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FRAGMENTATION AS A MEDIUM TO REVALUE WOMEN’S POSITION AS SEEN THROUGH MARLENE’S LIFE IN CARYL CHURCHILL’S TOP GIRLS
AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
AMBAR FATAH MELANY
Student Number: 114214071
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2015 PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
FRAGMENTATION AS A MEDIUM TO REVALUE WOMEN’S POSITION AS SEEN THROUGH MARLENE’S LIFE IN CARYL CHURCHILL’S TOP GIRLS
AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
AMBAR FATAH MELANY
Student Number: 114214071
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2015
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DO IT NOW, SOMETIMES ‘LATER’ BECOMES ‘NEVER’ (Anonymous)
You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream. (C.S. Lewis)
Whatever you do, DO IT LIKE A BOSS! (Gilit Cooper)
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Dedicated to the readers: May you find happiness.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thesis writing is not an instant process. It takes time and energy to finish it. Time and mood management are the key to success in writing this thesis. It was impossible for the writer to finish this thesis without any help from family and friends. Here, the researcher would like to mention some names who were willingly to help her academically and emotionally to finish this thesis.
The researcher would like to thank God for His guidance from the beginning until the end of this thesis writing. A sincere gratitude is directed to Dr. F.X. Siswadi, M.A., her academic and thesis advisor, who has supported the writer since the beginning of this thesis writing. He always encouraged her to do her best and finish this undergraduate thesis sooner for the better. The researcher would like to express her gratitude to J. Harris
Hermansyah S., S.S., M. Hum, her co-advisor, for his valuable second opinion for the finishing touch of this thesis.
The researcher would also like to thank Umi and her adoptive parents for their love and support, financially and emotionally. A big thank is also directed to her Sprache friends especially Angel and Arum, and USD 2011 Class C friends for the great time and all the positive vibes. Without all the positives vibes, this thesis is impossible to finish in time. To all people who have willingly helped in this long process, the writer would like to say thanks.
Ambar Fatah Melany
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE ...... i APPROVAL PAGE ...... ii ACCEPTANCE PAGE ...... iii STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ...... iv LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH ..... v MOTTO PAGE ...... vi DEDICATION PAGE ...... vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... ix ABSTRACT ...... x ABSTRAK ...... xi
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION...... 1 A. Background of the study ...... 1 B. Problem Formulation ...... 4 C. Objective of the Study ...... 4 D. Definition of Terms ...... 4
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...... 6 A. Review of Related Studies ...... 6 B. Review of Related Theories ...... 8 C. Theoretical Framework ...... 15
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ...... 16 A. Object of the Study ...... 16 B. Approach of the Study ...... 17 C. Method of the Study ...... 18
CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS ...... 20 A. Fragmentation Depicted in the Play ...... 21 1. Fragmented Character ...... 23 2. Fragmented Setting and Plot ...... 27 B. Fragmentation as a Medium to Revalue Women’s Position ...... 34 1. Women as Seen in the Traditional View and Women’s Liberation Movements ...... 34 2. Fragmentation as a Medium to Revalue Women’s Position ...... 38
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ...... 48 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 50
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ABSTRACT
MELANY, AMBAR FATAH. Fragmentation as a Medium to Revalue Women’s Position as Seen through Marlene’s Life in Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2015.
Top Girls is a play produced by Caryl Churchill. All of the characters in this play are women. This play tells about Marlene’s getting promoted as a managing director in ‘Top Girls’ Employment Agency and her need to leave her family and her only daughter since she was young to get a successful life. Churchill uses fragmentation as her narrating style and method. There are two objectives of this study. The first objective is to know how the play is fragmented, and the second is to elaborate how the fragmentation is used as a medium in revaluing women’s position. This study is conducted in a library research method. The primary source of this study is Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls play script. Some written and internet based sources are also used in analyzing the work. The writer uses the Postmodern Feminism approach to analyze the problem formulation of this study. The discussion indicates that the fragmentation is depicted in Marlene’s characterization and the setting and plot of the play. Marlene as the fragmented character is told to have different characteristics depending on whom she is with. When she is with her imaginative friends who have the same power as her, Marlene becomes a good responsive listener and never uses any harsh words. When she is with her co-workers and Joyce who have lower power, she tends to be an ignorant person and uses harsh words a lot. Setting and plot are combined for the sake of the ease for understanding. Churchill uses a non-linear plot to narrate her story. Each scene of the play happens in different time and place. Besides analyzing the intrinsic element of the play, it also elaborates how women are seen in traditional view and some women movements happened years ago. Both are useful to give the reader an acknowledgment of the value of women before the analysis goes further to the revaluing women’s position. Fragmentation that has been mentioned earlier becomes Churchill’s medium to trigger her audience to be actively involved in her play. To get to understand the message of the play, the audience needs to rearrange the plot, observes the motif of using fragmentation and interprets its relation to the real life. The result of the whole discussion of this study is that fragmentation is the only proper medium to help Churchill to voice her view in the need of revaluing women’s position. If women in the past are seen as inferior, Churchill proves that women in the present can be as superior as men through the figuration of Marlene.
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ABSTRAK
MELANY, AMBAR FATAH. Fragmentation as a Medium to Revalue Women’s Position as Seen through Marlene’s Life in Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls. Yogyakarta: Program Studi Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2015.
