"Nearly half the women on death row in the United States were convicted of killing abusive husbands. Spontaneous combustion is not recognized as a capital crime."
Nottage includes this quote as the sole note before the start of the play, clearly setting up one of the major arguments she is making in the work. Obviously, Nottage is angered—and wants the readers and viewers to be angered—by the hypocrisy of women facing death row for killing their husbands. In the second sentence, she brings in an element of play: spontaneous combustion, she says, is not going to land you a death sentence. This is her work-around, and her way of highlighting the injustice of someone being sentenced to death for defending themself against someone who very well may have tried to kill them first.
"Everybody always told me, 'Keep your place Loureen.' My place, the silent spot on the couch with a wine cooler in my hand and a pleasant smile that warmed the heart. All this time I didn't know why he was so afraid for me to say anything, to speak up. Poof!..."
Here, Loureen describes existence within a deeply rooted patriarchal structure. She has spent her life voiceless and silent, being bossed around and told to be warm and inviting, never given space to question her position in the family and world. All along, her power lay in her voice: as soon as she used it, she was free.
"How many times have I heard you talk about being rid of him. How many times have we sat at this very table and laughed about the many ways we could do it and how many times have you done it? None."
This line gives us some context: Loureen and Florence have talked before—often, even—about killing Samuel. The way Florence describes it, that they have talked and laughed about it, tells us that it has always been at least partly a joke. However, brainstorming the various ways one could kill their husband is not a typical occurrence, so it's obvious that there has been some degree of desire in the imagining. The quote also shows Florence's disbelief in the possibility that something could go from a hypothetical discussion to a real life event. She assumes that Loureen couldn't have killed Samuel, because she hadn't so many times before; this illogical fallacy reveals a complicated stasis in Florence—an immobilization that won't allow her to enact change—that ultimately suggests that she will not leave her husband at the end of the play.
"All that needs to happen now is for my palms to bleed and I'll be eternally remembered as Saint Loureen, the patron of battered wives. Women from across the country will make pilgrimages to me, laying pies and pot roast at my feet and asking the good saint to make their husbands turn to dust. How often does a man like Samuel get damned to hell, and go?"
This moment clues us into the lens through which Loureen is living her life, and, therefore, understanding this situation: Christianity. She believes that she has not only killed Samuel, but that she has damned him to hell—an even bigger deal than him simply dying. The final line also serves to underscore the fact that she, and very likely others, have wished this for a while, but that it always seemed impossible; in saying "a man like Samuel," Loureen suggests that Samuel is the kind of man who had a knack for getting away with things. Furthermore, Loureen's biblical allusion makes the case for two things: one, that women all over the country are suffering at the hands of abusive partners, and two, that it is Christ-like to kill an abusive husband. Even though Loureen is being hyperbolic, it's clear where Nottage stands.
"No...he exploded. Boom! Right in front of me. He was shouting like he does, being all colored, then he raised up that big crusty hand to hit me, and poof, he was gone...I barely got words out and I'm looking down at a pile of ash."
Loureen's description of what happened reveals a lot about Nottage's political stance in the work. Importantly, we are told that the moment preceding the spontaneous combustion is not an exceptional one; it wasn't a moment more notably violent than other moments, but rather "he was shouting like he does," i.e., in a way that Loureen has experienced many times before. This is significant—if Nottage had selected a moment that was beyond the realm of what Loureen was used to (say, a moment of graphic, gratuitous, previously inexperienced violence) then Loureen's "killing" would be seen as justifiable because of that escalation. But that's not what Nottage does; instead, she allows Loureen to "kill" him in the midst of what seems to be a near daily occurrence of abuse, underscoring her politics—abuse is abuse, and any attempt to save yourself is justified.
"Chile, I'll give you this, in terms of color you've matched my husband Edgar, the story king. He came in at six Sunday morning, talking about how he'd hit someone with his car, and had spent all night trying to outrun the police. I felt sorry for him. It turns out he was playing poker with his paycheck no less. You don't want to know how I found out...but I did."
