictional and lacked specific detail, so he wanted to add more reality to it.

In the first paragraph speaker A talks about how there was once a poor girl who lived with her wicked stepmother in a house in the suberbs. Speaker B doesn’t agree with the word choosing, he believes since she lived in a house, socio-economically she wasn’t poor. Speakers B continues to show the same pattern throughout the story , correcting Speaker A. The point he’s trying to make is that you can’t be too naive when reading a story. You can’t believe every single detail thrown at you just because you can’t prove that it’s not wrong or just because it fits in to the storyline so you don’t want to doubt it. I even make this mistake sometimes when I watch a movie or read a book. I will ignore little things that don’t make sense just so I can continue and enjoy the rest of the story. I know some people who just focus on every single word and detail , just like speaker A, but in my opinion you can’t enjoy a story if you question everything that doesn’t make sense to you. I believe it’s better to accept everything the way it is and with an open mind and a little imagination you’ll be able to enjoy every movie or story you come across.

 

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 parlor 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  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. Nottage’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 on their dream.

Intimate Apparel

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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.

Intimate Apparel: Esther and George

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The story Intimate apparel by Lynn Nottage touches on tissues of race, religion and traditions.Not only does Nottage speak on these issues, she also addresses love and marriage. This is done through a 35 year old African American women name Esther.  Esther moved from North Carolina to New York City to seek her fortune as a seamstress. She sews gorgeous lingerie for wealthy white clients. Esther is extremely great at what she does and prey’s to one day own a beauty salon. With such great talent under her belt she is still lonely and dreams of a good man to marry. Esther seeks love when she meets George.

When Esther marries George, he was  nothing like the man she wrote letters to back and forth. George didn’t have the same genuine feelings that Esther had for him. He proves himself to be an opportunist who takes all her savings and use it on foolishness. He squanders her money on drinks,gambling and prostitutes that Esther despise greatly.

Even though Esther marries the man she wanted to marry, he turned out to be not a good man. Their love and marriage didn’t last. I can definitely relate this to many marriages in today’s society. Women get so excited to finally get married but in the end they end up disappointed. The excited they once felt disappears and all they are left with is a new beginning.

When the real world and the written collide

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Intimate Apparel is a play written by Lynn Nottage that takes place in 1905. The play follows Esther, a 35-year-old African American seamstress that makes her living in Manhattan. Esther has worked hard her entire life, from picking berries to sewing. Esther is very relatable to woman: she longs for love, she aspires to open a beauty salon, she is self-conscious and a caring humble woman. Many aspects of Nottage’s play resonate with the experiences and feelings of many women, past and present. This is because the characters in the play feel authentic, dealing with real issues many women face. Esther seeks love, but doesn’t feel she is pretty or that anyone will even be interested in her. Here, Esther’s self-doubt in her and in her looks is a very real aspect of Nottage’s imagined world. When Esther gets a letter from George, a panama man who is courting her, she must ask others to read and write letters back as she does not know how to. In 1905 this seems reasonable that Esther wouldn’t have learned to read or write in her economic status. Another way in which Nottage’s play felt authentic was the romantic tension between her and Mr. Marks, a Jewish man who sells her fabrics. Esther opens up to Mrs. Van Buren, saying, “I fear my love belongs someplace else” but disregards her feelings as they come from two different worlds, and he has a fiancé he has not yet met. Nottage’s created world yet again connects with our real world, as interracial relationships would have been greatly looked down upon for someone in Ether’s position in the early 1900’s. A woman would be expected to stay within her race or class and not doing so would result in a social stigma.

Another interesting character that has her own very real issues is Mrs. Van Buren. Esther and Mrs. Van Buren are also from two different worlds, but get along great as friends. Mrs. Van Buren confides in Esther about the pressuring questions she gets from her peers about having a child, and how important having a child is to an important man like her husband. She admits to Esther that she is unsure if she is able to bear any children although people speculate that vanity is the reason. In what I find to be crucial part of the play, Mrs. Van Buren says “By the way, I bled this morning, and when I delivered the news to Harry, he spat at me. This civilized creature of society. We, us women, we all bleed, Esther. And yet I actually felt guilt, as though a young girl again apologizing for becoming a woman”. This part struck me a lot, as a woman trying to imagine the situation in which the character was place; is heart wrenching. Another reason being that many women really do experience this in their life.

The play itself is different than the format of other readings, using a dialogue between characters and descriptive information about the background setting. The advantage in this was being able visually conceptualize the play. For example, George’s infidelity with Mayme was shown rather than spoken in dialogue. The format of the play is able to draw on these scenes that are wordless between characters but speak volumes in the storyline.

Question: I didn’t exactly know what to take on the scene between Esther and Mrs. Van Buren, when Mrs. Van Buren kisses Esther and then says its because she wanted to show her “what it’s like to be treated lovingly”? Then later in the scene Mrs. Van Buren calls Esther a coward. I didn’t understand the motive behind Mrs. Van Buren’s actions in this scene. (Act 2, Scene 3)

Reading A Script: Intimate Apparel

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I enjoyed reading “Intimate Apparel” by Lynn Nottage. It was definitely different from reading a story with a narrator. Usually, a novel has a narrator or character telling a story what is going on in the story, as well as how certain characters are feeling. With reading a play, I can visualize what is going on as if I’m actually there. I’m no longer a reader, but I’m a spectator of the events taking place. I am reading the events as they are happening, but allows me to know everything that’s going on because I am present for all the conversations and significant situations that take place between different characters. Usually novels would have a omnipresent narrator or someone who knows more then majority of the characters. In reading this play, the roles are switched where I, being the reader, may know more than the characters. This gives me the position of being omnipresent. I am able to know things that aren’t the emotions of the characters that aren’t spelled out, but can be conveyed by what they say and the actions that the stage directions give the characters.