Top Girls adalah sebuah drama karya Caryl Churchill. Para pemeran dalam drama ini adalah kaum wanita. Drama ini bercerita tentang Marlene yang berhasil dipromosikan sebagai manajer direktur di ‘Top Girls’ Employment Agency dan pengorbanannya yang harus meninggalkan keluarga dan anaknya demi meraih kesuksesan. Churchill menggunakan fragmentasi sebagai metode dan gaya penuturan cerita dalam drama ini. Ada dua tujuan dalam penelitian ini. Tujuan pertama dari penelitian ini adalah menganalisis bagaimana drama ini terfragmentasi dan mengelaborasi kepentingan dari fragmentasi tersebut sebagai medium untuk menilai ulang posisi kaum wanita. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kepustakaan. Sumber utama dari penelitian ini adalan naskah drama Top Girls karya Caryl Churchill. Beberapa sumber tertulis dan sumber berbasis internet turut dipergunakan untuk membantu menganalisa karya tersebut. Penulis menggunakan pendekatan Postmodern Feminisme untuk menganalisa masalah yang tersaji di penelitian ini. Fragmentasi dalam drama ini bisa dilihat dari penokohan watak Marlene serta setting dan alur cerita. Marlene, sebagai tokoh yang terfragmentasi, dikisahkan mempunyai watak yang berbeda tergantung dengan siapa dirinya sedang berada. Ketika ia sedang bersama teman rekaannya, Marlene menjadi seorang pendengar yang baik dan tidak pernah menggunakan kata-kata yabg kasar. Sedangkan ketika ia sedang bersama rekan kerja dan Joyce, ia merupakan orang yang acuh dan sering menggunakan kata-kata kasar. Setting dan alur cerita dikombinasikan untuk kemudahan dalam memahami cerita. Churchill menggunakan alur non linier dalam mengisahkan ceritanya. Setiap babak memiliki tempat dan waktu kejadian yang berbeda. Disamping menganalisa unsur intrinsik dalam drama ini, penulis juga mengelaborasi bagaimana kaum wanita dipandang dari sudut pandang tradisional dan gerakan-gerakan kaum wanita yang pernah ada. Hal tersebut dapat membanu para pembaca untuk mengetahui secara sekilas bagaimana kedudukan wanita pada waktu itu. Churchill menggunakan fragmentasi sebagai medium untuk merangsang para penontonnya untuk terlibat secara langsung dalam drama ini. Para penonton harus menata ulang alur cerita, meneliti motif dibalik penggunaan fragmentasi itu sendiri dan menginterpretasi hubungan dari keduanya dengan kehidupan nyata. Dari penelitian ini, bisa diketahui bahwa fragmentasi merupakan satu-satunya media yang bisa membantu Churchill untuk menyuarakan pendapatnya tentang perlunya menilai kembali kedudukan kaum wanita. Jika pada jaman dahulu kaum wanita dianggap lemah, Churchill membuktikan bahwa kaum wanita pada masa sekarang bisa menjadi sama superiornya dengan kaum laki-laki melalui penokohan Marlene.
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Play has been seen as a result of someone‟s expression toward certain condition or even ideology. It was also used by women playwright during nineteenth century. For women playwright at that time, play was used as a medium to protest an imposed silence and it was an expression of the need to create new lives for women. Thus, it could be seen that 19th century play constituted feminist themes in that they portray the social and psychological restrictions placed upon women in a male dominant society (Friedman,
1984:70).
Cavanagh and Cree states that “Feminist has drawn attention to sexist attitudes implicit in social policy and practice, and to the existence of powerful patriarchal structure which oppress women as service-users” (1996:3). From that quotation, it is seen that women were oppressed by certain sexist attitudes from their working mates.
One example of sexist attitudes is the existence of traditional view from society that women belong in the home, not working as only men who have responsibility to earn money. By that such stereotype, women hardly got better living because they could not get a promising job and salary like men. Society thought that women were only responsible for their children, husband, and parents so that there was no deal with getting job outside home. Although they got a job outside, women were treated differently from men; it is that they got disproportionately lower wage than men (Cavanagh and Cree,
1996:59).
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Starting from the 1960s, women playwrights in Britain took their places to re-voice gender equality by producing some play performances. It was a continuation of former playwrights in the 1920s-1930s which were unsuccessful in voicing gender equality
(Gale and Gardner, 2000:23).
Caryl Churchill was one of the famous feminist playwrights in the late 19th century.
She had her own way in voicing the existence of women and gender equality. She packed all her idea related to that sort of theme into a play entitled Top Girls which was first performed in 1982. In this play, she introduced a unique way by having only women as the actresses.
Amelia Howe Kritzer, a lecturer of University of Wisconsin, in her journal states that:
That brief moment in which the not possible is realized communicates Churchill‟s confidence in the potential of oppressed people to transcend the limitations of their material conditions, and her challenge to audiences to go beyond what she has been able to imagine in the process of re-forming society (1989:131).
Churchill usually tries to challenge her audience to seek every single possible ideas from her story. It means that there is no limitation for her audience to interpret her story.
Churchill actually has given us space to go beyond her story. Top Girls is a feminism themed work using postmodernist style in its writing. This is what makes the study more interesting. While other researchers seek for feminism aspect, this study might do a bit different thing by looking deeper at the significance of using fragmentation, traditional postmodernist style, in a feminism themed work.
In the Theatre of the Absurd, the audience is confronted with actions that lack apparent motivation, characters that are in constant flux, and often happenings that are clearly outside the realm of rational experience. ... The relevant question here is
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not so much what is going to happen next but what is happening? „What does the action of the play represent?‟ (Esslin, 1968:406).
Top Girls is a fragmented play. Its fragmentation can be seen from the non linearity of the plot, mixed characters, and fragmented setting and place. There are time and place differences from scene to scene. Furthermore, in the very first scene, which is in Act One, it is shown that Marlene as the main actress has all her guests who come from different period of time to her dinner party. In order to get the message of the play, the audience needs to be more focus on every detail of the play: the character, plot, setting and place.
Through the time gaps showed in Top Girls, Churchill might want to share her idea that there is the similarity and also the difference(s) between women in the past and present. By the traditional stereotype of women in the past, women were seen as the ones who cannot be successful in men‟s world. In the present time, women are still seen as inferior because of the patriarchal system that has lasted for so long and it has become a social structure that can be hardly changed. Despite of that fact, women actually has struggled and sacrificed to revalue the traditional image and change the social structure that has made them suffer for so long by re-voicing gender equality through some feminist movements and tried to succeed working in men‟s world. Thus, it is obvious that through Top Girls, Churchill has tried to revalue women‟s position.
The beginning of second wave feminism, the term now usually used to described the post 1968 women‟s movement were thus marked by new political groupings and campaigns such as those organized around abortion legislation, demands for legal and financial equality, and equal opportunity at work (Sim, 2001:41).
It could be seen from Marlene‟s life. She is a successful woman with a promising job who has just promoted as a Managing Director in her agency.
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Based on the short explanation above, it is obvious that the significance of Top
Girls‟s fragmentation to revalue women‟s position is worth to analyze.
B. Problem Formulation
In this study, there are two problem formulations to focus on to the further analysis.
They are:
1. In what way is the play fragmented?
2. How does the fragmentation(s) reflect the idea of revaluing women‟s position?
C. Objectives of the Study
This study is intended to present an elaboration on how the play is fragmented and an analysis on the use of that Postmodernist‟s fragmentation as a medium to revalue women‟s position as seen through Marlene‟s life in Caryl Churchill‟s Top Girls.
D. Definition of Terms
In order to avoid misunderstanding of certain terminology, the writer would like to define the term mentioned in the title of the study and in the problem formulation.
1. Fragmentation
Fragmentation is a breaking to form a structure that would convey a hidden
message rather than the obvious message to its audience (Tycer, 2008: 45).
Fragmentation can be seen as both method and style of plotting a story by
breaking it into some parts which the detail will be different from one to another
to make the audience realize that there is a hidden message built in the story. Its
existence is to help the audience to dig the details of the play so that they could
get the most suitable message from their multi-interpretation of the play.
