Ethnicity, Gender and Class at the Crossroads

Esther Mills, the protagonist of Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel (2003), is an African American middle-aged seamstress working in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Her exquisite work in making delicate, sophisticated, elegant, and glamorous undergarments gives her the opportunity to move around the city from her room in a boarding house of Lower Manhattan to visit her customers and suppliers. Esther goes to the Upper East Side boudoir of her affluent, white customer Mrs. Van Buren, the Tenderloin District where Mayme, an African American prostitute lives or a Downtown tenement flat to visit Mr. Marks, a Jewish immigrant who provides her with fabric. Mobility gives her access to a variety of worlds within the urban setting. Linked to the geographical movement across boroughs, she can come into contact with people of different backgrounds and status, enjoy some freedom and a partially non-segregated life. The article will analyze to what extent identity categories of race, gender and class are fixed and limit her opportunities and how Esther’s close, intimate interactions with other characters across those lines provide her with experiences that enlarge her universe, account for a redefinition of her identity as a Southern African American lower-class woman and afford some possibility for autonomy and independence in the ebullient New York stage.