Sister Doubt

Piety is pretty sexy, at least in the case of Patria.

Though In The Time of the Butterflies was written over ten years prior to the film, Patria is similar to the nun in The Crime of Father Amaro, the famously controversial Mexican film where a nun pleasures herself to the image of Christ. "I'd see those boys and think, Ah yes, they will come to Sor Mercedes in times of trouble and lay their curly heads in my lap so I can comfort them. My immortal soul wants to take the whole blessed world in! But, of course, it was my body, hungering, biding its time against the tyranny of my spirit." What kind of comfort is she offering here? The sexual undercurrent throughout the chapter - her "body, hungering," - is brazenly depicted. "I smelled her wafer smell and I knew I was in the presence of the holy," says Patria during her first meeting with Sor Asuncion. "My heart beat fast, scared and deeply excited." Is she describing a meeting with the headmistress of Immaculada Concepcion or the chance of getting into the former's habit? I'm just being crass with the second opinion, but taken out of context almost every sentence in the chapter could come straight out of an eloquently written erotica novel. Likewise, Patria's sensuality isn't limited to only men. Her sensual being manifests itself even in interactions with family like her sister Minerva, whom she asks to play with her hair. "Soon her gratifying fingering and her lilting voice would lull me to sleep again." The word 'fingering' generally has only one connotation, and it's a connotation Alvarez is fully aware and conscious of. She's a deliberate writer. Alvarez is a master at using commonly seen language to show, rather than tell, what her characters feel. In this particular case, though, I feel like Alvarez succumbed to cheapening her 'art' for the sake of . In a book full of simple but poetic language, the word 'fingering' is just too blunt, consistency-breaking, and, for lack of a better word, sophmoric. The rest of her novel is written at such a high echeleon that almost any lapse in quality is jarring to the audience. For instance, a reader might have only recognized the sexual component to Patria's chapter on a subconscious level previously, but they're certainly going to notice /something/ when they see Patria's behavior towards Minerva. It's just that obviously. I feel like Alvarez prefers subtlety over bluntness , but now I'm being presumptuous. Maybe Alvarez intentionally threw that word in to make the audience realize what they've really been reading the whole time; to make us feel the same dirtiness or perverseness or shame that Patria surely feels for "hungering" even as a pious young woman. It'd be audience participation at its finest if this was the case. Feeling exactly as Patria feels, the struggle which "came in the dark in the evil hours when the hands wake with a life of their own."

Despite whatever connotations the language in this chapter may have, I don't think that Patria is necessarily a sexual being, so much as an incredibly sensual one. She's just incredibly passionate about her calling. Since it would not be acceptable for a young woman in her station to display overt desire, And then we have all the instances of the color red popping up in Patria's chapter - from the "brilliant red flames" of the flamboyants, to the "plush crimson cushion" in Sor Asuncion's office. (As an aside, the individual petals of a flamboyant are butterfly-shaped, which cycles back to the title of the book.)

Beyond the sensual content of Patria's chapter, she infuses her language with veiled references to BDSM. "They saw the pains I took keeping my back straight during early mass, my hands steepled and held up of my own volition, not perched on the back of a pew as if petition were conversation." Pleasure is pain. Servitude, too, is depicted as being a kind of divine pleasure for Patria. The lines between serving Christ and serving your body are totally distorted and blended together here. In fact, Alvarez almost suggests that Patria's sensuality manifests itself through religious service in an incredibly coquettish, unconfident fashion. Further parallels could be drawn to Marquis de Sade's (how appropriate) work "Justine." Though the titular character is the pinnacle of piety, at least in her mind, she is subjected to desolute horrors - such as being taken in by a group of monks and raped repeatedly by all of them. However, despite the abuse brought upon Justine throughout the novel, she refuses to give in due to self-righteousness, and by the end of the novel is a broken husk who no longer believes in God. Sade even suggests that, had Justine indulged sin for a brief time at the beginning of the book, that she would have been able to ultimately live a pious life by the end - according to Sade, one needs to know sin in order to know the light. Knowing what it's like to indulge in sin strengthens one's faith. Though Patria hasn't seen any of the abuse Justine did, the two characters are similar because their self-righteousness prevents them from knowing what they are preaching against. Bullheadedness can lead to a character's downfall just as easily as indulging in too much sin could; in many ways self-righteousness is even a sin in and of itself. Ultimately, however, Patria is a character of dualities, like many of the works we have read previously.

