THE SIX AGES OF WOMAN
In the second monologue, our heroine has become Mrs. Vicki Ziwicki, reveling in her Mediterranean furniture, her baby-doll nighties, and the freedom to fornicate, even if her spouse does strip only to his socks and refuses to make love until Championship Bowling goes off the air. Vicki at this point has a “master plan”: no children for at least three years, keeping her job until a house has been bought and paid for, and producing two carefully timed offspring, one of each gender. “We’re going to use rhythm. Father Bob swore to me it would work. . . . He’s a priest, so he should know.”
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Faktor’s tale also succeeds as well as it does because it retains its good humor from beginning to end–unlike the works of early feminists, who elevated the kaffeeklatsch game of “Ain’t It Awful?” to the level of epic tragedy. At no time does Faktor permit Vicki to whine about her lot in life–she complains, of course, kvetches and gripes and bellyaches as we all do, but she never indicates regret at the choices she’s made and never doubts her ability to change the course of her life. This is most apparent when Vicki talks about her affair with a man she met on an out-of-town business trip: “The more I saw of him, the more I realized how much I really loved Alan. . . . He loves the real me, not the me with the party manners I let this other guy see, but the me with the hair curlers and the bunny slippers.” How many plays were there in the last season in which imperfect husbands and wives actually liked one another?
