On Female Body Politics In Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues,the representative play of the noted contemporary American playwright Eve Ensler,reveals that female bodies suffer a kind of subtle body politics in a patriarchal society and demonstrates female's resistance to the pervasive operation of power politics by means of their own bodies through the depiction of female's monologues on different aspects of the vagina and vagina-related experiences.In The Vagina Monologues,female bodies are constructed by the ubiquitous patriarchal power and serve as the primary site of power conflicts and inscription.Based on Michel Foucault's theory of body politics,this thesis explores how female bodies suffer body politics in The Vagina Monologues and analyzes women's resistance to it via their own bodies.Firstly,this thesis analyzes the prohibited discourse and the ugly image of the vagina held by numerous women in this play.Many women's silence on the vagina and vaginarelated things in this play actually results from the exclusion of female discourse in terms of the vagina by patriarchal power,and their idea of the ugly and filthy vagina comes from their internalization of the derogatory knowledge about the vagina deeply rooted in patriarchal discourse.These women in The Vagina Monologues thus are deprived of their power of discourse on their bodies.Secondly,this thesis focuses on a number of women's objectified position in male-female sexual relationships in this play.These women's subordinate and passive position in sex originates from the omnipresent surveillance of patriarchal power on their roles in sex,and their self-repression of sexual desires attributes to their self-surveillance under the ubiquitous surveillance of patriarchal power.Thereupon,they descend into docile and useful bodies under the surveillance of patriarchal power.Lastly,this thesis explores the awakening of women's consciousness of body politics and their resistance to the operation of patriarchal power in The Vagina Monologues,which includes their challenge to the prohibited discourse and ugly image of the vagina,their seeing and praising of the vagina,and their pursuit of sexual pleasure.In general,through the analysis of the power relations inscribed on female bodies and female's resistance to it in The Vagina Monologues,this thesis uncovers the theme of it: numerous commonsensical social disciplines and conventions observed by many women concerning the vagina and male-female sexual relationships convey the complicated operation of patriarchal power relations and demonstrate the inscription of patriarchal power on female bodies;but women can resist to the construction of patriarchal power and struggle for the body autonomy by means of their own bodies so as to help establish a harmonious relationship between male and female in a better way and contribute to the harmonious co-existence of both sexes.