I feel like Patria has something of an inferiority complex. She needed Sor Asuncion to reassert her faith, that she had what it takes to become a nun; like she needed permission even though it has been known to us since the first chapter that Patria's self-confidence makes her feel superior to most people she comes in contact with. "It was after my conference with Sor Asuncion, once I had begun praying to know my calling, that suddenly, like a lull in a storm, the cravings stopped." Why did Patria's "hungering" stop after Sor Asuncion reassured her potential? It's almost as if . For all of Patria's self-righteousness and confidence, there are aspects to her character which are just as vulnerable and as insecure as a child. She's outwardly independent yet needy simultaneously. By relying on others - God, the Sor, her fiance - Patria is able to reassure herself of her own identity. It's the mother archetype brought to extremes.

Dear Eve

Nicely done. If I didn't know I Am An Emotional Creature was almost entirely anecdotal I would have thought "Dear Rihanna" was just a reprinting of an actual teenage girl's letter to the popstar. It's the domestic violence version of "Go Ask Alice," although at least Ensler isn't pretending the letter was written by anyone other than herself. Either way, Ensler does a pretty convincing job of getting into the head of an abused teen. Although some people may interpret "Dear Rihanna" as ham-fisted or preachy or, at worst, a self-serving, fantastical vehicle for the writer's own opinions, Ensler has enough experience working with battered women to sport at least a fundamental understanding of how young women might act in an abusive relationship. "It must be hard for Chris to be with you," says the narrator, reversing the blame onto the victim. It's all a mirror of the narrator's own relationship with Brad - as the narrator blames herself whenever Brad "acts up," she will blame Rihanna for Chris' actions, for 'provoking' him to hit her. To the narrator, her relationship is normal and healthy. Of course, as the reader, it's plainly obvious to see the gaps in the narrator's explanations. Though Ensler sensationalizes the piece to provoke a strong reaction from the reader, it's hard not to feel pity for the narrator, and it's especially difficult to not feel pity when one realizes there are numerous abusive relationships out there. The relationship between Brad and the narrator is likely a microcosm of all the relationships Ensler heard about firsthand over the interviews she conducted prior to writing the book.

"It's so shallow to dump someone after they mess up," the narrator continues. She uses the word 'shallow,' but I don't think it means what she thinks it means, nor does she understand the implications of the word. Isn't Brad and the narrator's relationship, one that seems to only be based on dependency, possessiveness, and violence, as shallow as it comes? Brad even told the narrator that if he was Chris he would have kept Rihanna "locked up in a room" for fear of other men looking at her. The narrator's hypocrisy is incredibly distressing, and Ensler knows this will likely tug on the audience's heart, which is where the sensational criticism comes into play. This aspect is perhaps a little abusive on the part of the writer. However, I feel like there are other far more substantial points made towards the end of the piece, all of which excuse whatever personal indulgences Ensler fulfilled through writing "Dear Rihanna."

For example, the narrator points out to Rihanna that her mother "judges him by one aspect of his personality but that's only a part of who he is." We go from shallowness in one paragraph to a whole different type of shallowness in the next. While the mother only sees Brad's violent side, the narrator only recognizes her boyfriend's positive aspects while ignoring or excusing everything else. The narrator is essentially just as shallow as her mother, who she accuses of shallowness; the narrator only sees Brad as a lover, not an abuser, which gives her a distorted and totally shallow and exaggerated image of who her boyfriend is. Their equally shallow people because neither piece together all aspects of Brad's self to see an accurate interpretation of who he is as a person. It's an interesting comment on the nature of perspective, as well the mindset of people who have been or continue to be in an abusive relationship. The point is continued, fracturedly, in an earlier statement by the narrator. "I heard Oprah say if a boy hits you once, leave 'em right then, but that's so cold, so mechanical." And totally ungirllike. Unemotional. What Oprah said would appear to be against the overarching theme of Ensler's collection. Previous selections made the distinction between Ensler's opinion of what makes a girls and what makes a women pretty clear (as well as that awkward transitional phase between girl and woman), and this statement could be an continuation of her sentiment. Is Oprah, and by extension most women, going against their 'girl' roots? I could be reading too deeply into this, but perhaps Ensler is saying it is in a girl's nature to be forgiving despite serious transgressions, because that is part of the emotional center: to forgive, but not necessarily forget. Forgetting is an entirely different matter. Having the power to forgive can be empowering, Ensler may be saying that the power of forgiveness makes the woman the dominant party in the relationship. That the woman is the one who can forgive, or walk away from the man, leaving him with nothing.

