The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler (now known as V) was originally produced as a play in New York City in October 1996 at the HERE Arts Center, off-Broadway. V, a Tony-award-winning playwright, began The Vagina Monologues by first talking with her friends about their experiences as women before interviewing over 200 women from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. V compiled their responses to produce the first edition of The Vagina Monologues, which has now grown into a global phenomenon with international movements and annual benefit performances translated into multiple languages.

This study guide refers to the 20th anniversary edition of the play, published in 2018, which also includes “Spotlight Monologues” and a segment devoted to V-Day, “a global activist movement to end violence against all women and girls” (169). V-Day, which is celebrated on Valentine’s Day each year, aims to increase awareness of violence against women through performances of The Vagina Monologues and other works by V.

V has won Obie and Tony awards, among others, for The Vagina Monologues. Other works by V include Necessary Targets, The Good Body, and Insecure at Last.

Content Warning: The source text features graphic depictions and discussion of rape, sexual assault, suicide and suicidal ideation, and domestic and systemic violence against women, which this study guide also discusses.

Plot Summary

The Vagina Monologues is a collection of monologues exploring an array of experiences related to being a woman in various global, local, and interpersonal circumstances. V interviewed over 200 women to create The Vagina Monologues. Each monologue is fictionalized nonfiction, as the stories the narrators recount reflect lived experiences that women shared with V or that V researched herself.

In Part 1, which constitutes the original set of monologues from the first edition, narrators move through tales of rape, menstruation, lovers, pleasure, and vagina workshops. The untitled first monologue establishes the narrator’s concern about vaginas—namely, that women love talking about them but don’t necessarily spend much time looking at or thinking about them. She details several pet names women have for their vaginas before reiterating her concern.

Several monologues share individual women’s stories regarding their relationships with their vaginas—and the men who take issue with them. In “Hair,” a woman describes her husband’s disdain for her pubic hair, which she shaves to try and keep him from straying. “The Flood” centers on an older woman’s feelings about self-lubrication, for which she was shamed by her first date.

In “I Was Twelve. My Mother Slapped Me,” a chorus of speakers describe their first experiences with menstruation, reflecting on their anticipation and dread, fear and excitement, and the often-confusing reactions of their mothers.

“The Vagina Workshop” details a woman’s experience in a workshop where she finally saw her vagina as a part of herself for the first time and learned to have intentional orgasms, something she had previously experienced only by accident.

“Because He Liked to Look at It” contains a similar theme of self-discovery, as its narrator only started appreciating her vagina after meeting a lover who likes to spend time staring intently at it.

“My Vagina Was My Village” focuses on the violent sexual assaults women faced in rape camps in the Bosnian War. This monologue is followed by two short excerpts—titled “Vagina Facts”—about female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice designed to eliminate women’s sexual pleasure.

Two monologues return to the choral format, listing responses to questions about what one’s vagina would wear and what it would say if it could talk. A later monologue revisits these questions, posing each of them to a six-year-old girl.

“My Angry Vagina” is the extended rant of a narrator who takes issue with discomfort of menstruation products, gynecological exams, and products that purport to “clean” the vagina. She offers a host of things her vagina actually wants, ultimately settling on “everything.”

“The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could” recounts several sexual traumas the narrator experiences, from accidental injuries to a rape that occurs when she is 10. At 16, she has a sexual relationship with an older woman that changes her perspective about her body.

A short monologue entitled “Reclaiming Cunt” describes a woman’s intent and process of reclaiming the slur as she deconstructs the word into its individual sounds and letters.

The narrator of “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy” is a sex worker who serves as a dominatrix for other women. She describes the empowering sensation of making her clients moan and the specific types of moans she elicits.

“I Was There in the Room” recounts V’s experience being in the room as her daughter-in-law gave birth to her granddaughter. She describes her awe and the power of the vagina, likening it to the human heart.

Interspersed among the other monologues are several “Vagina Facts,” which are excerpted from The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets and other sources. One fact notes that a woman was convicted of witchcraft during the Salem trials for possessing a “devil’s teat,” which was simply her clitoris.

The “Spotlight Monologues,” Part 2 of the 2018 edition, emphasize stories of women who’ve been silenced or ignored by history. “The Memory of Her Face” shares the story of a victim of an acid attack in Pakistan and that of 300 women who went missing and were found murdered in Mexico. “Under the Burqa” describes a woman’s experience with oppression, violence, and loss while trapped under a burqa she did not choose to wear. “They Beat the Girl out of My Boy…or so They Tried” focuses on the experiences of a transgender woman in America wrestling with gender dysphoria and the hate-motivated murder of her partner. In “Crooked Braid,” an Oglala Lakota woman experiences intergenerational domestic violence rooted in white colonialism. “Say It” is dedicated to the “comfort women” who were forced into sexual enslavement by the Japanese Imperial Army.

A series of “Spotlight Monologues” focus on women in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake, in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the nation’s civil war, all highlighting the ways that women carry trauma for their communities during times of crisis.

“Over It” is an indictment of rape culture, followed by “My Revolution Begins in the Body,” a piece dedicated to women in the Philippines that celebrates a nonviolent revolution rooted in love and connection. Part 2 closes with “Then We Were Jumping,” a piece in which the speaker dreams of her father—who raped her—being forced to publicly consume her pain, an act that she calls justice.

Part 3 provides a detailed look at the impact The Vagina Monologues and its sister movements, V-Day and One Billion Rising, have had on the world in the decades since the play was first produced. The final section includes a history of V-Day, its mission, and the principles of the “City of Joy,” a site of education and healing created and run by Congolese men and women.