Feminism in Top Girls

Feminism in sort out GirlsThe play is wholeness of the close to famous works of Churchill in all of hers. Some pass the play as a very radical feministic one, some consider it as anti-feminist. But the matter is that she, by the engage of polar techniques and strategies has made her play like a globe in which all wowork force be thither supporting, discarding each different.The play has a very grave historical evidence behind itself and it was the matter of Thatcher that had become prime minister, as Churchill, her self comments that when she wrote bloom girlsThatcher had only become prime minister there was talk about whether it was an advance to have a charwoman prime minister if it was someone with policies like hers. She may be a woman solely she isnt a sister, she may be a sister but she isnt a comrade. And, in accompaniment, social occasions have got much worsened for women under Thatcher. (Churchill in Betsko and Koenig 1987, 77)In fact Margargont Thatcher and Ed ith Cresson, as prime ministers of their own time were really top girls.In top girls, Churchill has had two main idea in her mind those of dead women coming clog up and women running(a). these are in fact two main topics of the play, which are very closely intertwined. the dead women from the yesteryear appear in act one, taking place in a restaurant, a celebration that Marlene organizes, because of her young promotion, we see other characters such as Lady Nijo, Dull Griet, Pope, Joan who celebrate their femininity with each other. during the seam of the night they gather together and supposed to speak about their victories, and of course there occurs an epiphevery for them because they in fact had lost their own womanly manner in order to achieve mens world.The presence of this empty women is so well epitomized in the character of Marlene, as a kind of gap between past and present, this working class girl pregnant who left her home village to make a new one in London., so the old Marlene has died and no one is born and replaced by a cruel one, so we see here some assembly of dead women, who so naively consider themselves as the most alive ones.The structure of the play so excellently shows the sense of death of its main characters, in other words we can see a kind of correspondism, between their life and the structure of play. the plays denouement is someway truncated, as the lives of women truncated and crooked. Of course we can consider this kind of techniques used by her as a feminist stances of denying the masculine pattern of plays inherited by Aristotle,I think before the full analyses of the play, thats reform to mention some characteristic of it that is so prominent her adaptation of Brechtian playing period by the use of frenzy effects,a kind of aesthetic distance, the matter and technique is so excellently showed by successive interruption of waiter and of course their laughter.From the perspective of dramatic shape it consists of three a cts. one consists of three scenes and act two of allure scenes. I think the matter and division is because of creation of some chronological disruption, and it is through as a way of fulfilling a very good function in order not to create a kind of identification between the reader/audience and the actor/actress on the stage. another(prenominal) important thing mentioned here is that, between different layers of this play, we have the working of the ideology. In this way we have a objurgation of capitalism and capitalist regimes that the play puts forward.In another sense, it can be used to instance to a greater extent feminist reading of the play in fact by occurrence of a complete completion and by in fact having a diametrically opposed panorama tothe structure inherent to cataclysm postulated by Aristotle. as Christopher Innes has statedCombining surreal fantasy with Shavian discussion, documentary case-histories, and naturalistic domesticated drama (complete with kitchen s ink and ironing-board), Top Girls breaks out of conventional methods of portraying life on the stage, and suggests new slipway of seeing reality.. creating a dynamic that is liberated from cause-and effect logic. (Innes 1992, 466),and this matter some how leads us to the neighboring point looking for a feminist form(or at least a kind of form different from the patriarchal one).the fact that we have in the drama only women and not men, is really vital in comprehension of it. the fact that the actresses in Top Girls have to double or treble roles prevents us from identifying with them and, consequently, focuses the help of the reader/audience on the political message of the play, that is feminism . Thus, the woman-only cast illustrates the subject matter of Top Girls and reinforces the theme of feminism or thats better to say anti feminism.Although, the play deals with oppression of women by men in a capitalist regime, but we see the oppression of women by women as a outlet of be ing part of that regime .It can also means that how women have internalized the rules and privileges of patriarchal societies, however, we dont see a manifest attack of Churchill on men, in other words we dont see the struggle of women but in fact the play turns on the analyses of class strife and economics. An example can be found in the case of Marlene, who sacrifices her own daughter and family in order to escape from her working-class origins, besides, here in this drama we see that all the women somehow have some masculine way of behavior, although they think that they have trim back with them, as we see that they have just an illusion that they are successful women or we as a kind of reader find tat its just an illusion to consider the play just as representation of a feminist drama.I think even the naming of character in the play, they exemplify the whole discussion about class struggle and economic strife that underlies it. so we have here a four group classification. First group women of past as we have Isabella Bird, as her institute reminds us the matter of travelling. It can also be considered as a reference to the several characters in the play(Marlene, Lady Nijo, Win, Angie, Jeanine and Shona), who long for escape from their reality and fly to other, sunnier lands. here we see on the surface feministic tendency.Another important thing that really needs concentration is the language used by Churchill, she really has done her best to create a kind of distinctive use of the language in the play as Aston and Savona argue thatIn Top Girls, the use of overlap is a sign of the pistillate voice. Brechts splintering of the self is further problematised in Churchills text by the female entry into the symbolic order of language. As a logocentric or phallocentric sign-system (as identified in Derridean or Lacanian terms), language places the female subject in a marginalized analogy to its patriarchal order. (Aston and Savona 1991, 70) By destabilizing t he linguistic exchange and therefore unfixing identity, but at the same time enceinte predominance to a female voice, Churchill seems to be stressing in a radical way the destabilization and interlingual rendition of the female subject in relation to language (Aston and Savona 1991, 70), and consequently in relation to occupying a position in apatriarchaliy-defined society.All the women of top girls have conformed themselves to the male standards of behavior and that shows the theatricality of their works and glories. They are never satisfied with this new brand of gender, at least before they were just women now not men and not women belonging to one of them.From Lacanian point of view and as a con householdation of what I mentioned in the prior paragraph that all their actions are nothing but facade, we see that all of the characters are confined in the symbolic stage with the role of father. Since language is given in and by a system dominated by men, womens access to it is go ing to be clearly mediated. According to this, womens voice, their identity, will be totally artificial, a construct defined by patriarchy. This isprecisely what Gret purports to destroy in her powerful speech, in which she equals the Symbolic Order to hell. A hell where all the devils are male.As I mentioned in the previous paragraphs, Caryl Churchill in her marvelous play Top Girls has inserted a lot of messages some say that it is basically a play about capitalism and sexism About capitalism in the sense that it analyses labor and social traffic constituted by a capitalist economy, about sexism in that these relations are seen from a female point of view, which explores how female identity is put down by the politics of patriarchy.Top Girls is also a socialist-feminist play. It can be defined as socialist in that it takes a clear position against any sort of capitalist ideology, and it can be defined as feminist because it presents us with a parallel between socio-economic, by t he use oppression and gender oppression. In fact, as we have seen, Churchill herself is a firm believer in the inseparability of feminism and socialism(Kritzer 1991, 149).besides, her uses of characters are true to life, she really generalize the theme of her feministic play, by use of characters of different classes to connote that it is a play about all women. Different strategies of her to create a womanish setting is really of paramount importance, although in this play she showed women who have achieved the highest level of social life but they are not really satisfied. I think the main message of her is that women should know the limits, as she is a social feminist and she is criticizing the bourgeois feminists.ReferencesJstore Titol de la testi Gender, Politics, Subjectivity Reading Caryl Churchill