Ensler also digs into the psyche of domestic violence, with a specific focus on its repetative nature. "They (parents) are always pissed off about the same things and she makes him feel so bad about himself and then he gets ugly...sometimes he hurts her and then she gets meaner..." The narrator - and by extension Ensler - paints everything in cyclical colors. Even the narrator recognizes how cyclical her parents' violence is, although it is a shame she doesn't recognize the cycle of violence within her own 'romantic' relationship with Brad. It's easy to point out the problems in other people's relationship, I suppose, as the narrator does with both Rihanna and her parents. The narrator is too busy making excuses: "they're (boys) are all crazy sad you know...seeing how alone he (Brad) is and confused and sad." Although excessive empathy may be central to being a 'girl', to being close to one's Emotional Creature much like the power of forgiveness is, it isn't when the 'girl' is being victimized or taken advantage of for doing so. The 'girl' in all creatures should be celebrated, not punished. And ultimately, what Ensler implies is that domestic violence gives birth to more domestic violence, and until someone tries to put an end to the violence in a non-violent way, whether by leaving the abusive relationship or bringing an outside authority into the equation, the violence will continue and most likely just escalate.

Why We Know So Little

Sophie et Apolline is an anamoly amongst the other pieces in "I Am An Emotional Creature." While Ensler's tone throughout most of the works in Emotional Creature is generally dire or grave, with occasional burts of tongue-in-cheek humor, "Why French Girls Smoke" is none of these. Absolutely none. It's frank, unadorned, minimal, and - despite being written to appear like a poem - reads much like prose would. Although Sophie started smoking at a party due to peer pressure and "at the beginning (Sophie) didn't want to smoke all the time," like she does, and Apolline "smokes to avoid the future," both Sophie and Apolline treat the topics at hand - their smoking addictions, family problems, social issues - with such an earnest, matter-of-fact tone of voice that it's difficult to see the monologue in a negative light. It's a 'pure' piece. Neither narrator speaks about their problems in a way which makes us cringe or want to immediately close the book, even when Apolline discusses her unfortunate first sexual experience. "I didn't want to have sex, I was a little drunk," says Sophie, but she immediately follows this up with "I am with my boyfriend now, he is gentle," which lightens the mood almost immediately. Sophie doesn't allow herself to dwell too much on the negative, outside of her addiction to smoking. Likewise, neither woman uses anything that could be considered 'highbrow' language or overly poetic terms to describe their situations. It's a straightforward work, and Sophie et Apolline is totally devoid of exaggeration and sensationalism, the latter of which is a criticism frequently levied at Ensler's writing, whether true or not. In these respects Sophie et Apolline is the most 'real' piece in the entire collection: because it seems so believable, unlike the piece about the basketball player thinking about her ancestors in the middle of a game, nor does it feel like an exaggerated anectote or a product of Ensler's potentially overgeneralizing, overassuming, painting-with-broad-brush-strokes mind as is the case with "What Do You Like About Being A Girl." Unlike "The Vagina Monologues," where all monologues have some basis in the experiences of another person, "I Am An Emotional Creature" is predominantly written in the experiences and perspective of only herself. (Not that I personally feel like she overgeneralizes girls or women or boys or men too much, as she doesn't claim to be writing from a factual perspective, but it's a valid criticism of her writing which can sometimes present a narrow, rather than balanced, view.)

However, despite it's relative breeziness, "Why French Girls Smoke" isn't without depth. In fact, for such a straightforward piece, Ensler throws in some pretty subtle hooks. For one, Ensler never makes it clear what the girls smoke. Is it cigarettes, cigars, marijuana, or something else? This ambiguity is typical of Ensler, but at the same time lends a darker veneer to Why French Girls Smoke. I'm not saying that smoking object A is 'worse' than smoking object B, but in terms of legality, as well as one being more taboo than the other, certain substances can be seen as objectively worse. I feel like Ensler is even challenging us to question what it is that the girls smoke, using what isn't there to have the reader take notice of what is there, and vice versa. The piece screams deconstructionist theory. What isn't said is just as important, if not more important, than what is said by Apolline and Sophie. The girls give us only a narrow snapshot of what their lives are like without delving too deeply into anything beyond their smoking habits. It's an interesting tactic and one that is certainly characteristic of Ensler's deliberately written style.