The way the play is written affects my way of reading because I have to read it line by line instead of sentence by sentence. Reading doesn’t flow as well as it does if I were reading a story. There are also a lot of stops in the script for giving stage directions to the characters, telling the person who were to be the character what to physically to display an emotion. This was something that I had to get used to because I had to tell myself that the direction weren’t something the character said, but did. It’s like I had to take a break in reading to read a side note about the characters action.

Women Of Today Vs. Women in 1905

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I really enjoyed reading Intimate Apparel because Lynn Nottage was able to fully grasp my attention throughout the entire play. Although Nottage’s play was taken place in 1905, I believe it depicted many similar ways of what women go through till this day.
One example is from the character Mrs. Van Buren who is seemed to be an attractive white woman in her early thirties, who believes that she is not good enough for her husband. It seems as if Mrs. Van Buren is always trying to be up to date with the latest styles and fashion to keep her husband interested. She tries different things and changes up her looks to catch her husband’s attention which most of the time ends up failing anyway. I feel that she relates to many women in our society today, because I think a good amount of women up to this day are still so insecure with themselves and are always trying to impress our men because their eyes are so easily distracted.

Another example is from the character Esther who just turned thirty-five and is pretty much ashamed of herself for not being married or seeing anyone since she’s always so taken up with working. It also seems as if she has very low self-esteem and doesn’t think that anyone would want her but mainly because she’s always been working since the age of seventeen. She feels like it’s a disgrace and too late because she’s getting older and no one will really be interested in her. I believe this issue relates to women of today in some ways but not all. Some women today, just like Esther begin to give up once they reach a certain age because they feel they are not worthy enough anymore meanwhile other women of today don’t care how old they are, they’re still out there meeting people on social networks, dating and having fun. I feel that Esther hasn’t had much of an opportunity to meet anyone she’d be interested in other than George that wrote her because she had always locked up working.

The effect that I have of reading a play is much clearer and easier to me rather than just reading a regular narrated story. It’s much more simple for me to put the characters together and picture a scene of whom it is and how they’re acting in my head.

Intimate Apparel

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Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel was pretty interesting to me. The issues that women faced in the play was pretty similar to issues that woman face today. Obviously the issues are not going to be exactly the same, being that the play takes place in 1905 and its 2014. One thing that I found to be similar was the fact that Ester wants to find a guy and she is getting older. Woman today are like Ester in that way because Ester has been working since she was seventeen and she really has no time to meet guys. Then when she gets the letter, she is hesitant about it.

Another way that the play is like the world today is because some women cant have kids like Mrs. Van Buren thought. I think it was probably more important to have kids back then than it is now, but women still face that problem today. Actually I’ve been hearing about women and their inability to have children for a very long time. I suppose it was a bigger problem back then because there are suppose to be ways around it today, which is a bit weird because it seems very unnatural.

Another thing is how insecure woman can be about themselves. For example, How Ester thought she wasn’t good looking enough, but thought Mrs. Van Buren was beautiful. Even Mrs Van Buren questioned it when Ester told her. This is interesting because I guess this is a bit of a timeless problem because most women will never really be content with themselves. It sometimes doesn’t even have to do with the way you look. Its just kind of mental sometimes.

Another issue is sexism. The issue was most likely a bigger issue back then because of the time period, but we still see it today. I actually don’t think that men and women will ever be seen as completely equal.

 

Now and Then

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I actually enjoyed reading Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage. This play makes me think that life and relationships are not much different now than they were in the early1900’s. Esther who was a seamstress for Upper and Lower Manhattans women who lived in the night life puts me in the mind of the independent women in today’s society . Esther needed a stepping stone on the way to pursuing her long term goal to open a beauty Salon, but was sidetracked In the interim. Nottage to me depicts an old time picture from a new story told time and time again. it seems to me that men were sexist in those days as we see some men to be nowadays. One thing that will remain the same is a woman’s sensitive  side and ability to love . Based on some of the conversations In the play, women then did not know their worth. Esther was told that her face didn’t matter but that men were only interested in her body. It is interesting to me that despite the struggles of African Americans at that time, dreams are real. It was very easy for Esther to deny herself the opportunity of accomplishing her dreams , due to her being blinded by love.  Intimate apparel differs from the world today in several ways. Although illiteracy still exist it is more rampant n 1905 which this play was based in. Education and resources are more available in today’s society. Women in today’s society are respected more for their independence although we are still fighting the battle for equality.

This play had several different issues which made it a little difficult to channel in in one of them. There were issues of self esteem, racial issues, class issues, and issues of the struggling African American woman. I would say that reading it as a play made it a little more difficult for me to understand at first because it was outside of the normal story which is narrated.

Proffessions for Woman

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The writer in this reading was stating her opinion of woman professionals in our society. The writer explains that just because woman have more opportunity’s  in the work force, than in the past it doesn’t necessary mean that woman are actually equal to men. In her particular situation she is a writer who faces the issues of sexism in her line of work. She refers to an angel who she kills, which is the angel within herself, the angel is the conscious voice in her mind that try’s to prevent her from writing things that would not come from the idealistic  woman society tells her she should be, the angel is a warm woman who is sheltered in her home a woman with no voice or strong opinion, she had to kill the thought of this “angel of a woman” so that she can write freely without concern or shame. Woman are not allowed to think or say certain things, there’s  an invisible code of moral that has been placed upon woman since the beginning of time , being a writer is one of the best ways one can express themselves freely , the writer felt as if she could not do her job as well because of her inner woman, this angel of a woman kept getting in the way, she then had to kill her; remove the angel  out of her thoughts,  she then dosent have to feel as if her writing has  boundaries because she is a woman.