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 8-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 8 Summary: “When Making a Left Turn, You Must Downshift While Going Forward”
In 1979, Li’l Bit is on a bus to upstate New York. She’s reading a book for a class she is teaching. A man, young enough for his voice to break, sits next to her. He says he’s a senior in high school, but Li’l Bit has doubts: she tells the audience that “perhaps he was—with a very high voice” (28). She tells the audience how he invited her to dinner and walked her home and how they had sex in her room: she says they engaged in “the faltering and slightly comical ‘first act’” (29) and “and extremely capable and forceful and sustained second act” (29). As she lay on her back “after the second act climax” (29), she thought of Uncle Peck. She realized that “this is the allure” (29)—“Being older. Being the first. Being the translator, the teacher, the epicure, the already jaded” (29).
The scene shifts and now a 15-year-old Li’l Bit asks Teenage Greek Chorus, as Grandmother, if sex hurts the first time. Though Grandmother is appalled by the question, Female Greek Chorus, as Mother, explains that it hurts just a little and that there’s a little blood. Grandmother and Mother disagree over how much information to share with Li’l Bit: Grandmother believes Li’l Bit is “too young to be thinking those things” (29) while Mother argues that if she doesn’t tell her, she will find out “[i]n the street” (29). Grandmother tries to frighten Li’l Bit out of having sex by telling her it’s extremely painful. Mother criticizes Grandmother for not talking to her and Mary about sex when they were young and for telling them “to go to the priest” (30).
Li’l Bit complains that “[i]t’s not fair” (30) and asks, “Why does everything have to hurt for girls?” (30). Mother tells her it doesn’t hurt if the man loves her, and Grandmother chides her for talking to Li’l Bit honestly about sex. Mother responds that she and Li’l Bit “have a very close relationship” (30) and that if she and Grandfather had been more open with her, she wouldn’t have had to marry her “no-good” (30) husband. Grandmother suggests Mother was too loose with her sexuality.
All this time, Li’l Bit, having heard all this before, retreats. Eventually, she sits in passenger seat of Peck’s car, saying, “Ahh. That’s better” (31).
Scene 9 Summary: “Before You Drive”
No action occurs in this scene. After announcing the driving tip—“Before You Drive”—the voice advises you to “check under your car for obstructions” (32), such as bottles, branches, “and the bodies of small children” (32), noting that children are frequently “crushed beneath the wheels of unwary drivers” (32) and that they “depend on you to watch them” (32).
Scene 10 Summary: “You and the Reverse Gear”
In 1967, Li’l Bit and Peck are in a parking lot. As Peck describes to her his favorite cars, Li’l Bit intersperses comments about “The Initiation into a Boy’s First Love” (32).
Peck tells Li’l Bit he wants her “to know [her] automobile inside and out” (32). As they sit in the car, he asks her to tell him what she’s supposed to do before she starts the car. Li’l Bit tells her she doesn’t know. When he asks “[w]hat’s the first thing you’re going to adjust” (33), she suggests her bra strap. Peck is firm and commanding, telling her she can adjust the radio in her own car with her license but not when she’s learning. She responds, “Yes, sir” (33).
Peck tells her how she should adjust the seat and how the side mirrors should be positioned. He asks her if she can do what he says and if the positions of the mirrors are good. When he tells her she has to drive with two hands on the wheel, Li’l Bit asks, “If I put my hands on the wheel—how do I defend myself?” (34). Peck tells her he “will never touch [her] when [she is] driving a car” (34). After he tells her “[h]ands on the nine o’clock and three o’clock position gives you maximum control and turn” (34), he says nothing for some time.
Peck then tells Li’l Bit that her life is in her own hands and that when she’s driving, she has something “that nobody can take from you […] power” (34). He explains he “want[s] to teach [her] to drive like a man” (34) because “[t]here’s a lot of assholes out there” (34). Men “drive with confidence” (34) and “aggression,” as if “[t]he road belongs to them” (34), whereas “[w]omen tend to be polite” (34). This distinction “can be fatal” (34). In the event of an accident, he wants Li’l Bit to be able to “steer through it” (35) and to “be the only one to walk away” (35).
Li’l Bit asks Peck why he describes the car as a “she.” Peck says when driving, he thinks “of someone who responds to your touch—someone who performs just for you and gives you what you ask for” (35). Li’l Bit tells the audience, “I closed my eyes—and decided not to change the gender” (35).
Scene 11 Summary: “Defensive driving”
Scene 12 Summary: “You and the Reverse Gear”
Li’l Bit announces that it’s 1966 and that the scene will demonstrate “The Anthropology of the Female body in Ninth Grade—Or A Walk Down Mammary Lane” (35).
Li’l Bit is walking down the hallway of her middle school when the Greek Choruses, as classmates, pretend a boy, Jerome, is having a serious allergy attack. When she asks what he’s allergic to, he grabs her breasts and tells her he’s allergic to “[f]oam rubber” (36). As they laugh, Li’l Bit hurls insults at Jerome. Teenage Greek Chorus tells her that “[r]age is not attractive in a girl” (36). Female Greek Chorus tells her to “[g]et a sense of humor” (36).
Scene 13 Summary: “Good defensive driving involves physical and mental preparation”
Li’l Bit and the Female and Teenage Greek Choruses are standing outside the showers in gym class, hesitating to drop their towels. Finally, Li’l Bit drops hers and steps into the shower. The Greek Choruses laugh at Li’l Bit’s body. Female Greek Chorus remarks that “[i]t’s not foam rubber!” (36) and that Jerome owes her money they’d bet.
Scene 14 Summary: “Were You Prepared?”