On another, I also took particular notice of the "Popular girls smoke for style, unpopular girls smoke for stress" line. Lines like these are why I read poetry so much. The meaning doesn't bang you over the head, especially because in this case the two lines are broken up structurally as the first is said by Sophie and the second is said by Apolline, but Ensler speaks insightfully. Since popularity or the lack thereof exerts an enormous amount of pressure on young women, popular girls theoretically have less stress in their life (although to play devil's advocate popularity can be an enormous burden in and of itself), while the girls who are constantly vying for a venerated status amongst their peers have more stresses in their lives. On another note, the fact that Sophie says the first line and Apolline says the other can be a subtle comment on female friendship or closeness. Would two male characters behave in a similar fashion, at least in Ensler's perspective? As the two girls are said to be best friends, the fact that they are able to complement or finish each other's thoughts so perfectly indicates depth beyond what a typical friendship for either sex might be. The readers, however, are not totally let into the worlds of Apolline and Sophie. The poem is just a snapshot. We know precious little about their relationship with each other beyond being best friends, or any of the situations they may have experienced together. I see it as an extension of Francis Bacon's famed "Of Friendship" essay, but without the homoerotic subtext. There is no question in my mind that Apolline and Sophie are heterosexual. Call it a feeling even though Ensler is intentionally vague here. Likewise, another such instance of Ensler being intentionally vague occurs when Apolline describes her boyfriend.

"He is gentle. He pays attention to me. We have sex one or two times a week." I took note of how these lines are the only places in the entire poem where periods are used, and in such close quarters. Periods are usually used for emphasis, and doubly so when coupled with these short sentences, as well as the fact that the rest of the poem is not structured this way, draws It seems like Ensler wants us to pay special attention to Apolline's idyllic love life here. With that said, while Apolline says a lot about her relationship with her boyfriend in just three lines, she also says very little. The audience knows what their sex life is like now, but what about everything else? Do they go on dates or just have sex? What are the other aspects of their relationship like? I don't want to read too much into the piece, but it's even possible that Apolline is confusing love for sex here, which is a pretty common theme in Ensler's writing. I find myself incredibly curious to know more about Apolline and Sophie but Ensler gives just us enough to peek into their lives without saying nearly enough to get a feel for what they are like.

Bad Boys

I gave my mother a poem
She sent me to a shrink

I laughed hard when my eyes came across the third stanza. In a poem which initially looks like a darkened tunnel without an end in sight, these two lines are still dark, but the humor is intrinsic to the poem - at least as much as sadness is, which is true of Ensler's heartbreaking realism but tongue-in-cheek tone. Most pieces from The Vagina Monologues follow this style, especially "The Flood," which conjures up ridiculous images of Burt Reynolds and the Rat Pack swimming in a casino full of female ejaculation alongside the cruel reality of a woman never feeling comfortable with her sexuality - her skin - nor ever finding true love because a negative experience she had as a teenager discouraged her completely from doing so. On a purely content-based level, the narrators of both "The Flood" and "Bad Boys" experienced traumatic events which have influenced their interactions with the opposite sex, albeit in entirely different ways. For the Jewish woman in "The Flood," her experience with Andy totally turned her off of pursuing sex and love with men for the rest of her life. For the unnamed girl in "Bad Boys," her relationship with her father is presumably either strained or distant due to his "high expectations" which she "fails a lot," and while she is able to pursue a romantic relationship with a boy, it's pretty obvious from the way she talks about him that it is nowhere near the standard teenage girl-teenage boy relationship. How many teenage girls would date someone who "is not the most handsome boy," nor a boy who is "very angry" or who "spray painted a bomb on his bedroom wall?" Their relationship, and by extension both the girl narrator and presumably her boyfriend, are deeper than whatever appearances might say about them. What I find particularly interesting, however, is that Ensler seems to have created a male character - the boyfriend - who isn't a rapist, a slovenly pig, or a dreadful bore (but more or less "decent" guy) like Bob in "Because He Liked To Look At Them." He's deeper than these classifications which the vast majority of Ensler's male characters tend to fall into, even if we only know a little bit about him from the poem. Is Ensler saying the rare boy can be "emotional creatures" like girls can? It's all up to interpretation. In all of these respects, I Am An Emotional Creature is an extension of The Vagina Monologues, even if more subtle aspects, such as the near-perfect poetic style in the latter, suggest it's a deviation rather than a continuation. Ensler's duality continues.

