Summary Of Paula Vogel's Play 'How I Learned To Drive'

The narrator in this novel, Esch, explains sex as being “easy” when she first started having it. She explains it as easy as swimming. Jesmyne Ward writes, “The only thing that’s ever been easy for me to do, like swimming through water, was sex when I started having it”(22). This comparison shows how Esch thought about sex after she started experiencing it at a very young age. Esch uses swimming in water, a skill that is also usually learned at a young age, to explain how “easy” sex was for her. This shows how she doesn’t treat sex as a serious matter and wasn’t considering the consequences that might follow. Because of experiencing sex at such a young age, it became easy to her. She thought of it as similar to something simple that you learn as a child, which in this case happens to be swimming.

‘How I Learned to Drive’ is a play by Paula Vogel that concern the protagonist Li'l Bit and her affair relationship with uncle Peck.Uncle Peck sexually assaulted his niece Li'l Bit and the facts of this case label the play as a drama, more generally a tragedy. This relationship with uncle Peck has affected Li'l Bit from age eleven to eighteen before she puts a conclusion to it. In this essay, I will analyse the three speeches of Uncle Peck in the play ‘How I Learned to Dive’ when he uses language and power to empower the others because he is a man and has all the power against others. I will analyse the first speech of how uncle Peck has the same power on Bobby using them on him the same way he used on Li'l Bit. The second speech that will be analysing that how he teaches Li'l Bit how to drive and have control of her life the same way that he has on her. The last speech of uncle Peck showed that he is interested in all women and he teaches her how to stand like a woman

Paula Vogel's, How I Learned to Drive, is an exceptional portrayal of an obsessed pedophile with unyielding charms, an admission of the damage from his molestation of a prepubescent child, and a description of stereotypical gender roles and substance abuse played out in the sexual exploitation of a young girl. It also attempts to make the reader feel sympathy and affinity for the abuser, which is an insult to people who are survivors of sexual abuse, and an off-putting moral dump. Even though Li’l Bit is supposed to be the injured party of the play, she comes to recognize and acknowledge her own involvement, and feels guilty for a past in which, as a young girl, she should not have been held responsible. The play goes back in time, as a sequence of recollections, which ends with the last scenes linking Li’l Bit with the introduction of her agonizing isolation at 11 years old when her uncle touched her breasts for the first time. Li’l Bit says, "That day was the last day I lived in my body. I've retreated above the neck, and I've lived inside the “fire” in my head ever since" (1606).

Later in the novel, Alofa and Lealofi, a boy Alofa had a crush on, were caught naked outside by an adult. Of course, what Alofa was doing was considered extremely inappropriate and wrong. Because of her actions, Alofa was punished by having her head shaven and being badly beaten by Filiga. Even though it seems as if Alofa and Lealofi did not actually have sex together, the severity of Alofa’s punishment shows that even just the intimacy the two had together is considered immoral. Although the concept of gender roles is not the central topic being discussed, it is important to note that despite both Alofa and Lealofi were caught doing

One of the norms Kincaid questions is virginity, whether sex is actually meaningful, that it could be enjoyable without the feeling of love. As a nineteen-year-old girl, Lucy is new to what a sexual relationship could have

A few stories from her book consist of young females, as young as fourteen, and their treacherous journey through adolescence with the title of “slut” weighing on their shoulders, when in reality it may not have been true or consensual sexual relations. Continued in her book, there are cases where women are asked about their sexual relationships and gynecology records when filing a lawsuit against people or companies for sexual harassment from males and payment inequality. When men were surveyed, 92% said that the double standards, that they themselves live up to, are unfair, but 65% said that if a woman they liked had slept with ten to twenty men the previous year, that they would not take them

In current days, date rape is an obvious risk for modern women. The criminal cases with regard to date rape and robbery are not unusual. In this context, many sociologists, researchers, and even police are warning young females to pay attention to personal safety when going for a party or having a date at night. However, in spite of these good-willed and well-intentioned warnings, there are also some comments and opinions putting forward advices on protecting personal safety for young girls based on the false ground, making their ideas lack of reason and reliability. The editorial, On Date Rape, written by Camille Paglia, is one of these opinions with obvious fallacies and weaknesses in reasoning. There are three most clear fallacies in this article.

There is a lot of depth to the play, especially in the way the family talks about sex, and more importantly, the interest Lil Bit’s uncle gives her. When we first meet her family, they made joke about Lil Bit, and her grandfather goes so far as to say that her “Breasts turn the corner before she does.” One of the things I was most struck by was how crass her family

Paula Vogel has said that she likes to focus on what makes people uncomfortable (Vogel), and she did just that when she wrote How I Learned to Drive. How I Learned to Drive is a play that follows the relationship between Li’l Bit and her Uncle Peck from her childhood to her adult life. Li’l Bit is of a minor age for the majority of the play, so the relationship between them is not legal. However, Vogel manages to blur the lines of what is right and wrong over the course of the play. At some points, the reader can feel pity for Uncle Peck and see him as a role model and father-figure to Li’l Bit, who he sometimes considers a son since he does not have any children of his own. At other times, the reader can put some blame onto Li’l Bit by arguing that she is flirting with and seducing Uncle Peck intentionally. Despite this, Li’l Bit and Uncle Peck’s relationship follows a typical victim/perpetrator dynamic, where Li’l Bit is sexually assaulted by a person she knows, which causes the abusive relationship to prolong, and Li’l Bit places more blame on herself than on Uncle Peck for his actions.