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2. Revalue
To revalue means to consider that someone or something is important. In this case,
women‟s position is revalued. It means that women‟s position is also as important
as men‟s. Women in the traditional view were not seen as something important
because their position is lower than men. Therefore, there is a need to revalue
women‟s position to assure the society that women are as important as men. They
are equal as human being living in this world.
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CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
A. Review of Related Studies
The study on Caryl Churchill‟s Top Girls was also done by other researchers. In this section, there are some short passages taken from journals. The first is from Rebecca
Cameron‟s journal entitled “From Great Women to Top Girls: Pageants of Sisterhood in
British Feminist Theater” who writes:
... however, this production expresses a feminist ideal more than they do a material reality; the performance of united sisterhood shows signs of strain with a certain degree of self-awareness (2009:143).
From that short sentence, Cameron tells the reader that Top Girls only reveals the idea of feminism through the sisterhood of all the characters who come from different cultures and period of time. From Cameron‟s point of view, the play being discussed only deals with the „feminist ideal‟ which means it is on how men and society should treat women.
However one interprets the play, the experience of these six women exemplifies how male domination in the patriarchal system has occurred since centuries ago and is supported by most sacred institutions of the Church and flourishes in the marriage institution (Djunjung, 2002:174).
A bit similar to Cameron, Jenny M. Djunjung also writes that Top Girls deals with the idea of the existence of patriarchal system in that era that women could not resist.
They hardly resist that kind of male domination because it had already existed long time ago. Although there were some feminist movement, or what so called as suffrage movement, they run ineffectively because Church which was supposed to be neutral supported that patriarchal system.
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After reading the other studies perspective toward Caryl Churchill‟s Top Girls, there is a need to seek for a further learning point of the play. The previous studies only focused on one main point in which feminism took its place. It is the existence of patriarchal system and feminist ideal. Besides, like what Kritzer had said earlier,
Churchill actually has given the reader space to go beyond her story (1989: 131).
A short passage below is from Hua Ni and Dawei Lian‟s journal entitled “Study of the Fragmented Structure in Oracle Night as a Metafiction.”
Fragmented narration at least has the following function in Oracle Night. In the first place, fragmented narration provides infinite space for the writer‟s imagination. ... In this kind of writing, we would have difficulty assuring ourselves whether the writer is narrating a real experience or is just simply creating a fiction (Ni and Lian, 2012: 545).
From the quotation above, it is seen that fragmentation could help the audience to see something beyond the story itself. The researcher agrees that fragmentation exists to make the audience of Top Girls become more critical on the postmodern style in writing such a feminist themed work. Fragmentation is used simply to deliver Churchill‟s message on how the society has changed, which the researcher explains in the next chapter on the analysis part. If Hua Ni and Dawei Lian, through their journal, wonder
„whether the writer is narrating a real experience or is just simply creating a fiction,‟ through this study, the researcher tries to explain how actually Churchill does both thing in her Top Girls.
Together with the fragmentation of the main figure, their remarks contribute to the transformation of the dramatic space, from the realistically depicted bedroom to non real landscape (Kolecka, 2009: 117-118).
Anna Suwalska Kolecka, through her work “Fragmentation and Discontinuity in
Three Tall Women,” shows that fragmentation can be a medium for a „transformation‟
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from something to something else. In her work, she states that the „transformation‟ being discussed is the change from „the realistically depicted bedroom to non real landscape‟ (2009: 118). In other words, fragmentation takes charge in transfiguring new identity of something. The researcher agrees with Kolecka‟s work. It means that fragmentation can be a media in „transforming‟ a new identity.
This study is a development of the other studies that have been mentioned earlier. It explains how the fragmentation as seen through the non linear plot, mixed characters coming from different period of time, and the fragmented setting are described in the play being discussed. This study also examines how the fragmentation style used in Top
Girls makes a twist in each end of the scenes to trigger the audience thinking about women‟s position and the fragmentation itself as a medium in revaluing women‟s position.
B. Review of Related Theories
In this section, the researcher presents several theories that are applied in analyzing the work for this study. They are theory of feminism, postmodernism, and postmodern feminism.
1. Theory of Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a movement originated within the arts and architecture. It is now a term which encompasses various approaches, including discourse analysis, genealogy, deconstructionism, textuality. What binds postmodernists is their rejection of modernity; they question, for instance, the Western knowledge (systems), the social construction of dominant interpretations, rationality, and are concerned with forms of resistance and silenced voices (Marchand and Parpart, 1995: 245).
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Certainly many subsequent authors have done their best to sledge-hammer these four literary cornerstones into oblivion. Either plot is pounded into small slabs of events and circumstances, characters disintegrated into a bundle of twitching desires, settings are little more than transitory backdrops, or themes become so attenuated that it is often comically inaccurate to say that certain novels are „about‟ such-and-such (Sim, 2001:126).
It seems that plot, character, setting and theme are several main problems for postmodernist writers. What it means by problem is that they need to find a way to deliver their message to the reader by not following the mainstream. Since the postmodernist writers distrust the wholeness and completion associated with traditional stories, they prefer to deal with other ways of structuring the narrative. As mentioned by
Sim earlier, the plot, character, setting and theme might be divided into several parts in order to restructure the narrative. Postmodernist writers distrust the unity only as a narrating style and method. They believe that unity can not really help them to voice their main idea. Thus, they prefer what so called as fragmentation which can be both a method and a writing style. Generally, fragmentation itself means the breaking of something. The text is broken into pieces so that the reader needs to rearrange it in order to get the message. Fragmentation is merely a piece that has survived the destruction of a whole (Hart, 2004: 69). Therefore it is considered as an important „part‟ of the literary work.
Fragmentation points a hidden center in each part. Therefore, it signifies the breaking rather than building up of information, to form a structure that would convey a hidden message, the reflection on concepts of reality and on its own status in reality. As such, postmodern drama addresses the fragmentation and constructiveness of every version of the real (Schmidt, 2005: 19).
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“That narratives are discredited and fragmented is no reason to assume that they need always be so. This merely poses us a problem that we must direct our efforts towards resolving” (Sim, 2001: 33). Fragmentation exists of course for a certain reason.
The aim of breaking down the narratives into pieces is to help the reader to reach an agreement of what should be done with those pieces. As mentioned earlier, since it is not for building up an information, fragmentation exists to guide the reader to dig every single detail of a story so that they could solve the „riddle‟ in the story and get the writer‟s idea. Through the pieces of text, the reader has already triggered to think why it is so which generates the first problem to solve. The next problem could be seen when the reader is able to identify the main point in each piece of the broken narratives.
