Literary Authority, Interpretation and Sexual Politics & Literary Tradition

"Top Girls"  

Caryl Churchill

Before we get started, let view a little background about the author. Churchill was born in 1938, England. She was raised up in a family where her father was a political cartoonist, and her mother was a secretary, model and a minor film actress. This lead Churchill to attract in the field of literature and play. She began writing her plays while she was studying at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Even though, she was married and had three children, she could successfully in her writing career. Top Girls is one of the most important play that Churchill had accomplished. Attracted to plays and feminism in society, she often wrote about the role of women. In "Top Girls", she brought up women from history to present, from various region and culture together, they talked and shared their stories from being women.

Top Girls is a very interesting play, Churchill is very succeeded in using the voice of women to opening the feminist drama. In Top Girls play, it shows that women were very strong in making their decision, strong feminist ideas are shown to be the main theme. Some very strong women in the story are portrayed as being the household maker and the “bread winner”. For example, Marlene, the main character in the play was succeeded in her agency career. She could put away everything, and family just for her work. While she is hosting the dinner and invites her friends to the dinner, we explore more about these women experience of lives. 

These women came from different centuries and cultures, some were long-death and the others were from fictional, for example, literature or paintings. All of these women had made their own decisions that had completely changed their lives. To illustrate, Pope Joan, first was dressed as a boy so she could go to church and studied and later became the Pope. But not for long, Joan had an affair with a chamberlain, got pregnant and was stoned to death. In this play, the author shows very strong emotion and strong wordy, how the women were treated back then and how they felt about it. If it was written by a male author, I think it would be very different. I don’t think the male author would talk very much about the women lives, their families, love and relationship. Also I don’t think he would choose to talk about how the women were treated badly. While in this play, it seems like the women from the past century did not have any power, they fight hardly to get what they suppose to have, just like how Marlene is different from the other women.