Direct Address in Monologue

Waller-Bridge carefully balances direct address, able to go from casual to extreme in a sentence. ‘I send Harry a picture of my vagina. I text Lily. Still nothing from my sister’ (30), the short, sharp sentences indicative of the modern short attention spans - Fleabag shares openly with the audience and then shuts them out, just as quickly (Tasioula, 2023). The monologue in conjunction with comedy softens the intensity of what is actually being discussed; confusion informed by grief and guilt, which is then fueled by the reaction to hypersexuality by the patriarchy. This was described by Stewart as a ‘terrifying portrait’ of a woman who is reverberating the feminist movement whilst simultaneously being a self involved narcissist (2013). This type of reading however emulates how Fleabag was not supposed to be perceived - if she is a ‘terrifying portrait’ then it perpetuates the idea of ‘bad’ feminism and even criticises regular women and their dating patterns. Fleabag is anxious about her own feminism because her behaviour is so informed by the expectations of patriarchy (she complains she ‘can't even call herself a feminist’, 21). By directly addressing the audience during a monologue, the internal experience of the external display of a woman with seemingly questionable values is made to be understood to a far greater extent.