There is no one central meaning to any text, but a plurality of possible meanings. From such a perspective conventional criticism is a pointless act, since it is based on the notion that each text has an essential meaning which it is the critic's duty to present to the reader. Active interpretation represents an explosion of this assumption, since by its manipulation of the text's language it continually discovers new meanings (Sim, 2001: 179).
Since a postmodern work always provides multiple meanings, interpreting is the proper way to solve the problem. Active interpretation is Derrida‟s term of not so much a reading of a text. Active interpretation here is in the standard sense of a critical interpretation, or „explication de texte‟ Derrida calls it (Sim, 2001:179). It is designed to reveal the text's underlying meaning. In sum, to interpret is to negotiate the value of several possible meanings in order to get the most suitable one (Sim, 2001: 179-180).
2. Theory of Feminism
Feminism has many divisions. In this section, there are only three divisions of feminism to be discussed. They are, radical feminism, bourgeois feminism, and
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socialist/materialist feminism.
In short, radical feminism supports the separation from male dominated culture.
Apart from liberating women from men‟s power, radical feminists also emphasize women‟s superior characteristics (Tycer, 2008: 15). Bourgeois feminism emphasizes on the struggle for equality with men within existing social structures. Women need equal opportunities for professional job, equal education, and also equal pay. Bourgeois feminism is also known as liberal feminism which women want to be „like men‟ (Wandor,
1981: 134). Socialist feminism, also known as materialist feminism, focus on the economic relationship.
Rather than assuming that the experiences of women are induced by gender oppression from men or that liberation can be brought about by virtue of women‟s unique gender strengths, that patriarchy is everywhere and always the same and that all women are „sisters‟, the materialist position underscores the role of class and history in creating the oppression of women ... Not only are all women not sisters, but women in the privileged class actually oppress women in the working class (Case, 1988: 82-83).
The quotation above is from a feminist theater scholar, Sue-Ellen Case, who simply differentiate materialist feminism and the other feminisms. Women are not only oppress by men but also the other women from the upper class. During the 1970s, British socialist feminists found that they were underrepresented in labor hierarchies and struggled with the sexism. Therefore they tried to work with their union „sister‟ to enact social change (Rowbotham, 1997: 405-4015).
Social feminism deals with the belief that the oppression of women is not only based on the economic system, but also patriarchy and capitalism combined into one system.
This oppression needs to be understood, not just in terms of inequalities of power between men and women, but also in terms of the requirements of capitalism and
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the role of state institutions in a capitalist society. Socialist feminist writers in the 1970s and early 1980s tended to concentrate on issues such as employment, domestic labour and state policy (Welch, 2001).
Social feminists try to achieve sexual equality through working in masculine world. They work hard there to get public‟s interest to make them realize the recognition of sex discrimination. What makes social feminism different from the other feminism is that it refers to the fact that women actually are not only oppressed by men but also by women.
In a word, lower class women, or they who are in the working class, are oppressed by not only the upper class women but also the working class women who have higher power and position than them.
3. Theory of Postmodern Feminism
Feminist experts have reacted to postmodernist thought in a number of ways. Some reject it directly, while others try to get a synthesis of feminist and postmodernist approaches. Some feminists believe feminist theory has always dealt with postmodern issues and indeed, has more to offer women than male-centric postmodern writers. Thus, it is seen that postmodern feminist attempts to criticize the dominant order.
Postmodern feminists offer women differential power relations that allow them to be constructed as women in the first place. According to the existentialist Simon de
Beauvoir in her Second Sex, women are socially constructed as the Other (Sim, 2001: 43).
In this case, women's exclusion is not an accidental omission but a fundamental structuring principle of all patriarchal discourses. It is called as a fundamental structuring principle because it is like what Beauvoir, in The Routledge Companion to
Postmodernism, states that women have, historically, been considered “deviant, abnormal and contends” (Sim, 2001:43). It confirms that women had been seen as the
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Women, according to Kant, are passive rather than active. They are dependent creature. They are made for a dependence on man. Kohlberg has responded to the initial
Gilligan critique. He has argued that the differential performance of women and men reflects variations in education and job experience (Assister, 1996: 100-1003). Women tend to have lack of education and job experience than men. This is what makes women hardly get a promising position for their job.
As the evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer, put it: „the deficiency of reproductive power among upper class girls may reasonably be attributed to the overtaxing of their brains—an overtaxing which produces a serious reaction on the physique‟ (Asisster, 1996: 115).
Furthermore, in the late nineteenth century, in Britain and elsewhere, theories about natural sex differences were used to refuse women access to higher education and to justify differential treatment of the sexes. This is what makes women could not get equal rights to have equal wage as men.
Borrowing Gaten‟s words that is cited in Assister‟s book, the subject is always a sexed subject. Patriarchy is, in her view, not a „system of social organization that enhances the value of the masculine gender over the feminine gender. Gender is not the issue; sexual difference is‟ (1996: 121).
Below is a quotation from World Bank cited in Marchand and Parpat‟s book on how the women‟s position in the 1980s:
Culture and tradition vary but often confine women and girls inside the family or
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close to home. As a result, women‟s productivity is frequently depressed well below potential levels—and this carries a cost in economic efficiency. Women are, in a sense, wasted ... women feel reluctant to seek help for themselves or their children ... In some societies where women are not encouraged to think for themselves, authority figures have helped persuade women to seek health or family planning services, continue breastfeeding, and so on (Marchand and Parpat, 1995: 228).
The quotation above shows how women are seen as the Other, like what Simone de
Beauvoir in her Second Sex. Women are bound by tradition and gender based difficulties.
Women have problems with their own self confidence by means that they could not voice what is on their mind. Therefore, there is imposed silence from women who are too afraid to state the oppression they had experienced for so long.
In many cases, feminist theorists only speak up only as women so that they only theorize things based on their own desires. Some postmodernist French philosophers embrace them in the context of responding to the “contemporary crisis of the rational subject” (Sim, 2001: 206). Since the postmodernists embrace the feminists, it is now known as postmodern feminism. The vision of postmodern feminism itself is to respond the pessimism of postmodern philosophy by “embracing its emphasis on the fragmentary nature identity while retaining a politics, ethics of a sexual difference” (Sim, 2001: 207).
The difference between traditional feminism and postmodern feminism lies in their point of view of what to show to public. Traditional feminism goes public with “no more masks” (Sim, 2001: 310). On the other hand, postmodern feminism argues that “we are nothing but masks” (Sim, 2001: 310). Postmodern feminism tends to expose all the sexual roles as nothing more than performance. Women tend to represent themselves as something different from what society demands.
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C. Theoretical Framework
The criticisms that are discussed in this chapter are needed to help the writer to analyze her object of this study. Those criticisms have given information about how feminism and the idea of patriarchal system depicted in Caryl Churchil's Top Girls.
