aug 28, 1982 - Top Girls

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In her 1982 play Top Girls, Caryl Churchill expresses concerns with the feminist movement by exploring female gender roles and what being a successful woman means. The central character of Churchill’s work is Marlene, a “career woman”who receives a promotion as head of a London employment agency. As the play progresses, viewers learn about the compromises Marlene has had to make (i.e., performing “masculine” behavior) in order to achieve any degree of success, such as exploiting other women within the company and leaving her own daughter in the care of her [Marlene’s] sister. Churchill’s protagonist, born into poverty, infamously claims, “I don’t believe in class; anyone can do anything if they’ve got what it takes.” Marlene’s aggressive individualism thus personifies 1980s Thatcherism, and Churchill’s play was one of the first to directly engage with this political philosophy. Churchill’s exploration of Thatcherism, a conservative ideology, and feminism, a progressive ideology, presents the two as polar opposites. Her work and its political interests therefore reflect the time of Top Girls’s publication, during Margaret Thatcher’s leadership as well as the mainstream feminist movement. Churchill claims that her conversations with American feminists inspired her to write the play; as such, it highlights the differences between American feminism, which celebrates individualism, and British socialist feminism, which concerns itself with a collective group gain. Churchill’s work holds relevant today because it offers a contribution and advancement to antisexist discourse (though in a limited fashion -- the play fails to consider WOC, trans women, lesbian women, etc.).

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