Two lines can say so much. The narrator in "Bad Boys" probably thought she was writing the poem to her mother as a gift, or as a not-so-subtle way of getting her mom to pay positive attention to her. Anything other than her mom constantly desiring her daughter to be "super-thin," "getting straight A's," or "being intelligent and happy." Hell, isn't writing beautiful poetry, which the narrator most likely does considering her "connection to Sylvia Plath," considered a sign of intelligence and creativity? It is by "emotional creatures", but not for the mother, apparently, who appears to be so confined to rigid thinking that she sends the daughter to therapy. Is Ensler saying her mother can not understand her daughter's poetry because the mother herself is not an "emotional creature"? Taking into one further, maybe Ensler is even accusing the vast majority of women of not being in touch with their 'girl' side, their "emotional creature," which would also be a criticism of men, as well, since the mother is married to a man. Has the mother let herself be domesticated by society's rigidness, by her husband, and perhaps even by the burden of having a daughter? The mother does want her daughter to be a model, and the poem suggests pressure from jealousy - because the mother's sister was a model - is at least partially responsible for her wishes.

We're both troubled
I'm better at hiding it
I cut myself

This is an all too true, if somewhat subtle and off-hand, comment about American culture. If a person appears to be okay, they surely must be okay, right? In addition to mocking the perceived shallowness of American sociopolitics, I feel like Ensler writes open-endedly to show people that nothing should ever be taken at face value, and examples of this practice can be seen in both The Vagina Monlogues and I Am An Emotional Creature. The narrator in "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could" visibly says her rape offered her redemption and the opportunity to feel comfortable within her own skin for the first time ever, but what happened to her between her later teenage years and the moment when she fell in love at the women's shelter? Did she secretly struggle with what happened to her when she was thirteen? She doesn't let on anything (I will say that her somewhat rueful tone of voice at the end of the monlogue in the filmed version suggests there was some conflict here, though), and we have absolutely no way of knowing without being presumptuous, but I feel like speculating is absolutely integral to understanding the monologue's complications. These gaps in time allow for a little creativity and a little bit of guess work on our part. Ensler is encouraging us, challenging us, to look beyond what is written on the page in order to grasp fully at the ideas she presents, in the same way that she is challenging the narrator's friends, family, and especially her mother to look beyond the Sylvia Plath-like poetry and the scars and the "chopped up bangs" to fully understand what is on the girl's mind. Dismissing the girl's poetry outright, and in fact 'rewarding' her with a trip to the psychology, is Ensler's way of critisizing people for attempting to either avoid problems completely or to take the easy way out. In this case, it's throwing a wad of cash at a therapist to take on the responsibility neither parent seems willing to even attempt to take on. It's one thing to send your child to counseling when they are having conflicts, but it's an entirely different and irresponsible matter when the child is thrown to another without looking into the issues yourself first.

He is not the most handsome boy
But he's troubled
Like me

Ensler's had to dodge criticism left and right for nearly everything she's ever put to paper and the stage. Not here. The closing lines of "Bad Boys" are the purest and most heartwrenching words I've seen from Eve so far. Unlike some of her other work, which (often meaningfully and not without deliberately constructed purpose) indulges sexual and social taboos, "Bad Boys" does not, but in a way it does - love as it is described in the poem is as much a taboo as being a debauched sex-crazed slut. Although it is often said that depressive personalities don't experience sexual desire as much as other people do, the narrator has affections for her boyfriend on a purely emotional level, and I feel like this would be considered incredibly odd or deviant in an image-based society like ours. Ensler, in a move as vulnerable as the narrator sharing her poetry with the mother, proves she isn't as shallow as works like "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could" (where much of the speaker's attentions are dedicated to describing how 'gorgeous' the rapist is) may suggest. Love has many dimensions, and it's nice to know Ensler can capture all of them in her writing.

We Are All Emotional Creatures

I don’t usually get along with militant feminists.

