How I Learned to Drive

“Sometimes to tell a secret, you first have to teach a lesson.”

Li’l Bit tells her story non-chronologically, opening with a scene in which she is 17. By waiting until the end of the play to show us the first incident of Peck’s abuse, Vogel allows us first to see how the abuse has changed her protagonist. Li’l Bit teaches her lessons—about sex, about abuse, about love, about society, about the flaws and complications of human character—before she reveals her secret. The effect is that Peck’s abuse appears that much more grave, for we are aware of the damage it does long before we see it. 

“Lord, gal—your mind!”

Peck says this to Li’l Bit in the first scene, when he tells her he wants to climb into the bathtub with a bottle of the shampoo she uses and she scolds him to “[b]e good” (10). As Peck has been sexual with her for years, Li’l Bit is not wrong to imagine that this particular comment will have sexual undertones. However, Peck turns the tables to suggest that she, not he, is fixating on sex. Peck frequently uses this technique to manipulate Li’l Bit. Doing so both absolves him of guilt and enables him to forget that Li’l Bit, a minor and his niece, does not have the power of consent.