Marlene and Joyce Feminist argument in Caryl Churchill's Top
What use is female emancipation, Churchill asks, if it transforms the clever women into predators and does nothing for the stupid, weak, and helpless? Does freedom and feminism, consist of aggressively adopting the very values that have for centuries oppressed you sex? In Act three of Churchill's Top Girls, Marlene and her sister Joyce are having a conversation about Angie, the girl that Joyce has raised as her own we have just discovered is Marlene's child. The focal part of the conversation is not Angie herself, but rather how the arrangement for her rearing took place. They are discussing the circumstances of Marlene's pregnancy and subsequent birth of Angie. We discover that Joyce the more traditional of
Still she didn't turn the child over to an orphanage or give it up for adoption she kept it and raised it. So I don't think being a predator has much to do with gender. Here we see Marlene take on a more masculine role and defend herself on her right to have a child and leave it with someone else provided the second party is willing. Just because one does it in the job market and one does it in the home is one of them considered to be any more or less of a woman because of the choices they made? Should they be? I think that as long as there are people in this word, there will be somebody who is aggressive and somebody who is passive. Just because we traditionally view the aggressive role as male doesn't make it true. So how then can we determine who is strong and who is weak. Certainly being clever makes it easy to exploit others and Lord knows a woman can get what she wants. Men have been dominated by there wives for centuries, though the domination is not always public I think you will have a hard time finding someone who at one point or another did not have a strong feminine role model (mother, grandmother, aunt, family friend), a lady who took it on herself to look after the person to some degree. Certainly both women have character; they are strong, clever and able to help themselves. We know from previous dialogue that Joyce is neither, stupid or helpless, so we come to the conclusion that she must therefore be weak in order to take on this role of caring for Angie. But is she really, she has managed to single handedly raise a child in the absence of a man, and not just any child a child that is not her own and one that she was under no legal obligation to care for. But does choosing not to develop this finesse in the workplace make you unfeminine certainly not. the women opted to raise Marlene's child rather than support her in an abortion.
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Girls Marlene,
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marlene's child,
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