By this, I mean the kind of Angry Young Women who thought the SCUM Manifesto was meant to be taken at face value. By extension I should probably be repulsed by Eve Ensler, but I’m not. In fact, I actually find her endearing. She’s a charming, humorous, and skillfully tongue-in-cheek (unfortunately, it looks like her tone of voice is lost on a lot of her detractors) writer who knows when to be vulnerable, when to be tough, when to be emotional, when to be stoic, and when to just be her own persona.

Take, for example, the title poem “I Am An Emotional Creature.” The poem represents the many faces of Eve, as well as the many faces women as well as (yes, Ensler would probably disagree with me) men have but rarely recognize: her masculine side, her feminine side, her androgynous side, her own I-don’t-belong-to-anything-side. Likewise, Ensler’s tone of voice is brilliant and bombastic, with a winking, accusatory rasp Maya Angelou should be proud of. “Things do not come to me as intellectual theories or hard-shaped ideas," boasts Ensler with eviscerating pointedness. "They pulse through my organs and legs and burn up my ears.” These lines are a musical statement, cut more from the discordant jazz cloth than the classical tradition, and an indictment against the cold, logical detachment people (specifically men) Ensler is rallying against throughout the entire poem. The logic vs. emotion conflict appears to be a frequent theme in Ensler's writing, as even The Vagina Monologues intersperses 'vagina facts' between the comparitively ambiguous monologues. Even "I Am An Emotional Creature," which is a mostly straight-forward poem, has numerous interpretations.

For instance, there is one point in the poem which confuses me. It's difficult to interpret what Ensler's intentions are here, or if her intentions are really meant to be known - "don’t you dare say all negative that it’s a teenage thing, or because I’m a girl." This line is potentially hypocritical. Was she not previously attributing numerous emotional advantages, such as “knowing when your girlfriend is pissed off,” to womanhood? However, I feel like Ensler wrote the line knowing full well what she was doing. It's all part of the duality of being an emotional creature. Logic juxtaposed against the openness of the soul. As brazenly emotive as she is, or wants to appear to be, Ensler’s a smart writer exercising a lot of precision over the words she puts on the page. She's jazz music - presenting a facade of corrosive dynamics, threatening to fall apart, comatose at any moment in front of the audience, while in reality she's as controlled as an orchestrated baroque piece. Her voice drips calculation dressed in the wildness of the Atlantic Ocean. Though at face value Ensler revels in being an iconoclastic, feel-everything woman, she's a dichtonomy. Her dynamics are dualities, and they only serve the purpose of making Ensler's poetry even more vulnerable and realistic. "I Am An Emotional Creature" is a celebration of dualities. We aren't Vulcans, but all of us have hearts connected to being an "emotional, devotional, incandotional creature." Just look at the word incandotional here. Incandotional isn't even listed listed in the dictionary - it's apparently a word of her own construction, which appeals to Ensler's emotional rawness and uorthodoxy , but at the same time, Ensler attaches a deliberate meaning to the word. She didn't just pull the word out of thin air. There's a personal meaning, whatever it might be, that Ensler lovingly grafts onto the word, and it didn't come from osmosis. Raw emotionality and pre-meditated, LOGICAL deliberation can co-exist despite Ensler mostly ignoring to consciously awknowledge the latter.

Similarly, how many people are wholly objective? Even scientists are guided by some kind of moral obligation that isn't entirely steeped in tangibility. The connection of the brain to the heart and to the soul just increases the intensity of emotion because we feel tugging on all aspects, logic and emotion, of our being. "Everything is intense to me," says Ensler, but it should be everything is intense to us.

Vagina Facts of Life

Last class' vagina fact provoked a pretty intense emotional response. Between the clitoris being the "only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure" as well as having "twice the nerves as those contained within the penis," I'd have to agree that the clitoris is an amazing part of the body. However, don't get too excited yet. This fact is only steeped in science. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised the same author who wrote "I Am An Emotional Creature" would include a purely scientific fact in her book. What ever became of the angry vagina - the "pissed off" vagina who wanted people to "stop shoving things into me" like "dry fucking wads of cotton?" I mean, "I Am An Emotional Creature's" title poem is all but lambasting men because "thoughts do not come to me (not men) as hard-shaped ideas or scientific theories." Well, in that case...why did she include this particular vagina fact if she seems to have such an aversion to science? The simplest answer is that Ensler is a writer of dualities, much like Danticat, who appeals to both the mind and the heart - science and raw emotionality - logos and pathos. She knows her audience isn't going to just be militant feminists who blindly agree with everything she says. She wants people from every categorization to read what she has to say. Not just feminists; in fact, I get the impression Ensler wants people to challenge her ideas, as the best "shock writers" often want. Transgendered people, androgynes, tired housewives, chauvinistic businessmen, and ambivalent people who don't care much for women's issues all have a place in Ensler's audience. This is all a testament to Ensler's skill as an effective writer. She knows that in order to reach the largest audience, to change the world's preconceptions (as well as create ideas where nothing else may have existed previously), you need to write something which can be relevant to anyone and everyone.