At the Sock Hop, Li’l Bit and Female Greek Chorus stand against the wall, listening to the music. Li’l Bit tells a joke about a man fondling a girl’s breasts; Female Greek Chorus says she’s “weird.” Peck, elsewhere, is setting up a tripod but is distracted by the sight of Li’l Bit’s body.
Li’l Bit asks if Female Greek Chorus ever feels “self-conscious,” as if she’s “being looked at all the time” (37). Male Greek Chorus, as Greg, approaches and asks Li’l Bit to dance, but Li’l Bit declines. As he walks away, Li’l Bit notices Peck looking at her and grows tense. Female Greek Chorus says Li’l Bit should “take pity on” (38) Greg; Li’l Bit says he’s too short for her and that his head comes up to her breasts. She adds that “he asks me on the fast dances so he can watch me—you know—jiggle” (38). Female Greek Chorus, who had tried to get Greg’s attention when he approached, replies, “I wish I had your problems” (38).
Greg asks Li’l Bit again during another song, and she declines again. Female Greek Chorus tells Li’l Bit she should “take it as a compliment that the guys want to watch you jiggle” (38) because “[t]hey’re guys” and “[t]hat’s what they’re supposed to do” (38). Li’l Bit dives into a lengthy rant about how her breasts are “alien life forces” (38) that have attached themselves to her so they can “take over the world” (38) and will continue to grow until they “suck all the nourishment out of my body and I finally just waste away” (38). Female Greek Chorus says Li’l Bit is “the strangest girl [she has] ever met” (38). Li’l Bit tries not to cry. She suggests her breasts are sending out radio signals “to men who get mesmerized, like sirens” (38).
A slow song begins, and Greg, his eyes fixated on her breasts, approaches and asks Li’l Bit yet again to dance. However, Li’l Bit is drawn to Peck’s side. Greg says he “could just hold [her] and we could just sway a little” (39). Over the music of the dance, Li’l Bit tells the audience that “[i]n every man’s home some small room, some zone in his house, is set aside” (39) for “his secrets” (39). She says that in Aunt Mary’s house “Uncle Peck’s turf” (39) is the basement.
Scenes 8-14 Analysis
That learning to drive is a metaphor for sex—how to do it, as well as society’s expectations of it—is reiterated in these scenes in both the action and the subtitles. In “Before You Drive,” the voiceover warns that “[c]hildren depend on you to watch them” (32), an unsubtle condemnation of Peck’s sexual pursuit of his teenage niece. In “Defensive driving,” the voiceover warns one to protect oneself against “hazardous and sudden changes” (35) with “mental and physical preparation” (35)—a hint of events of the following scene, in which Li’l Bit is sexually accosted by classmates.
The connection between driving and sex is blatantly clear in “You and the Reverse Gear,” in which Peck tells Li’l Bit, “I want you to know your automobile inside and out” (32). Peck’s teaching Li’l Bit the workings of the car—after she tells him she doesn’t know what to do, he shows her how to adjust the seat, where her feet should go, and how to position the mirrors—draws images of his teaching her the logistics of sex. Peck takes on the role of the older, more experienced teacher. His commanding tone and her quick compliance illuminate the control he exercises both in driving and in their sexual relationship.
Peck’s telling Li’l Bit he imagines the car is a “she” because it’s “someone who responds to your touch” (35) or “performs just for you and gives you what you ask for” (35) introduces us to yet another layer of his pursuing of Li’l Bit. The idea that a car, or a “she,” is valuable insofar as she “performs for” and satisfies men is echoed in the scenes in which Li’l Bit is sexually objectified in school. In the middle school hallway, Jerome grabs her breasts, using her body as the punchline of his joke; at the Sock Hop, Greg persistently asks her to dance, clearly enthralled with her breasts and not even concerned if they dance as long as they can “sway a little” (39). Her female classmate even suggests Li’l Bit should take boys’ obsession with her breasts as “a compliment” (38).The female classmate’s belief that Li’l Bit should allow herself to be objectified because exhibiting unrestrained sexuality is what boys are “supposed to do” (38) establishes a power structure in which “boys will be boys” and girls’ worth is dependent on their desirability.
Interestingly, at the Sock Hop, her female classmate tells Li’l Bit she should “[t]ake pity on” Greg (38) because he “can’t help” (38) that he’s short. This pity is a luxury not afforded to Li’l Bit, who can’t help the shape of her body any more than Greg can help his. The classmate’s sympathy for Greg continues to reveal a double standard in which boys deserve leniency whereas girls are targeted for their bodies, and even for sexual assaults upon them. Her classmates’ lack of sympathy when Jerome grabs her breasts—in response to Li’l Bit’s objections, they tell her to “[g]et a Sense of Humor” (36) because “[r]age is not attractive in a girl” (36)—reinforce the expectation that girls be compliant and ladylike.
Li’l Bit begins to see her body as a burden, telling her classmate she is “self-conscious” (37). Her complaint to Grandmother—“Why does everything have to hurt for girls?” (30)—illustrates her acknowledgment not only of pain during sex but also of the pain of objectification. After Peck’s explanation of his calling his car a “she,” Lil’ Bit narrates, “I closed my eyes—and decided not to change the gender” (35). On one level, her acquiescence shows her acceptance of Peck’s attention. However, it also demonstrates how her learning to drive a car is representative of her learning at a young age what’s expected of girls.
These scenes offer more glimpses of the complexity of Li’l Bit and Peck’s relationship. As Peck watches from offstage while Greg pursues Li’l Bit, “signals” are “pulling Li’l Bit to his side” (39). When Li’l Bit describes how every man has space in his house just for him, she inhales and “savors” (39) the scent of Peck’s Bay Rum. During a driving lesson, Peck is emphatic that she learn to protect herself on the road, telling her he wants to give her the “power” (34) that is driving. The fact that the relationship is not without mutual caring makes the play’s messages complicated and more delicate.
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