48 pages • 1 hour read
Paula VogelHow I Learned to Drive
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Scenes 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 1 Summary: “Safety first—You and Driver Education”
In a monologue, an adult Li’l Bit tells the audience that she intends to tell a secret and must first start with a lesson. The lesson begins on a “warm summer evening” (9) in a parking lot in Maryland.
In 1969, Li’l Bit is 17 years old, and “very old, very cynical of the world” (9). As she climbs into the car with Uncle Peck, husband of her Aunt Mary, he moans, telling her he loves how her hair smells and asking her what kind of shampoo she uses so he can get into the bathtub with a bottle of it. When she interrupts him, telling him to “[b]e good” (10), he says he is only going to wash his hair with it and asks what she thought he was going to do.
Peck says he’s been “good” and asks when Li’l Bit is “gonna let [him] show [her] how good” he is (10). He asks if he can undo her bra; she tells him to “be quick about it” (11) and is impressed that he can undo it one-handedly through her blouse. Uncle Peck says her prom date would need her help.
Peck asks if he can kiss her breasts; when she hesitates, he says, “Don’t make a grown man beg” (11). As he caresses her, he tells her he would give up “all the cathedrals of Europe” (11) for her “celestial orbs” (11).
Li’l Bit tells him she has to go because she has graduation rehearsal the next day. She resists being called “Li’l Bit,” saying she’s “a big girl now” (12). Peck says “[k]ittens will turn into cats” (12) and that he looks forward to seeing her all week.
Scene 2 Summary: “Idling in the Neutral Gear”
Adult Li’l Bit gets out of the car and informs the audience that in her family, “folks tend to get nicknamed for their genitalia” (12). The character of Female Greek Chorus, here played by the same actor portraying the character of Mother, explains that the family was “so excited to have a baby girl” (12) and that she pulled down Li’l Bit’s diaper to “see for myself” (12). Between her “chubby little legs” (12) was, offers Uncle Peck, “[j]ust a little bit” (12). Peck says that when Li’l Bit was one day old, he held her “right in this hand” (12-13).Li’l Bit adds that she “was sixteen or so before [she] realized that pedophilia did not mean people who loved to bicycle” (13).
Scene 3 Summary: “Driving in First Gear”
Li’l Bit demonstrates “[a] typical family dinner” (13) in 1969. Female Greek Chorus, as Mother, points out to Grandma that “Li’l Bit’s getting to be as big in the bust as you are” (13). Ignoring Li’l Bit’s horror, Teenage Greek Chorus, as Grandmother, explains how during the Depression, she never had a good bra and begins taking off her shirt to show them how her shoulders are “crippled from the weight” (13).
As Li’l Bit predicts, Male Greek Chorus, as Grandfather, begins making crude remarks about the size of Li’l Bits breasts. Peck attempts to change the subject, but Grandfather continues to bring the conversation back around to Li’l Bit’s chest, noting that “five minutes before Li’l Bit turns the corner, her tits turn first” (14). At Li’l Bit’s protests, Mother says that Li’l Bit’s “at that age” (13) and is “so sensitive” (13). Peck convinces Li’l Bit not to leave.
Grandfather doesn’t know why Li’l Bit is going to college, for “[s]he’s got all the credentials she’ll need on her chest” (14). Li’l Bit says she wants to “[r]ise above my cracker background” (14) and read Shakespeare, a suggestion that makes Grandfather laugh and ask, “How is Shakespeare going to help her lie on her back in the dark?” (14). Li’l Bit, criticizing Grandfather’s hypocrisy and meanness, storms off. Female Greek Chorus, now as Aunt Mary, asks Peck to calm her down, for “[y]ou’re the only one she’ll listen to when she gets like this” (15).
Peck cautiously approaches Li’l Bit and offers her a handkerchief. When Li’l Bit says she hates her family, Peck agrees that Grandfather is “ignorant” but reminds her that “[f]amily is…family” (15). Li’l Bit asks Peck for the keys to his car so she can go for a drive. Peck wants to join her, but Li’l Bit tells him he can be alone with her later that night.
Scenes 1-3 Analysis
Immediately following her short opening monologue, Li’l Bit sits alone in a car with a grown man who flirts with her and kisses her breasts. It isn’t until the scene is nearly over that we become aware that the man is her uncle. By withholding this information until after this sexual behavior occurs, Vogel makes the behavior all the more shocking. We witness early on the dysfunction of Li’l Bit’s family and the way she is sexualized. Though we will not see how this sexualization started until much later, it appears to be an everyday occurrence in Li’l Bit’s life.
This is the first of several scenes that turn out to be more than what they first appear. Mother’s description of the joy the family felt the day Li’l Bit was born is clouded by the family’s obsession with Li’l Bit’s genitalia. When Peck steps forward to confirm that between her legs was “[j]ust a little bit” (12), Mother seems to consider Peck’s admission that he held her daughter “right in this hand” (12-13) just another happy detail of Li’l Bit’s story. The knowledge that he has sexually molested her, however, makes this statement ominous and unsettling. One wonders whether Peck molested her with that hand. The statement also foreshadows the power Peck holds over her, as she grows into adolescence.
Much of How I Learned to Drive will explore the sexual objectification of women. Li’l Bit’s nickname—we never do learn her real name—reduces her to her genitalia. It is what defines her; she is, according to Grandfather—who believes she won’t need Shakespeare to “lie on her back in the dark” (14)—good for nothing else. Like her name, Grandfather’s frequent comments about her breasts are diminutive and dehumanizing. Moreover, with her nickname now explained, audience members are forced, over and over again, to think of the origin of her name; we, too, must sexualize her and reduce her to her anatomy.
These scenes offer an early glimpse of the manipulation and victim-blaming Li’l Bit endures. When Grandfather relentlessly teases and humiliates Li’l Bit over the size of her chest, rather than defend her daughter, Mother accuses her of being “sensitive” (13). Similarly, Aunt Mary asks her husband to go after Li’l Bit, after Li’l Bit leaves the table because Li’l Bit will not listen to anyone else “when she gets like this” (15). The women in Li’l Bit’s family not only accept Grandfather’s tormenting of her but are complicit in it, blaming not Grandfather for sexualizing his teenage granddaughter but Li’l Bit herself for taking his words too seriously.
Peck himself engages in this manipulative behavior in the first scene by suggesting it is she, in fact, who is overtly sexual: when he tells her he is going to climb into the bathtub with a bottle of shampoo that reminds him of her, he feigns shock that Li’l Bit would interpret his words as sexual, telling her, “Lord, gal—your mind!” (10). His unhooking her bra mere moments later shows the flimsiness of his pretense. That Li’l Bit later retreats to Peck for comfort establishes the complexity of their relationship; she frequently seeks solace in him when frustrated by her family, when she feels most keenly the desire to escape her “cracker background” (14). This complexity will be the focal point of the play.
Throughout How I Learned to Drive, all parts except Li’l Bit and Peck are played by the three Greek choruses. In Greek theater, the chorus spoke together, representing not individual characters but onlookers, community members, or even the internal thoughts or motives of the characters. In How I Learned to Drive, the choruses comprise the individual voices of Li’l Bit’s life. The people who influence her, though distinguished from each other, blend in her mind into a single collection of voices, all of which together teach her about the world around her, as well as her place in it. Each chorus, played by several different characters over the course of the play, represents the fact that though the people are different, the messages they impart to Li’l Bit are the same.
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