Decline of the "Top Girl" - Essay

Featuring exclusively female characters, Caryl Churchill's Top Girls is indeed filled with remarkable women. The 1988 play contains women from across the globe who have distinguished themselves over the span of a thousand years, from Joan, the ninth-century pope, to Marlene, a twentieth-century career woman. The women, despite their vastly diverse backgrounds, have all had to sacrifice their femininity, freedom, and their families in order to pursue their individual goals in a male-dominated, male-oriented world. Churchill cleverly uses historical figures to create powerful criticism of contemporary feminism, particularly of that present in 1980s England, and explores what it really means to be a "top girl". With disorienting theatrical and linguistic technique, she ensures the audience's active participation and encourages critical socio-political thinking and self-reflexivity.

            From its very beginning, the play disorients and confuses, subverting theatrical conventions of style as well as content. The first scene, set in the present day of Top Girls, introduces six women from six different times and places. This results in an absurd amalgam of costumes, accents, mannerisms and vocabularies that has the audience grasping for order from its first moments. The play's unique linguistic technique, skip-connection, in which the characters interrupt one another in lieu of speaking in turn, contributes to this sense of chaos and ensures the alertness of the audience.

This subversion of stylistic expectations in the first act is soon followed by subversion of contentual expectations. Initially, the women are controlled, dignified and poised. They have gathered to celebrate Marlene's promotion. Marlene plays the host smoothly and efficiently, expertly ordering a bottle of wine and greeting the girls as they enter the restaurant. Nijo, a thirteenth century courtesan of the Japanese emperor, expresses satisfaction with her present state of relative liberation, signified by her drinking: "It was always the men who used to get so drunk. I was one of the maidens, passing the sake" (2). Isabella, nineteenth century traveler, is similarly content, relating a life filled with charity: "I sent for my sister Hennie to come and join me… we'll live here forever and help the natives" (1). When Joan begins her story of life as a male theologian, she too is proud of her intellectual achievements and remembers being immersed in the experience. "They noticed I was a very clever boy … I think I forgot I was pretending" (9). She goes on to describe her enjoyment of her position as pope, reflecting, "I consecrated bishops and let people kiss my feet" (14). The story of Griselda, a character from Chaucer's Canterbury tales, starts similarly charmed, when a highly eligible marquee proposes marriage to her. Finally, while Griet is neither dignified or poised, she does seem happy as she provides harmless comic relief with her unfamiliarity with modern Western crockery and cutlery, her crude eating habits and her monosyllabic or colloquial responses of "Balls!" (18), "Cake" (20), or "in a field, yah" (17).

            However, from the very beginning, nuances in the women's language indicate that there is more than is immediately apparent in their seemingly controlled, easy-going conversation. Marlene's glad of her promotion but hasn't had "time for a holiday" (1); Isabella is happy to travel but misses her pet (2); Nijo is proud of having served as a concubine to the emperor but admits "when the time came I did nothing but cry" (3). Joan's term as pope, though luxurious and empowering, was accompanied by earthquakes, and bloody rain, and a plague of giant grasshoppers (14).

            As the evening wears on, and the women continue to drink, these nuances give way to explicit, overwhelming misery. It becomes apparent that during their lives, every one of the woman has a desire, aspiration or expression of femininity curbed by a male figure or anti-female behavior during their lives. Joan and her newborn child were stoned to death after she gives birth on the street, because a female head of the church is of course in contradiction of the rules of the papacy. Isabella ceased travelling after she marries John. Nijo had to give away three babies she has out of wedlock, and even had to witness one girl being "brought up carefully so she could be sent to the palace" like Nijo had been, a fact she resents very much. Griselda's husband repeatedly frustrated her modest dream of having a life alongside her family, when he takes her children away from her, lies to her that he would kill them, and then sends her away for twelve years as a test of obedience. Finally, Griet's small comic role turns central and dramatic as she describes battling alongside other women from her village against demons from hell that killed their families. Once again, disintegration in character and composure is matched by disintegration in style as Joan at the end of the scene is depicted, ironically, blaspheming as she struggles to recite from memory verses in Latin.