Sexual Revolution and Changing Adolescence The short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates can be viewed as both a metaphor of the sexual revolution and its consequences on youth in the 20th century and a thematic image of the struggle to understand sexuality and vanity as an adolescent in modern society ruled by sexualized media. Oates published this short story in the 1960s, in a climate of post-war celebration and sexual revolution with the rise of birth control and the decline of sexual abstinence due to a less uber-religious America. This world context gives insight to the extended metaphor that is this story and also shows how this seemingly horrific story of a pedophile attacking a young woman is not what it appears.

In contemporary 21st century thought, sexual liberty is at the forefront of the feminist movement. Women are taking their bodily autonomy back, and ascribing a sense of ownership back to themselves. This movement to gain bodily and sexual liberty, however, are not new concepts. Philosophers and literary greats tackled these issues prior to the 21st century. Both Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence and Kate Chopin’s short story, At the ‘Cadian Ball and which were written prior to the 21st century and its third wave of feminism. portray women’s sexuality throughout their texts. However, in both novels, the sexuality that is portrayed is confined within boundaries that are prescribed by the men in the story. By writing the female sexuality this way, they are exposing the problematic nature of being able to express a woman’s sexuality, and the lack thereof. Through the focalisation of the narrative as well as plot development of the female characters and their lack of freedom and autonomy in other aspects of their life, the authors make their points clear about women and their freedom, sexual and otherwise.

This essay will examine the social and cultural conditions, within the macro-diachronic and micro-synchronic theoretical models , that intensify or perpetuate sexual assault. I have chosen only one concept from each model because these are the only concepts that I feel that I can use to most accurately and comprehensively depict causes and reasons for why sexual assault is deeply entrenched in our social structure. I will thus explore, from these ideological viewpoints, some of the motivations and circumstances which lead offenders to sexual assault. I will also fuse some of the historical attitudes from which today's concepts have evolved to our contemporary understanding of this social

Act II Scene II of Spring Awakening illustrates the lack of sexual education taught to adolescents with the dialogue between Wendla Bergmann and her mother. In the scene, Mrs. Bergmann returns home to announce to Wendla that her older sister Ina was visited by the stork who had "brought her a little baby boy" (Wedekind 35). It is clear to see that Mrs. Bergmann, in keeping with the modes of morality, is shielding her daughter from any knowledge whatsoever of sexual intercourse. She instead prefers to keep in Wendla in total ignorance, perhaps to keep her from experimenting or to keep her untainted by such immoral knowledge. Despite this desire, Wendla is curious to learn how children are actually procreated and begs, "Please, Mommy, tell me! … Answer me - what goes on? - how does it all

I think that society persecutes young people on the topic of sex and who they choose to have it with for the very fact they are teens. There are many excuses as to why, but I feel the most valid reason may be that we aren’t fully developed and teens are much more hormonal than adults are since they are more than likely going through puberty. Romeo and Juliet laws are defined as “young adults or teenagers who are a few years apart and have willingly had sexual relations. These provisions relate to state and federal laws regarding statutory rape or sexual assault,” ( ).  I personally believe that Romeo & Juliet laws are a flawed good. The example in the article had an eighteen-year-old male and a fourteen-year-old female. Personally, I find this to be odd as the age gap is bigger than I would personally go for at either of these ages. However, there are many adults who have a much bigger age gap between them that isn’t looked down upon. Also, I feel as if the biggest flaw in the system is the fact that the parent can press charges without the consent of their child. If the sex is consensual then the sex is consensual, end of story; the parent should not be allowed to dictate in a very public way whether what happened was ok or not. I believe since teenagers are hormonal, the law believes it should be allowed for a parent to do such a thing. People react negatively to the evidence children have sexual feelings because they believe that children should be innocent and not try to grow up so fast, but at the end of the day I think people forget what it was like to be a teen after time. Also, people may remember their mistakes they made at that age and try to prevent our youth from making the same mistakes, but these mistakes allow a person to grow. I believe that a parent should deal with the matter privately between them, their kid, and their partner.

In order to successfully deliver Vogel’s message, she revealed the secret at the end of the play in which Uncle Peck is a pedophile. Besides, various scenes were included before the revelation of the secret, such as interactions among Li’l Bit’s family and Uncle Peck provided a clear picture of the process of how Li’l Bit became the victim of her uncle. It allowed the avoidance of the issue being preconceived by audiences as well as developing subjective opinions towards Uncle Peck through piecemeal information provided at each time points. In this way, the audiences are able to conceive Vogel’s message more effectively. There are a few ways to view gender as a social construction, including: female sexuality and agency, femininity, masculinity and objectification of female.