THE MYSTERY OF THE INTERNAL MONOLOGUE

The gender politics and stereotypes in this piece were going to get attention, the author had to know that. The male comes off as self-pitying and insulting, with hints that he can be verbally abusive. The female is balancing her own concerns with worries that he will go off and have a tirade. His day at work did not seem to hold anything catastrophic — just more routine disrespect and drudgery. Offices are brutal places, and she hears that often, in fact experiences it herself. The hand on the knee ….. that’s the guy in the story I want to punch, not the two leads as one responder suggests.

So given we have these stereotypical characters having a distressing but non-catastrophic exchange, I want to know: does this seem real, or even plausible? The voices, the words, her thoughts, the whole scene — was it a slice-of-life or a slice-of-stock character indulgence? Her internal monologue — is that the way our heads work? Is this what it sounds like inside when we let the words flow? Because if Priya is going to subject herself to the gender critiques that will be headed straight for her with some levels of vitriol to be expected, is it worth it? Do we get insight into what goes on in the silence behind the noise? In literature and plays, in the occasional narrated movie, we have the convention of the internal monologue spoken aloud — Hamlet of course is the prototype, and it is pure poetry; actors spout thousands of these monologues at auditions; what do we really sound like in the deep caverns of our psyches? If the writer perpetuates superficial cliches in crafting a monologue, that’s open game, because they’ve just influenced five people to write like that and pass on the shallow pop-culture emoji school of life. Priya doesn’t get that shameless: her characters have moments of authenticity, if not originality (“I love him so much”; “They just hired a 26 year-old, making more than I make. Fuck me.”) — but even the authenticity is wearing thin. If we sound like this inside, we’re not all that interesting, and I am starting to suspect we couldn’t be told apart if you put our inner monologues, anonymously, side-by-side ….. that’s my worry here. The gender inequities and power differentials between men and women aren’t going away overnight, and pieces like this keep the dialogue alive, so in the end I almost asked the question, as did another responder, ‘What’s the point of this story?’ but instead I’ll say it reminds us that we need to work on the gender dynamics in our lives, and we still haven’t cracked the mystery of the internal monologue — I have never read one that made me go — Yes! It sounds like that — Hamlet is a work of art, but not a depiction of the real voice we carry. The monologues from “Her” are sanitized versions of the kinds of things that might run through women’s heads when their partner comes home in such a state, but they don’t crackle with the breath and pulse of life — that’s what I’m looking for.