Ruined

About a year ago I read a Victorian novel that included the term, "ruined" to describe a family that had declared bankruptcy. I wrote down the term and usage in a notebook because it struck me as odd. People go bankrupt but their lives continue. In the past couple of decades I knew several people who declared bankruptcy to have their debts cleared and to start anew.

So the use of this term led me to wonder what could ruin a person.

I never answered the question, but a new play, Ruined, at the Manhattan Theater Club explores it. The second I read about it, I was curious to see it.

I got to see the show last night. Basically, it follows the lives of a small group of people associated with a brothel in the Congo. The sex workers are women who have been raped by soldiers and shunned by their husbands, families, and villages. The rape stigma and the war conditions have narrowed their options to a life in the brothel or on the dangerous streets. Some of the women have bodies so brutally damaged by soldiers, they are considered "ruined."

The play explores different forms of caring (employer, uncle, lover, husband, mother) and coping (fight, appease all sides, flee, drink, make art, become callous). It offers a picture of the dire situation in the Congo and the great difficulties faced by people who remain in the area.

I think of ruin as near total loss. While the women in this play (and those who have actually suffered similar circumstances) have had a great loss, they are still able to function. So the brutalized women in this play are not ruined -- they sing, dance, work, and love again, but the application of the term to their condition presented many issues worth pondering.