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.

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The play “Intimate Apparel”, by Lynn Nottage takes us back to 1905, where  Esther, a 35 year old African American is a talented seamstress, whose clients range from pampered Fifth Avenue society wife Mrs. Van Buren, who hates her life, to a prostitute named Mayme who could have been a successful pianist but instead she sells herself.  All Esther wants is a good man to marry. She finds herself unattractive.  On one side there is man who she married meeting through letters and on the other side there is this charming, sensitive man but his religion and traditions turns Esther’s love into nothing but a dream.

Through this play script Lynn Nottage touches on issues of race, women’s sense of worth, and the struggle against compromising one’s dreams.  Plays explore life through storytelling and acting. It becomes entertaining when performing and visual act comes together. Reading a play script is different than reading a narrated story. A play script consists almost entirely of dialogue. This helped me to engage and to be alert by going into a certain character’s world. I found myself become a part of the whole experience like watching a movie.

Also, through this play Lynn Nottage helped me explore questions like How do we love? How do we find happiness by also looking at themes like religion and traditions.  Each character is boxed into certain excepted norm of what their role is in the society and their struggle to be heard.  For example Mr. Marks who owns the store where Ester buys fabrics. He is an observant Jew who respects old world traditions, but his affection for his favorite customer is obvious.  “It isn’t often that something so fine and delicate enters the store,” he says, referring to a particular fabric but perhaps meaning Esther herself. Their love, obviously, can never be.

I felt like Lynn Nottage uncovered and interpreted her past and present through characters by this play. It helped us to enter the world of the play writer. Although set in 1905, Esther and her world speak to our everyday struggles like traditions, religion, race, self worth and one’s dreams.

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