Those three theories being mentioned in the Review of Related Theories are useful in helping the researcher to analyze how the play is fragmented and elaborate its significance in revaluing women‟s position through Marlene‟s life in Top Girls.
The theory of Postmodernism helps the researcher to analyze how the play is fragmented, while the theory of Feminism and Postmodern Feminism help the researcher to see the significance of the fragmentation as a medium to revalue women‟s position.
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CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
Top Girls is a play produced by a famous British female playwright Caryl Churchill.
It was produced in the 1980s and was first performed at Royal Court London and Public
Theater New York in 1982. Caryl Churchill got her Obie Award for Playwriting from this play. Since its first debut, Top Girls had been performed in many theaters around Europe,
United States and Australia. It also was filmed by the BBC in 1991.
Caryl Churchill wrote Top Girls as a response to political event in which Margaret
Thatcher became the first female prime minister in Britain and that of Thatcherism took its place. Churchill wrote and produced this play in opposition to Thatcherism existing at that time. What makes Churchill felt the urge of producing Top Girls was that there was a shift from socialist mindset to capitalist one; it is of which women are not only oppressed by men but also by the other women of a higher position.
Top Girls is a play that all the actresses are female. Using the overlapping dialogue technique, non-linear plot, fragmented characters, and fragmented settings, Churchill tries to expose her criticism on capitalism by showing not only how women became very ambitious in pursuing power and money but also how the main character needed to abandon her daughter to reach her success.
This play is actually about how Marlene, the main character, abandons her daughter and taken care by her sister just for the sake of gaining power and money. She wants to be the most dominant woman in manly world. She wants to show the society that women
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can also reach their successful life although her competitors are men. She is described as a successful career woman who gets a promotion for a higher position in her agency. Ironically, she has to leave her only daughter for getting her success.
B. Approach of the Study
Postmodern feminism approach is used in this study for giving further explanation on the significance of fragmentation as a medium to revalue women‟s position reflected through Caryl Churchill‟s Top Girls. Top Girls is a play which has a fragmented plot, fragmented characters, fragmented setting, overlapped dialogue, and unclear ending.
This approach challenges the oppressive and patriarchal construction in which women suffer from for so long.
„One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one‟ (Butler, 1999: 143). That is what
Simone de Beauvoir has stated in Butler‟s book Gender Trouble. Beauvoir argues that no one born with a gender because gender is something that needs to be acquired. , there is a difference between sex and gender. Sex is only an attribute of a human so that there is no human who is not sexed. Besides, sex does not cause gender. Gender is the „variable cultural construction of sex‟ (Butler, 1999: 143). Thus, it is obvious that sex is what human have naturally, but gender is what they need to acquire.
The mainstay of women‟s oppression lies in a symbolic system that is dominated by the „male imaginary‟ (Assister, 1996: 31). Women‟s oppression lies in some feature of women‟s experience, for example women‟s domestic canon that they only suppose to work only at home, parenting, and being a care-taker of her dependent family member(s).
While socialist feminists focus on the material realities of women within the world system, postmodernist feminists add other differences like ethnicity, race and age to the
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In the male-centric world, working women are double oppressed by not only men but also the other women who have higher position. There is still distance between men and women. Postmodern feminism, through language, tries to remove the boundary between sexes. It sees women are equal to men. They have no difference. Thus, from those gender equality, there are no more „women‟s rights‟ to claim.
From those brief explanation above, it is clearly seen that postmodern feminism approach is an appropriate tool to explore Caryl Churchill‟s Top Girls. This approach is applicable in this study as it is helpful in relating the use of postmodernism‟s fragmentation with its significance as a medium to revalue women‟s position.
C. Method of the Study
The study was conducted in a library research method. Written sources from many books, journals, and articles were used in analyzing the work. Some sources from the internet were also used for additional information related to the study. The primary source of this study was a play script entitled Top Girls which was written by Caryl
Churchill, while the other sources were some books and journal of the related theories and studies that were related to postmodernism, feminism, and also postmodern-feminism.
The study was done in some steps. The first step was close reading the script and note taking so that some important keys were not missed. Close reading was also a proper way to help formulating the problems that later were written in the problem formulation part.
The second step was observing the structure of the play script and watch the play in
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YouTube. Watching the play online was also helpful to see details of the play like how character, setting, and plot were arranged and how the dialogues were overlapped.
The third step was gathering and close reading some sources, written and online, related to the questions in problem formulation which were about postmodernism, feminism, and postmodern feminism. They all were used in analyzing the work and explaining the answer for the problems.
After gathering and close reading the sources, the fourth step was that the theory of fragmentation was applied to answer the first problem. It was to get the point on how the character, setting and plot were fragmented. And then using the approach of postmodern feminism, the writer answered the second problem which is about the significance of the use of fragmentation as a medium in revaluing women‟s position.
The last step was drawing conclusion of the analysis. It was done by relating all the data in the analysis based on the theories and approach that the writer used, then made it into general statement. That is how the study was conducted.
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CHAPTER IV
ANALYSIS
Top Girls could be seen as a typical feminist writing. Its existence is to criticize the patriarchal idea at that time and also what existed before it. It is true that Top Girls is a work that has direct implication with Churchill‟s own political background as a feminist.
Churchill in her interview with Betsko and Koenig says:
When I was in the States in „79 I talked to some women who were saying how well things were going for women in America now with far more top executives being women, and I was struck by difference between that and the feminism I was used to in England which is far more closely connected with socialism (1987:77).
From what Churchill has said to Betsko and Koenig, we know her stand point that she is more a social feminist. She presents her Top Girls as the reaction towards not only men‟s domination but also other women‟s domination.
Top Girls is a 1980s play that was produced as a direct response to political event. It is that Top Girls produced in opposition to Thatcherism (Tycer, 2008: 13-17). Margaret
Thatcher was elected as Britain‟s first female prime minister in 1979
(www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/margaret_thatcher). While people in general saw it as a victory for equal representation, Churchill saw it only as a shift to a capitalism where things would get worse under Thatcher.
Top Girls is written in postmodern style. Churchill uses fragmentation to deliver her message. The story is broken down into seven parts that are within three Acts. What has been fragmented in this play and its signification are explain in the next section.
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A. Fragmentation Depicted in the Play
Before analyzing the fragmentation depicted in the play, it is important to know the definition of the word fragmentation itself. In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English, it is written:
Frag-ment /fræg‟mənt $ „frægment, fræg‟ment/ v [I,T] to break something, or be broken into a lot of small separate parts - used to show disapproval: the dangers of fragmenting the Health Service －fragmented adj: a fragmented society － fragmentation /͵frægmən‟teɪʃən, -men-/ n[U]
From the dictionary, it is clear that fragmentation means the breaking of something, so does in literature, it also means to break up the text into pieces. It is similar to what
Schlegel in Kevin Hart‟s Postmodernism Beginner’s Guide states that “fragment is merely a piece that has survived the destruction of a whole (Hart, 2004: 69). Thus it can be seen that there is no difference between the definition of fragmentation in the dictionary and in literature book as both states that fragmentation is the break of something.
