The Vagina Monologues

Content Warning: The source text and this study guide feature graphic depictions and discussion of rape, sexual assault, and domestic and systemic violence against women.

The primary narrator of the play is V herself reading monologues in character. There are excerpts, however, that list facts about vaginas or share interview questions with lists of responses from a chorus of women. The primary narrator acts as a tether who binds the separate monologues to the overarching narrative addressing sexual violence, self-discovery, and community together.

The primary narrator also complicates the categorization of The Vagina Monologues as the text is, at once, a play, a fictionalized recounting of lived experiences, and an activist movement that is still being performed today. Therefore, the primary narrator can be all women, one woman, a doctor, or a playwright, and the identity of the narrator sustains the narrative and symbolizes the community of the narrative and the empowerment millions of women have found through producing this play in communities around the world.

The unnamed narrator of “Hair,” one of the original monologues in the first edition of the play, exemplifies the type of individualized storytelling typical of many of the Monologues.