Synopsis: The play concerns an affair between its protagonist, named Li'l Bit, and her uncle Peck. The affair takes place over the course of years, with the character of Li'l Bit maturing from age 11 to 18 before she finally puts an end to it. How I Learned to Drive is a memory play that deals with issues of victimization, sexual abuse, incest, and alcoholism. It is also a play about growth, acceptance, and forgiveness.
From the very beginning of the play, gender is a very apparent theme. In the second scene, the main character, Lil Bit, explains what it is like at a “normal family dinner” in their household. She then goes on to explain what the nick names mean for everyone in her family, and how they are always associated with that persons genitalia. “Lil Bit, Uncle Peck, Big Papa” etc. So right away, gender is discussed with every character we meet. The scene then goes on to have the family discuss something (especially sensitive for a maturing girl), the size of her breasts.
Very stereotypical view as a family about gender: male and female, aside from the fact that they choose to name each other by their genitals, they also have the typical “1950s” ideas for men and women.
Grandfather: “What does she need a college degree for? She’s got all the credentials she needs right there on her chest.”
She then goes on to talk about how she wants to learn things, shell be taking a class on Shakespeare.
Grandfather: “How is Shakespeare going to help her lay on her back in the dark?”
It is eventually Good old uncle peck who is sent to comfort and care for Lil Bit.
For ex: Peck
Aunt Mary’s monologue: “My husband is such a good man, every night he does the dishes. The second he comes home he is taking out the garbage, or doing yard work, lifting heavy things…Everyone in the neighborhood borrows peck…. There’s always a knock on our door for a jump start on cold mornings, when anyone needs a ride, or to help shoveling the sidewalk.”
There’s also another scene between Peck and his nephew when they are fishing. The little boy starts crying that he does not want to kill the fish, Peck tells him it is OK if he cries around him, but not to cry around anyone else because its not “manly.”
That’s Peck. A Typical “good man” who loves his family and cars.
However, this “typical good man” is actually far from good. This brings us to the topic of pedophilia in gender.
-It is known today that 96 percent of sexual assaults reported to law enforcement were male.
-89 percent of child sexual assault cases involve persons known to the child.
The only problem with this play is that Peck is not your “typical stereotype” for a pedophile. He is this upstanding man, a war veteran, a husband, a helper and smart. This is ultimately what draws us in as an audience, and keeps us interested, instead of just having us push him aside and say that he is wrong. As much as he manipulates everyone else in the play, Especially Lil Bit, he manipulates the audience as well.
With the molestation/pedophilia whatever you want to call it going on, there is always the theme of “power” between Uncle Peck and Lil Bit. The entire “affair,” it seems as if Lil Bit is the one who has the “power” in their relationship, as there is between men and women. She calls the shots. She draws the line in the sand, and Peck does not cross it. Or so she thinks.
There are many instances in which it is clear that Peck is ultimately holding all of the power.
Examples:
-“Now that’s a fact. I held you, one day old, right in this hand."
From the very beginning, Peck was always “steps ahead” of Lil Bit. While she was a child, he held her, in the very hands that he now touches her in other ways.
-Lil Bit: “Don’t go over the line now.” I won’t. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do. “That’s right.”
-The restaurant scene, Peck and Lil Bit are celebrating, he gives her the “power” to choose whatever alcoholic beverage she wants, while he tells her he will remain sober. A few martini’s later, Lil Bit is stumbling into the car.
“Mother” interrupts with a little insert about how women should, as a last resort, wear a “skin tight girdle- so tight that only a surgical knife can get it off of you- so that if you do pass out in the arms of your escort, hell end up with rubber burns on his fingers before he can steal your virtue.”
Even then, the scene ends with Peck once again saying “nothing will happen to you until you want it to” and covering her up with a blanket as they drive home.
-Even the entire plot of the show, “Learning to Drive” an actual car. He even says, he “wants to teach her to drive like a man."
The one thing that Lil Bit says gives her so much freedom, HE is the one who taught her, he is the one who gave that to her.
Even while teaching her to drive, the car has a gender, a female, as he later explains why:
“When you close your eyes and think of someone who responds to your touch, someone who performs just for you and gives you what you ask for."
The most ironic part about this power, to me, is during “Aunt Mary- Pecks Wife” speech. After talking about how great her husband is, she tells the audience that she thinks it is Lil bit who has all the power in this relationship.
“I wish you could see how hard Peck fights against it… She’s a sly one. She knows exactly what she’s doing, she has twisted peck around her little finger and thinks its all a big secret, yet another one who’s borrowing my husband until it doesn’t suit her anymore.”
This is showing how women often are pinned against other women, aside from the fact that she KNOWS this is going on, and probably has gone on before, and still blames these “other women."
Lil Bit eventually takes this power away from Peck by cutting off their relationship once she is away at school, and it is a few years after this that Peck eventually drinks himself to death.