Fragmentation was firstly known simply as “the fragment.” It is the term first popularized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge through his poem “Kubla Khan” and later developed by Friedrich Schlegel in the late 1700s, which is known as Romanticism period. Writing in fragment was first popular as a poem writing style in the 1700-1800, from Coleridge to Wordsworth (Hart, 2004: 68). The term fragmentation was in its peak position as a popular feature of twentieth-century art and culture.
There is a difference in the usage of fragmentation between the Modernist and
Postmodernist. The difference lies in the mood or attitude towards the fragmentation itself. In Modernism, there is a tone of lament, pessimism, and despair when using fragmented form, while in the Postmodernism, fragmented form is welcomed.
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Postmodernist sees fragmentation as an „exhilarating, liberating phenomenon, symptomatic of our escape from the claustrophobic embrace of fixed systems of belief‟
(Barry, 2002: 84).
Fragmentation in general has characteristics as follows:
First, it posits a hidden center in each text. Second, it is considered as a self-enclosed item without due regard to the spacing between itself and other fragments. Third, it was required to be relatively short. And fourth, it remains in fee to identity: not a formal unity, to be sure, but a supposedly higher, imaginative wholeness (Hart, 2004: 72).
Fragmentation in general is supposed to have a hidden message in each text. Although in many cases it seems to ignore the “spacing between itself and other fragments” (Hart,
2004: 72), fragmentation also respects either the interval, interruption, or even silence that space each text. Fragmentation could be resolved in unity, but supposedly only in more imaginative way. It means that to resolve the fragmentation, the audience need to think deeper and go beyond the story so that they could formulate the message of the story in a complete wholeness. Actually there is no fixed rule for the writers to strictly use those characteristics of fragmentation. As the literary world developed, they could have their own style in their writings.
In this study, the subject being discussed is the fragmented writing method and style in Caryl Churchill‟s Top Girls. Considered as a leading feminist text in its first London debut in 1982, Top Girls let its audience have several interpretation for its main point, feminism. Using postmodern format, fragmentation, Churchill might want to challenge the social ideology at that time. It is on the female stereotypes that she wants to speak up.
In this fragmented play, she fragments character, setting and plot.
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1. Fragmented Character
Rather than having all characters portrayed from only one time, either from past, present, or present time, Churchill prefers to have them from both present and past time.
In Top Girls, there are characters representing the present time and characters representing some various periods of time. From the present time, there are Marlene as the main actresses, the Waitress, Joyce, Angie, Win, Nell, Mrs. Kidd, Shona, Kit, Jeanine, and Louise. While Isabella Bird, Lady Nijo, Dull Gret, Pope Joan, and Patient Griselda come from various periods of past time. In this section, it is only Marlene that is being discussed.
The reason why Marlene is the only character to be discussed is that she is the main character here. Therefore she is the prominent figure to be analyzed. The other characters are also important as they also contributes in this play. Each of them has its own contribution. Without them, Marlene could hardly be analyzed deeper.
Marlene is portrayed as a successful female in male‟s patriarchal world. She beats her male rival Mr. Kidd and gets the promotion to be a managing director in her agency.
In the beginning of the play, she holds a dinner party to celebrate her promotion. She invites all her imaginative friends coming from different period of time to keep her company.
MARLENE. Now who do you know? This is Joan who was Pope in the ninth century, and Isabella Bird, the Victorian traveller, and Lady Nijo from Japan, Emperor‟s concubine an dBuddhist nun, thirteenth century, nearer your own time, and Gret who was painted by Brueghel. Griselda‟s in Boccaccio and Petrarch and Caucer because of her extraordinary marriage. I‟d like to profiteroles because they‟re disgusting (Churchill, 1990: 74).
All of her (imaginative) friends share different stories portraying women in their own periods. All of them are seen as successful women. It is because they either marry a
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Prince, become a Pope, travel throughout the world, or become a nun, but there is a price to pay. They need to sacrifice something for those sort of success.
In Act One, it is seen how Marlene is a good listener and quite good in responding all her friends‟ stories.
MARLENE. But Griselda, come on, he took your baby. GRISELDA. Walter found it hard to believe I loved him. He couldn‟t believe I would always obey him. He had to prove it. MARLENE. I don‟t think Walter likes women. GRISELDA. I‟m just sure he loved me, Marlene, all the time. MARLENE. He just had a funny way / of showing it (Churchill, 1990: 74). ... JOAN. St. Peter‟s to go to St. John‟s. I had felt a slight pain earlier, I thought it was something I‟d eaten, and then it came back, and came back more often. I thought when this is over I‟ll go to bed. ... Far away I heard people screaming, „The Pope is ill, the Pope is dying.‟ And the baby just slid out on to the road.* MARLENE. The cardinals / won‟t have known where to put themselves (Churchill, 1990: 70-71).
Marlene rarely interrupt when her friends are speaking. Although the dialogues are overlapped, they always listen to each other well and focus on who is speaking at that time. Marlene shows good attitude towards all her imaginative friends all the time. It is because she considers herself as equal to them. She also breaks the traditional women‟s stereotypical ideals just like what they have done in their period of time. This scene is like a surreal thing to happen in the real world. The audience may spot this scene as
Marlene‟s imagination because of those surreal characters. She does not have real friends in her real world. Therefore, she invites her guests from her imagination to attend her diner party.
In Act Two, Marlene is shown to be a high-qualified lady in her work. She has two co-workers, Win and Nell, whom also have good qualification for women at that time.
Win a is well educated girl and she has a science degree so that she is told to be a high
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achiever student at school. She also travels and is always successful at sales. She tells it all through her speech to Angie (Churchill, 1990: 119).
JEANINE. I‟m saving to get married. MARLENE. Does that mean you don‟t want a long-term job, Jeanine? JEANINE. I might do. MARLENE. Because where do the prospects come in? No kids for a bit? JEANINE. Oh no, not kids, not yet. MARLENE. So you won‟t tell them you‟re getting married? JEANINE. Had I better not? MARLENE. It would probably help (Churchill, 1990: 85).
In the interviewing process, Marlene keeps on asking about Jeanine‟s personal life and told her that she is better to not naively tell people in her future job about she‟s going to be married. Through her speech, Marlene seems to warn Jeanine that if she does so, she could not get her own successful life because she has no other choice rather than taking care of her family. From that short quotation, it is seen that marriage and having children is still acceptable in the workplace, but it would be a burden for a woman to reach her success. Therefore, Marlene tells Jeanine that it is better not to tell about her desire in marriage and having kids in the interview because it can degrades her value.