At first, Florence doesn't believe Loureen; she thinks her friend is telling an outlandish story. This moment is a technically sophisticated one, as there are two things going on at the same time—Florence's response to Loureen, as well as a revelation about Florence's husband. Florence reveals that Edgar recently came home spinning a tall-tale, trying to cover up the fact that he gambled away his paycheck. This clues us into Florence's marriage; while she says in the play that he has never been as violent as Samuel, it's obvious from this anecdote that he's certainly no saint. Edgar is deceptive, and he has clearly broken any sense of trust they would have had in their marriage.
"You've taken a thousand blows from that man, couldn't you've turned the cheek and waited. I'd have helped you pack. Like we talked about."
We can see in this moment how Florence is still stuck in the mindset that the women should carry on, should not cause trouble, that any form of reciprocal violence is absolutely not the answer. The abuse has become so normalized that she is literally telling Loureen that she should have just let Samuel hit her. Florence is advocating for the nonviolent approach whereby the two women leave in secret. This is a moving act of resistance, but the play suggests that they have been crafting this plan for a while now, and, as we can see, it's never happened. Florence's preferred plan would mean that they could avoid direct confrontation with their husbands—she would rather flee than face him. There's absolutely no shame in that. At the same time, it's true that the plan would force them to leave their lives behind, to make all kinds of sacrifices and try to start anew somewhere else. Furthermore, the fear of being found would likely hang over them forever. Loureen's situation is, ironically, much cleaner: Samuel is gone, he can't continue to intimidate her, and she doesn't have to give up her life. In this way, the play seems to suggest that reciprocal violence was actually the only plausible answer in this scenario, the only way that Loureen could be truly free.
"Should I be feeling remorse or regret or some other 'R' word? I'm strangely jubilant, like on prom night when Samuel and I first made love. That's the feeling!"
This moment reveals the confusion Loureen feels over how she should be feeling. She feels like she should be sad, should regret what she did, but the truth is that she doesn't feel that way at all; she feels not only happy but "jubilant." Interestingly, the related image that comes to mind—a memory where she felt similarly jubilant—is prom night, when her and Samuel had sex for the first time. Memory works in mystery ways, but in such a short play, we can assume that Nottage was extremely intentional with each of the details she selected. It's interesting, then, that this is the memory she should choose to link the moment to. What Loureen feels is not only a sense of weightlessness but a sense of freedom now that Samuel is gone. Freedom as in safety from the constant threat of physical danger, but also, it seems, freedom as in possibilities, freedom as in things she might want: that desire, she suggests, hasn't been present in their marriage since they were young.
"You've broken it...We agreed that when things got real bad for both of us we'd...you know...together...Do I have to go back upstairs to that?...What next?"
Here, we can see the complicated emotions Florence is feeling. On the one hand, she is pleased for her friend—she knows Loureen's life will be much, much better without Samuel—but on the other hand, there is a sliver of disappointment, of jealousy, rooted in her worry about her own situation. Florence feels like Loureen broke their pact. In this dialogue, she is clearly delineating a "you," a "we," and an "I"; Loureen diverged from the plan, we had agreed that when we both needed to leave, we would go together, now I have to suffer on my own. Interestingly, this pushes up against the idea that the friendship between the two women is the vehicle through which they survive; the emotional (and physical) support they have given each other has been unequivocally vital, truly the only saving grace. However, Florence's fear that she will now remain stuck in her marriage—that she cannot leave unless Loureen leaves with her—demonstrates that the action has to come from Florence, or Loureen, or anyone, herself. Their solidarity can provide safety and affirmation and love, but Florence cannot rely on Loureen to get her out of her marriage; ultimately, only Florence can make the choice to get up and go.
"What are you gonna tell them? About all those times they refused to help, about all those nights you slept in my bed 'cause you were afraid to stay down here? About the time he nearly took out your eye 'cause you flipped the television channel?"
When Loureen says that she should probably call the police, Florence immediately counters her. Not only is it a bad idea because the police will likely suspect Loureen, but, as Florence points out here, she really owes nothing to the police, who repeatedly didn't help her when she was unsafe. This moment underscores the failure of the systems to actually protect vulnerable people; when Loureen's life was in danger, the police weren't there to help her. Instead, she had to rely on her community—in this case, Florence—for care and protection.