            The two latter acts are set in 1980s England, during "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher's term as prime minister. Even though all of the obstacles that rendered the women of Act One so miserable – violent emperors, illegally cruel husbands, the powerful stigma against bastardy and impromptu death sentences against women in positions of power – are absent in modern day England, its women become no happier. Marlene's attitude, behavior and story through Acts Two and Three closely echo those of the women in Act One. Initially, she is poised and controlled. She is coldly businesslike, even condescending towards Jeanine, whom she interviews in the employment agency, telling Jeanine her test achievements are "not brilliant, not too bad" and advising her not to inform her future employers of her forthcoming nuptials (30-31). With her coworkers Nell and Win she communicates in an easygoing, uncouth manner that is traditionally masculine, discuss their infidelities and ridiculing their interviewees.

            Just as the composure of Act One's women had unraveled, Marlene begins to lose control and her happy, commanding exterior begins to falter. We discover that Angie is in fact Joyce's adoptive mother and that Marlene, her biological mother, gave Angie to her sister so that she could leave the small town of their childhood and pursue a career. While Marlene's cold, businesslike behavior during interviews at work may be acceptable to the audience and deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the agency, the same behavior exhibited by Marlene toward Angie is certainly repellant. Angie is in awe of Marlene, impressed by her promotion and her curt behavior toward Mrs. Kidd. Ironically, Angie is the only character in the play to shower Marlene with the praise the latter feels she deserves (as indicated by the celebration party of the first act and the many discussions that surround Marlene's promotion). As soon as Angie arrives at the employment agency to surprise her "aunt", clearly expecting to be lauded for her resourcefulness in having traveled to the city on her own, Marlene inquires, "So what train are you going back on?" (55) When Win points out that Angie adores Marlene, Marlene responds about her own child that "she's not going to make it" (64).

The disdain the audience is made to feel by Marlene's callous coldness toward her daughter is exacerbated by her argument with Joyce in the third and final act. It becomes apparent that Marlene supports the "tough lady, Maggie" (84) – Margaret Thatcher – whereas Joyce, who stayed home to live the life Marlene would have had had she assumed responsibility for the birth of her daughter, voted against her. The similarities between Thatcher and Marlene are no coincidence: the first syllables of their given names are identical; Marlene's domestic and professional attitude matches Thatcher's reputation as a politician. In establishing identity between the two women, Churchill harshly criticizes England's foremost female. Just as Marlene looks up to Thatcher, it is implied, other girls and women may too, and the consequences are appalling.

Marlene, then, and Margaret Thatcher are the modern equivalents of the historical "top girls" of Act One. By thus juxtaposing the historical with the contemporary, Churchill shows that, in spite of ostensible advances in legal and societal attitudes towards women, in essence nothing has changed. Women today perpetuate the same mistakes that they did a millennium ago: they turn their backs on their femininity, or subscribe to traditionally masculine behaviors, only to emerge as miserable as their very ancient foremothers had.

Churchill makes it clear that she does not condone the image of the powerful, coldly efficient woman that Thatcher represents. However, she does not offer an alternative. The only women in the play who are not potential "top girls" – that is, not particularly intelligent nor outstanding in their achievements – are Angie, Joyce, and Mrs. Kidd, but these three are not happy, either. Mrs. Kidd's husband lost a promotion to Marlene, Joyce hates "the cows" she works for (86), and Angie speaks the last word in the play – "frightening". By challenging contemporary politics and contemporary feminism but withholding a resolution, Churchill invites the audience to participate. She once again subverts audience expectations, this time of closure, and so the audience must supply their own idea of favorable feminism and politics. By denying the audience a favorable character with which to identify, Churchill causes the audience member to turn her gaze inward, and consider if, perhaps, she is a kind of "top girl" herself. Churchill proposes loud and clear what shouldn't be. What will be, however, and who they want to be, she empowers her audience to decree.

Works Cited

Caryl Churchill. Top Girls. Class text (I unfortunately don’t have the details).