Unlike in the first Act, in the rest of the play, Marlene shows another side of her.
Starting from the Act Two, she uses more abusive words in her speeches. She uses the word „fuck‟ mostly as adjective word. For example when she says „fucking tube
(Churchill, 1990: 103)‟ and „don‟t you fucking this fucking that fucking bitch fucking tell me what to fucking do fucking (Churchill, 1990: 133).‟ She also shows her quality of being an ignorant person. It could be seen from the fact that she leaves her family since she is young and abandons her only daughter, and also does some abortion in her life. It is proven in the Act Three which shows that she abandons her only daughter, Angie. She leaves Angie to be grown up by her sister, Joyce. Marlene is seen as a modern career
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woman who does not want to have a daughter, and that is why she leaves her biological child to be looked after her sister.
JOYCE. You didn‟t want to take her with you. It‟s no good coming back now, Marlene, / and saying － MARLENE. I know a managing director who‟s got two children, she breast feeds in the board room, she pays hundred pounds a week on domestic help alone and she can afford that because she‟s an extremely high-powered lady earning a great deal of money (Churchill, 1990: 134).
She thinks that it is good to raise a child only when she has promising position and good salary as well. That is the reason why she abandons Angie and has two abortions in her past life. At that time, she has such no good life as what she has the present life.
MARLENE. I‟ve had two abortions, are you interested? Shall I tell you about them? Well I won‟t, it‟s boring, it wasn‟t a problem. I don‟t like messy talk about blood / and what a bad time we all had. I don‟t want a baby. I don‟t want to talk about gynaecology (Churchill, 1990: 135).
From the brief explanation above, Marlene has a price to pay for her good career at her recent job. She abandons Angie and she also rarely visits her family. From the short explanation above, work and having a high achievement seem to be the most important thing in her life rather than family thing. When she maintains to reach her success and gains more power, she thinks that she is better not to have a husband nor children. It is like what she tells Jeanine that domesticity could not work well in the workplace.
From the short explanation above, it could be seen that the character of Marlene is fragmented. She has different characteristics when she is with certain person. For example, when she is with her imaginative friends, she tends to be a good lady. She becomes a good responsive listener and never uses any harsh words. It is different from when she is with her co-workers and Joyce. She „switches‟ her good quality to bad one.
She uses harsh words and becomes an ignorant woman. She is ignorant because she does
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not care with her competitor‟s condition and the worst is that she abandons her only daughter.
2. Fragmented Setting and Plot
In this section, setting and plot are combined because they are closely related to each other as in this play, the narration does not work well without the setting. However, to ease the process of understanding, the writer decides to combine them.
Rather than having a linear plot which always consistent runs from the past to present or vice versa, Top Girls jumps the plot from the present to the past to the present and the past again.
Here is how the plot of Top Girls is developed. Starting from the Act One, it opens with the dinner party scene. Act One takes place in the restaurant on Saturday night
(Churchill, 1990: 53). It is the night when Marlene hosts a dinner party to celebrate her getting promoted to be a managing director at „Top Girls‟ Employment Agency.
MARLENE. This is Joan who was a Pope in the ninth century, and Isabella Bird, the Victorian traveller, and Lady Nijo from Japan, emperor‟s concubine and Buddhist nun, thirteenth century, nearer your own time, and Gret who was painted in Brueghel. Griselda‟s in Boccacio and Petrarch and Caucer because of her extraordinary marriage (Churchill, 1990: 74).
She invites five guests from different periods of time and they are either historical figures or fictional characters from literature and art as has been mentioned earlier in the previous part.
Her first guests who arrive in the dinner party are two historical figures. The first is
Isabella Bird who is a woman traveller in the Victorian era, in the 1831-1904 (Churchill,
1990: 52). She travels overseas from her age of forty until seventy. The second is Lady
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Nijo who is a Japan‟s Emperor‟s courtesan who lives in the thirteenth century
(Churchill, 1990: 52). She always says that she belongs to the Emperor because that is what she is brought up for. Nijo becomes a Buddhist Nun after she is expelled from the palace. As a nun, she walks throughout Japan on foot (Churchill, 1990: 66). The next guests who arrive in the dinner party are Pope Joan and Dull Gret. Dull Gret is the subject of Brueghel‟s painting tiled Dulle Griet (Churchill, 1990: 52). She rarely speaks during the play. If only the other women in the play does not direct her, she is not going to respond what they are talking about. Gret only makes the one and only long speech in the end of the Act One. Pope Joan is considered as a child prodigy. She disguised herself as a man from her age of twelve just for getting a better education. Later she becomes a
Pope and enjoys the extravagance of being a Pope who is always praised by the people.
The mood of this scene changes from happy to sad when Joan tells a story that her gender is revealed when she is in the public procession. She gives birth to her first child on the street during that procession. After the cardinals and the people know the fact that she is actually a woman, they stone her to death and she believes that her children die because of that.
MARLENE. Total Pope. JOAN. ... Great waves of pressure were going through my body, I heard sounds like a cow lowing, they come out of my mouth. Far away I heard people screaming, „The Pope is ill, the Pope is dying.‟ And the baby just slid out onto the road.* ... MARLENE. So what did they do? They weren‟t best pleased. JOAN. They took me by the feet and dragged me out of town and stoned me to death (Churchill, 1990: 71).
Not only Joan, Lady Nijo also shares her story of her four children. She must give up her children due to the societal pressure and never sees them.
NIJO (to MARLENE). I saw my daughter once. She was three years old. She wore
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plum-red / small sleeved gown. Akebono‟s wife had taken the child because her own died. Everyone thought I was just a visitor. She was being brought up carefully so she could be sent to the palace like I was. I never saw my third child after he was born, the son of Ariake the priest. Ariake held him on his lap the day he was born and talked to him as if he could understand, and cried. My fourth child was Ariake‟s too. But oddly enough I felt nothing for him (Churchill, 1990: 72).
After that, Griselda comes in as the last guest who arrives in Marlene‟s dinner party.
Griselda is a character that appears in Chaucher‟s Canterbury Tales (Churchill, 1990: 52).
Griselda is married to a marquis named Walter. She has to obey whatever Walter wants no matter how extreme it is, like (not actually) killing their own two children (Churchill,
1990: 76) and arranging her husband‟s second marriage.
GRISELDA. And he stayed behind and put his arms round me and kissed me. / I fell half asleep with the shock. MARLENE. And he said, „This is your daughter and your son.‟ GRISELDA. Yes (Churchill, 1990: 79).