However, as an aside, I want to add an unscientific dimension to Ensler's vagina fact. It's a dimension Ensler surprisingly looks over, especially when her track record for relying mostly on her own experiences, the experiences of others, and her vulnerable writing style is brought into question. Let's take a look at the protaganist in Danticat's "Night Women." It's obvious the mother hates her profession, and is wholly unsatisfied. Why is that? If this fact showed the entire truth, she'd be the happiest, most fulfilled woman in New York City. All prostitutes would. There's more to feeling pleasure than nerves, science, and "hard-shaped ideas." Pleasure and sensuality is an art form which appeals as much to the brain as it does to the eye, the heart, and virtually every other sense unseen. I don't think the clitoris is the "only organ in the body designed for pleasure," and it is just as capable of feeling pain as any other organ of the body is. Furthermore, the 'pleasure' felt by the clitoris seems awfully one-sided and shallow. The clitoris does not have the raw passion of the heart, the aesthetics of the eye, nor depth of the brain. Sexual organs themselves do not have depth of emotions like the other senses do.

However, when the clitoris and all the other organs are able to join together on the same plane...that's when you've got a machine gun.

Voyeur

For those who see Ensler's Vagina Monologues as unrefined at best or tittilating and stereotypically (sometimes militantly) feminist at worst, the "I Was There In The Room" poem-monologue is a challenge to whatever criticisms have been levelled at Eve or her works. The opening line, "I was there when her vagina opened," would sound ridiculous in the hands of anyone else. Silly or sophmoric, even. Honestly, using the word 'vagina' provokes laughing or horniness more often than "deep worship" (sorry, Eve), and when 'vagina' is thrown towards us bluntly and immediately and with such unabashed frequency in a poem the author introduces as a serious tribute to her granddaughter and mother-in-law, the chances of a typical college audience taking the poem seriously - or in 'good taste' - might be pretty low. However, between Ensler's totally straight intent and the artful language she uses, it'd be difficult to read "I Was There In The Room" as anything less than a honest, brazenly realistic tribute to birth and the orifice most of us come from.

Stark comparisons could be drawn between Ensler and Danticat here. Although Danticat only refers to sexuality in veiled ways, their styles are similar: the juxtapositioning of the beautiful against the ugly, humanity against inhumanity. I usually feel like great writing should be full of dualities, and Danticat and Ensler have mastered this art. I've never smiled, nor laughed, nor groaned, nor felt reactions get as painfully stuck in my throat as when I've read through Krik! Krak? and The Vagina Monologues. Shouldn't the best artwork provoke conflict as well as appeal to our sense of what is attractive? The fourth stanza, in particular, is full of these beautifully awkward moments. "I saw the colors of her vagina," begins Ensler, her tone brusque and stripped entirely of her usual humor. "Saw the bruised broken blue, the blistering tomato red, the gray pink, the dark; saw the blood like perspiration along the edges, saw the yellow, white liquid, the shit, the clots pushing out all the holes, pushing harder and harder." Like Allen Ginsberg years before her, these lines - Ensler's entire poem - beg to be howled aloud. Ensler was there when "her vagina changed from a shy sexual hole to an archaeological tunnel, a sacred vessel, a Venetian canal, a deep well with a tiny child stuck inside," and we are there, too. The linear structure is easily digestible; each stanza begans with the phrase "I", with last replacing "I" with "so can a vagina," repetition which involves the audience more and more as the poem is read further, whether the audience is a willing participant or a disgusted and reluctant voyeur - or perhaps more likely, both. What's more, the lines themselves leave little to interpretation, nor uses much in the way of obtuse words, and as a result it cuts itself into our brains and hearts and souls the moment they escape Ensler's mouth. There are no barriers between the poet and audience here. The poem is as immediate and as vulnerable as the act of giving birth itself.