Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Intimate Apparel, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Intimacy and Friendship
Race, Class, and Exploitation
Gender and Expectations
The American Dream
Summary
Analysis
Esther and George stand on either side of the bed that's covered in the crazy quilt, Esther in her wedding dress and George in his frayed suit. After a moment, Esther remarks that she doesn't feel much different. She says that she doesn't know what else to say. George says they have plenty of time to talk as he takes off his jacket, tosses it over the bed, and loosens his top button. Esther picks up the jacket and glances at the label as she folds it. She offers to fetch a basin so George can bathe, but he kneels on the bed and invites Esther to sit. She sits with her back to him and trembles as he touches her cheek. George asks if Esther is afraid of him, but she says that all of this is just new.
Esther and George will have sex for the first time in the bed covered in Esther's crazy quilt—which very literally contains her hopes and dreams for the future, as it’s the hiding place for her life savings, which she wants to use to open a beauty parlor—thus tying George more firmly to those hopes and dreams. In this way, Esther reaffirms her commitment to becoming a proper lady by marrying and following through with all that brings with it, even when it's scary or uncomfortable for her.
Themes
George takes Esther's hand and places it over his crotch. Esther is uncomfortable but allows this. George starts to say what he expected of Esther, and Esther offers that he thought she'd be prettier. She suggests they say what they think now and get it out of the way. She says that in her letters she described her character, and she told the truth. As George starts to unbutton Esther's dress, she moves her hand and says she finds George disarmingly handsome. She admits that she's kissed before, but hasn't had sex. George slips Esther's dress off her shoulders to reveal a beautiful wedding corset. He compliments it, kisses her back, and runs his fingers over her breasts.
That George doesn't refute Esther's interjection shows that Esther was right—George did want a pretty face and not just a female body. With this, the play suggests that Esther is going to have a harder time being a successful woman, given that she's not able to be the kind of beauty that men seem to expect of her. Instead, she can borrow that beauty and fabricate it by making herself beautiful undergarments.
Themes
Esther quickly stands up to fetch the smoking jacket, which she made for George as a wedding gift. She helps him put it on. He's not comfortable in it and says that he'll get it dirty. He shrugs it off and tosses it onto the bed, pulling Esther close. Esther asks if they can wait a little bit, and asks George to tell her about Barbados. She pulls away, picks up the smoking jacket, and says that she came to New York from North Carolina when she was 17. Her mother died of influenza and her father died two years later. He was silent for Esther's entire life, as he was born a slave and had his tongue cut out. When Esther got to New York, an old woman taught her to sew intimate apparel and that was the most valuable gift Esther has ever received.
The smoking jacket symbolizes Esther's hope for intimacy with George; with it, as with Mrs. Van Buren's magenta corset, she tries to transpose Mr. Marks's friendship onto someone else. So casually taking off the jacket and discarding it is another red flag that George doesn't actually share Esther's love of storytelling or of these fine fabrics, even if he said he did in the letters. Esther attempts to kindle some of this intimacy by telling George her family history.
Themes
George takes off his shirt as he says that his parents were the children of slaves and slaves themselves, and they all cut sugarcane and died. He says their story isn't worth telling, but he hopes that his story will be different now that he's here. George says he'd like to do what they're supposed to do and have sex, and Esther allows him to pull her onto the bed. The lights fade as Mayme and Mrs. Van Buren, in their matching corsets, come onstage and stand over Esther and George's bed. Mayme asks what George is like as George gets out of bed and dresses. Esther kneels on the bed, wrapped in her crazy quilt, and says that George is handsome. Esther gets up and Mayme and Mrs. Van Buren help her get dressed.
George's unwillingness to play along and share his family history again shows that he's not willing to be intimate in a way that Esther craves; he's here for sex and not much more. Mayme and Mrs. Van Buren appearing to help Esther dress and make sense of this experience re-centers female friendship as the most important and intimate relationship, as Esther is using them to figure out how she feels, rather than drawing on George to provide insight into her friends.
Themes
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Esther says that George didn't say much when he saw her. Mrs. Van Buren says that George must be romantic, and Esther offers that his smell made her both sick and excited. Mrs. Van Buren admits that on her wedding night, she was tipsy, in love with the idea of love, and her husband scared her. Esther says that George is sturdy and handsome, with a musical voice. Mayme and Mrs. Van Buren retreat, and Esther says that after George fell asleep, she put her head on his chest and imagined mango and Flamboyant trees.
Mrs. Van Buren's comment that George is romantic again show that she's idealizing George and Esther's experiences with him, as this doesn't acknowledge that Esther wasn't entirely thrilled with the experience. Her later confession about her wedding night, however, suggests that for these women, sexual intimacy with men is difficult and not often fulfilling.
Themes
