34 pages • 1 hour read
Lynn NottageIntimate Apparel
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Longing for Intimacy
The play is about a desire for intimacy and the lengths that some will go to obtain it. A need for intimacy is an equalizer across class and racial divisions, as Mayme, Mrs. Van Buren, and Esther each search for intimacy in very different ways. Esther makes intimate apparel, lingerie, which is designed to show the parts of the body that are usually only shown in private. Although Esther conflates intimacy with sex and marriage at the beginning of the play, she learns after she marries George that neither sex nor marriage guarantee intimacy. Intimacy is about familiarity, allowing another person to share in your secrets, passions, and vulnerabilities. George’s letters create a false sense of intimacy, seemingly baring his soul but ultimately turning out to be the work of someone else’s soul. At the end of the play, Esther finds intimacy and connection because she is pregnant.
Each scene in the play takes place in a bedroom. For Mrs. Van Buren, allowing Esther access to her bedroom is a privilege that she doesn’t extend to others. Conversely, Mayme’s bedroom has been traversed by many, so she finds her inner secret self in her music and her fantasies. Mr. Marks’s shop is in his bedroom, an intimacy that Esther pretends not to notice. Esther’s interactions within these spaces are far more intimate than those that occur in her own marital bedroom. Mrs. Van Buren kisses her in an effort to love and feel loved. Mayme tells Esther about falling in love. Mr. Marks’s bedroom is the site of the greatest intimacy in the play. The way Mr. Marks and Esther appreciate fabric together is sensual without being sexual. They understand each other on a deep level. And because touching is forbidden by his religion, the mundane act of straightening the jacket at the end with his permission is more intimate than sex.
The Exploitation of Black Labor
In the first act, George is laboring on the construction of the Panama Canal, a project that was incredibly dangerous and claimed the lives of thousands of workers. In his letters, George ponders the terrible risks and wonders if the black workers would be invited to celebrate and toast the successful construction with the white people in charge. Of course, they certainly won’t. Those who die are considered expendable, sacrifices for the sake of progress while white engineers take credit for the innovations on their backs. In 1905, it has only been forty years since emancipation. Several characters are children of slaves, and the work available to African Americans is largely about labor—with more prestige associated with labor positions that interact with wealthy white people. When George needs a job, he prefers the labor of construction because it may be dangerous, but it isn’t as demeaning as serving white people.
Mrs. Dickson, whose parents toiled her entire life, married her husband to escape a life of labor by running a boarding house. Even Esther, whose sewing ability is an art, refers to her fingers as the source of her talent. She describes the money she has saved as the product of endless hours of physical work and thousands of stitches. Mayme, who has a great talent for music, is only able to support herself by selling her body as a prostitute. Her clients treat these transactions as if they are buying her as a person instead of paying for specific services. They are rough with her, ripping her clothes and treating her like she is nothing but a body to use. Mayme is dehumanized by her clients who demand her labor yet refuse to respect her.
Esther’s relationship with Mrs. Van Buren illustrates the gulf between wealthy white lives and the lives of the black labor they consume. Mrs. Van Buren is lonely and desperate for connection. She sees Esther’s inability to write her own love letters as an opportunity for her to visit a fantasy world of romance rather than recognizing that Esther’s illiteracy is likely the result of educational inequities. Mrs. Van Buren finds the opera boring and is envious that Esther has been to see black entertainers. She expresses a desire to accompany Esther to an African American theatre and sees no irony when Esther asks if Mrs. Van Buren would take her to the opera, a ridiculous and impossible idea. Mrs. Van Buren can visit Esther’s world, but Esther cannot visit Mrs. Van Buren’s world. When Mrs. Van Buren calls Esther a friend and claims to love her, Esther points out that she is not even allowed to use the front door.
Women and Worth
Since the play takes place in 1905, women have few rights and black women have far fewer rights. Those who are married are beholden to their husbands lest they risk the shame of divorce and rejection. Women in the play are assigned worth by men who decide whether they deserve intimacy and attention or not, and that worth is based on their bodies. At the beginning of the play, the unseen Corrina Mae celebrates her engagement. Esther worries that her appearance will prevent any man from seeing her value, and Mrs. Dickson explains that Corinna Mae’s only advantage over Esther is her light skin. Esther has other valuable qualities, such as her kindness, intelligence, and her talent as a seamstress. But in terms of marriage, most men have looked past Esther, unable to see her value beyond her appearance. Even George, who marries Esther, uses her appearance to devalue her and make her feel worthless so that Esther will try to compensate by giving him money. Only Mr. Marks recognizes that Esther’s value is her ability to create warmth,
Mrs. Van Buren is white and attractive, which gave her value in the eyes of a wealthy husband who married her and moved her to New York. But when she fails to conceive a child and fulfill the cultural obligation of marriage, Mr. Van Buren deems her worthless. He denies affection, abuses her, and has affairs with other women, seemingly unconcerned that Mrs. Van Buren is aware of his indiscretions—all because she cannot function as breeding stock. Mayme’s worth is defined literally by the men who pay her to use her body. To her clients, she is only worth the dollar they pay for her. As Mayme tells Esther, they don’t even care about her face, let alone her musical ability and non-sexual talents. They are only interested in the function of her body. But because she is a prostitute, men may be willing to use her body, but they, along with the rest of society, devalue her as a person. In the end, Mayme is torn between the only man to treat her like she has value and the only friend who doesn’t treat her like a prostitute.
Related Titles
By Lynn Nottage
