Restaurant Scene in Top Girls Essay

“Well, women are used to worrying over trifles” one of the husbands in Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles states when the women try to give their interpretation of a crime scene. This is just one example of how women tend to be respected much less than their male counterparts in a male-dominated society. Although the play Trifles was written in the year 1916, many of the feminist themes found in this play can be found in today’s society still. Michael Hollinger wrote the play Naked Lunch in the year 2003, and the female role is still written as the weaker more vulnerable character. Just as they were then, women are often portrayed as victims and do not receive the same respect that men do in our male-dominated world.

In “ Stage to Lordsburg”, one female character is shown as more “traditional” and another is shown as an outlier. Henriette is shown as a pretty, elegant, fragile, and nurturing woman. This idea that women are nurturers above all else, is also a very common theme in global

The beginning of the play centers on the male characters, yet the setting reveals the women to actually be the focal point. Their arrival into the kitchen, the remarks of its appearance, and Mr. Hale’s statement of his findings the day before, are used as the story’s exposition. They appear to be commanding the plot, including the female characters present. This is evident in the first line of dialogue, when Mr. Henderson commands the females, “come up to the fire, ladies” (278). Male domination was concept during the early twentieth century, yet Mrs.Peters resists when she states she is not cold. This is the first indication that the male characters of the story are not in control as they would like to think.

The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is about the major differences between women and men. This story was written in a time period when women were treated much differently than they are today, and the women and this story are not taken seriously. This story exposes the sexism that women dealt with then, and still to some extent deal with today. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale find incriminating evidence against Minnie, but the men never think to ask them their opinion; they are too busy looking for solid tangible, evidence. The “trifles” the women are worried about do not matter to the men. Although the women find evidence to believe Minnie is the killer, they

I have yet to attend a dinner party with a guest list that persist of a woman who is a world traveler from the Victorian era, a Japanese Buddhist nun, or even a female pope from the Middle Ages. Possibly because I would never be invited, but mainly because it is impossible to have a dinner party where we can invite them all to gather in the 21st century. Nonetheless, in the CCNY Theater revival of Caryl Churchill’s 1982 play, Top Girls, director Jennifer Tuttle showcases the life of woman, Marlene, in the 20th century and the price for her to achieve success. With a distractive transition of scenes, and difficulty understanding the accents of many of the actors, I was eager for the play to finish. Leaving not only with a confused face, but

Cavendish’s biography on Joan of Arc’s life provides a whole new outlook on Joan altogether. The author included statements from people that knew Joan personally during that time. Providing personal statements instilled credibility in Joan’s doing, and provided intricate details to each siege and encounter that Joan had faced. The author explores Joan’s childhood, her faith, the voices of the saints, her time as a soldier, her most famous battles, her ending battle, her imprisonment and death, and finally the church’s official declaration of sainthood.

This is by far her most important technique as she uses narration, description and repetition to overwhelm the reader and help them really feel what McBride’s character did. The reason she wants the readers to truly understand the emotional battle the women she describes went through is because her goal is to reveal the reasons behind their low self esteem in the early 1900’s. Those reasons are shown to have been largely a result of their work being demeaned as unimportant compared to the man’s.

The scarcity of substantial roles for actresses has long been a problem in theatre. Churchill radically alters the balance in `Top Girls' by having only women on the stage. Churchill also uses the method of doubling. This is where the same actress plays several parts. This allows for thematic links to be made between roles and asks the audience to consider the implications of role-playing in society as well as on the stage. It also allows the actresses to play radically different characters in the same play, demonstrating their range as performers. In writing substantial roles for actresses, Churchill is inviting them to make these parts memorable for the audience. The agenda of socialist feminism transforms these roles into a showcase for female performance. Thus performance in this play may be considered as important as the text.

Churchill explores the different characteristics of Marlene from the first scene of Top Girls; we capture the diverse characters that vary the historical, fictional, allegorical aspects to artistically create a melodramatic effect. The opening scene gradually reveals Marlene’s repressions by examining herself through five avatars. The togetherness at a dining table could present women as a communal as they had dealt with similar trials

For hundreds of years people have been trying to achieve equal society. The 20th century has become the breakthrough era in advocating the rights of people from different social categories. Although a great variety of civil rights movements emerged during the second half of the 20th century, feminism became one of the most important ideologies of that time, which have drastically changed the lives of modern people. Developed as political and social movement that had an aim to unite women and achieve gender equality, feminism appeared to be an ideology that divides women rather than helps all women benefit from the expected unity. Facing numerous challenges of the feminist movement, modern women are less likely to call themselves the advocators of feminism than their mothers or grandmothers. The evolution of feminism resulted in a wide range of problems, which even worsened the problems of females from lower classes. Several plays of the 20th century describe the lives of women and the challenges they must overcome to achieve happiness and satisfaction. The plays Top Girls (1982) by Caryl Churchill and A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney have an aim to reveal the core problems of this ideology. For this reason, it can be useful to understand the essence of feminism on the example Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958), identify the appropriateness of this plays for current realities, and discuss the theme A Past Concealed, A Present

     This tale is completely antithetical to that of the Wife of Bath. Where her tale focuses on the dominance of women over men this one is dedicated to exposing the subservience of the medieval woman. The clerk tells a tale of a peasant woman, Griselda, who marries a nobleman, Walter. He devises cruel ordeals to put her through in order to test her loyalty. She is led to believe that her children are taken away and murdered. Walter rejects her, and apparently substitutes her with a younger, more beautiful woman. This is a cause of suffering for both women. Griselda is forced to stand aside while her children are torn away from her to be killed, and she is pushed away by her husband who replaces her quickly. Her replacement, actually her twelve-year-old daughter, is also caused suffering due to her situation. She has been

The term ¡°top girls¡± is drawn from the famous play with the very same title written by Caryl Churchill, the most often produced British woman playwright on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Being committed to realism, she insisted more and more explicitly in her plays on ¡°the connection between politics and the quality of daily life, between people¡¯s internal state of being and the external political structures which affect them, which make them insane¡±1. Guided by this principle, her Top Girls presented the issue of feminism during its ¡°new wave¡± in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Marlene, the protagonist and recently promoted managing director of the Top Girls Employment Agency, has got what the feminists say they want: liberation from domesticity and child-bearing, and the chance for success in the male enclave and the world of work. There is, however, more the other side of the story, in which Marlene is trapped and forlorn. Besides her rudeness to her inferiors and

Therefore, it is evident that literary techniques are utilised to exploit the Beauvoirian idea of women “denying [their] feminine weakness” in order to justify their strength, while the “militant male... she wish[es] to be” however, Marlene accepts femininity and only wears a skirt to work.

Within Top Girls, Caryl Churchill explore a range of ideas that can be analysed through different lenses to reveal critical interpretations. Beauvoirian and Marxist ideas have be used to compare and contrast these ideas, further supporting this an assortment of literary techniques.

Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls explores in depth the role of women and their impact on society in vast array of historical contexts. Utilising a plethora of literary techniques supported by her revolutionary dialogue structure and pessimistic themes, allude to weighted philosophical topics. Themes can be closely linked to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex when examining the text through a feminist or Marxist lens.