My friend, Hannah, and I were discussing this play today. We decided that you can never say that you love this play - it is more like you have respect for it. Beautifully written and so well crafted. Reading a summary may make you feel that this would be a black and white story of good and evil, but it is so far from that. The entire play is one big gray area. Part of me wants to see a staged production, while the other part is a little more hesitant. I do think it would be interesting to see different representations of the characters!

I took a break from my current reading to read the play How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel. It's a short play that chronicles the relationship between a girl and her uncle and her coming of age.I don't particularly care for the "Greek chorus" performing all the characters besides Lil'bit and Uncle Peck; I feel that in performance this would be akward and confusing. Honestly, I felt it to be a bit of useless obfuscation anyway, since these chorus members are almost always the same character each time they appear. In performance I would eliminate this layer of abstraction and cast actors for each of the principle individual roles.Initially I was a bit turned off by the spoken 'titles' that divide the play, but I feel that, done well, they would help facilitate the transitions between scenes.Otherwise, I liked the play. It was about the right length, with about the right amount of character development. If anything, I would have liked to have known a little more about Lil'bit, but I can't think of a good way to do that, so I certainly can't hold it against Ms. Vogel.

An ongoing personal project of mine is reading the books featured in 500 Great Books By Women by Erica Bauermeister. These range anywhere from 13th century trailblazing classics to modern classics novels and nonfiction. Looking to finish my year with a round number of books read, I selected Paula Vogel's Pulitzer winning drama How I Learned to Drive, a play with a double meaning that focuses on the difficult subject of sexual abuse and molestation. While I was disturbed while reading through this script, I found Vogel's work to be a worthy read.It is the late 1960s in rural Maryland. Three generations of a family live on a farming compound far removed from any other people. Rumor has it that members of this family receive their nicknames for their sexual prowess or genitalia rather than for a moniker or characteristic. As this is pointed out in the script's opening pages, it lead to a disturbing feeling from the onset. Vogel focuses on teenaged Lil' Bit through various stages of her life. A seventeen year old who has grown up with her grandparents, mother, aunt, and lewd uncle, she is determined to break out of the family's mold and be the first to attend college. Vogel hints that she has received a scholarship to go to either an Ivy League or top woman's school; the family should be proud of her, but in their ignorance, they remain indifferent. Consequently, Lil' Bit is pining to leave her insular home.Employing a Greek chorus to show both flashbacks and later stages of Lil' Bit's life, Vogel shows how sexual molestation she was subject to as a child affected her throughout her life. The chorus is accompanied by popular 1950s and 1960s music but as I read rather than watched the play, the music had little effect on me. What did have a profound effect on me was the inappropriate relationship between Lil' Bit and her pedophile uncle Peck and the inability of Lil' Bit's mother or aunt (Peck's wife) to stop it. Lil' Bit's father was no where to be found in her life, and she grew up without a father figure in her life, besides for Peck. From the time she reached prepubescence, he cast his leery eyes at her. Her mother must have known, but, seeing that her daughter needed a replacement father, did nothing, making me sick. Vogel points that an innuendo episode from when Lil' Bit turned eleven essentially ended her ownership of her body. While this was meant to draw attention to pedophilia, it still made this script difficult to read; especially as this inappropriateness was happening to a younger girl. And yet, I read on to the conclusion.Lil' Bit ages and Peck is determined to teach her how to 'drive.' Having no sons of his own, he says it gives him pleasure to teach his niece how to operate a motor vehicle. Unfortunately, he would like to teach her more than how to drive a car, but also how to control her body. Now that Lil' Bit has moved past puberty, Peck desires her all the more. On these driving sessions, he puts his hand down her shirt and inside her underwear, and she is powerless to stop it. On the contrary, as her body matures, she desires these advances to a certain extent, even though she inherently knows that they are wrong. I hoped and prayed that Vogel would allow Lil' Bit to have some ownership over her body as she has hinted that she is a smart student, leaving for college soon. Yet, book smarts do not always translate to street smarts, and Vogel paints a fine line between the two. Consequently, I awaited the scene where Lil' Bit finally leaves home and finds herself out of Peck's clutches, hopefully realizing how inappropriate his behavior toward her was when she enters into the company of less insular adults.Vogel's drama won the Pulitzer, but she has written many other feminist leaning plays over the course of her career as well. While How I Learned to Drive may have been one of the most difficult reads that I have read this year, I found this play necessary as pedophilia is unfortunately an issue that is never going to go away. Having daughters at home, I found this play even more disturbing as Lil' Bit was abused from the time she was eleven or possibly younger. I would hope that this play is taught in some form, even if it is excerpts, in high school English classes, so that girls would have guidance in avoiding pedophiles. That being said, this play is not for the weak hearted but is a necessary read in terms of being informed.4 plus stars