Surprisingly, Walter reveals that actually the girl whom he sets to marry is their daughter and the page is her son. He secretly allows their two children grow up. After getting contented by his wife‟s unquestioning obedience, he reunites their family.
The scene is ended with the women‟s talking in their own context and not being responsive to each other.
GRET. We come into hell through a big mouth. Hell‟s black and red. / It‟s like the village where I come from. ... I‟ve got a sword in my hand from somewhere and I fill a basket with gold cups they drink out of down there. You just keep running on and fighting / you didn‟t stop for nothing. Oh we hive them devils such a beating (Churchill, 1990: 81-82).
It begins with Gret‟s monologue telling the audience that she becomes a leader of a group of women to fight against the devils in hell. She is motivated to have a battle with the devils because two of her ten children died because of the wartime horror with the devils. Then, Nijo is getting upset after listening to Griselda‟s story because she could
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not get her children back unlike Griselda. Then, Isabella‟s story of her last trip to
Morocco, Marlene‟s getting frustrated of men after listening to Griseda‟s story, and Joan who prays in Latin prayer (Churchill, 1990: 82-83).
Act Two Scene 1 takes place in Marlene‟s office at the Top Girls Employment
Agency. This is the shortest scene in the play.
JEANINE. I‟m saving to get married. MARLENE. Does that mean you don‟t want a long-term job, Jeanine? Because where do the prospects come in? No kids for a bit? JEANINE. Oh no, no kids yet. MARLENE. So you won‟t tell them you‟re getting married? JEANINE. Had I better not? MARLENE. It would probably help (Churchill, 1990: 85).
The stage opens with Marlene‟s interviewing Jeanine who seeks for a job placement. She suggests Jeanine not to tell her potential employers that she is going to be married. It is because they will think that Jeanine will leave the job to grow up her children. Therefore, it is too risky to tell them about her marriage. In the end of the scene, Marlene places her in a lampshade company (Churchill, 1990: 86).
Act Two Scene 2 takes place in Joyce‟s backyard in the evening. Joyce is Marlene‟s sister who lives far from London. In this scene, Angie, a 16-year-old, and Kit, a
12-year-old, are talking about their future. While the imaginative Angie dares to kill her mother and have Kit watch it, Kit who is clever student in her school plans to be a nuclear physicist one day (Churchill, 1990: 88-90). They are busy chit-chatting in the backyard while Joyce is repeatedly calling Angie to clean up her room. After Joyce tells them that she will lock the back door, both of the kids appear and they go inside.
ANGIE comes out. She has changed into an old best dress, slightly small for her. JOYCE. What you put that on for? Have you done your room? You can‟t clean your room in that. ANGIE. I put on this dress to kill my mother.
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KIT. I suppose you thought you‟d do it with a brick (Churchill, 1990: 98-99).
Instead of cleaning up her room, Angie comes out from her room putting on a blue dress which is too small for her. In the end of the scene, she tells Kit that she uses the dress to kill her mother and plans to visit Marlene in London.
Act Two Scene 3 takes place back at the Top Girls Employment Agency on a
Monday morning (Churchill, 1990: 99). The scene opens with Win and Nell who are busy gossiping about Win‟s having an affair with a married man. After that, Win interviews Louise who also seeks for a job placement.
LOUISE. I had management status from the age of twenty-seven. I‟ve built up a department. ... I don‟t expect attraction by making mistakes, everybody takes it for granted that my work is perfect. They will notice me when I go, they will be sorry I think to lose me, they will offer me more money of course, I will refuse (Churchill, 1990: 106).
Louise feels that she is not appreciated by her boss nor her co-workers in her recent job. She never does any mistakes and all her works are perfect. Getting frustrated, therefore, she looks for another job. From the quotation above, it is also seen how she gets terribly disappointed that she does not want to go back to that office although they offer her some money.
In the other place, Nell interviews Shona who builds up a story that she is a high-flying woman who always succeed in her job. Unfortunately, Nell realizes that she only tells a pack of lies (Churchill, 1990: 115-117). Surprisingly, Angie comes in. She tells everyone that she wants to meet Marlene, her aunt.
MARLENE. Are you suggesting I give up the job to him then? MRS KIDD. It had crossed my mind if you were unavailable after all for some reason, he would be a natural second choice I think, don‟t you? I‟m not asking. MARLENE. If he doesn‟t like what‟s happening here he can go and work somewhere else. MRS KIDD. It‟s not that easy, a man of Howard‟s age. You don‟t care. I thought he
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was going too far but he‟s right. You‟re one of these ballbreakers / that‟s what you are. You‟ll end up miserable and lonely. You‟re not natural. MARLENE. Could you please piss off? (Churchill, 1990: 113)
The atmosphere is increasingly intense when Mrs. Kidd comes to see Marlene asking as if she would give her promotion to Howard who is depressed by the fact that he fails to get that promotion. Rather than saying yes to her, Marlene directly asks her to piss off. The scene is ended with Angie‟s confession that she wants to work in „Top Girls‟
Employment Agency but everyone there doubts that because she has no enough credential.
Act Three is the last staging in this play. This scene is actually the earliest scene. It takes place in Joyce‟s kitchen on Sunday evening a year earlier. It is told to be a
Christmas day. Angie manipulates Marlene into her family-visit after years. Angie tells
Marlene that Joyce wants to see her, but in fact it is Angie who wants to see Marlene.
Marlene gives Angie a fancy blue dress which appears earlier in the Act Two (Churchill,
1990: 123-125).
JOYCE. So what‟s that got to do with you at the age of seventeen? MARLENE. Just because you were married and had somewhere to live－don‟t be stupid. JOYCE. You could have lived at home. Or with me and Frank. You said you weren‟t keeping it. You shouldn‟t have had it if you wasn‟t going to keep it (Churchill, 1990: 134).
After Angie goes to sleep, Marlene and Joyce reminisce their terrible childhood as
Marlene blames her alcoholic father for being abusive to their mother. Then, it is revealed that Angie is Marlene‟s daughter whom she abandons to be grown up by Joyce.
Marlene gets pregnant at her age of seventeen and she does not want to take care of the baby because she is busy pursuing her career. Therefore, she gives it to Joyce. It is also revealed that she has two abortions after that (Churchill, 1990: 135). The scene is ended
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with Marlene‟s trying to sleep on the couch and suddenly Angie‟s having woken up because of a nightmare and screaming „Frightening!‟ (Churchill, 1990: 141).
To sum up the brief explanation of how the plot is developed above, here is a diagram showing the comparison of how the original plot development and how it is supposed to be developed according to a traditional plotting rule.
What it meant by traditional plotting rule is that a plot should be developed from exposition to denouement. It should be linear. But instead of using that traditional rule,
Churchill prefers using the postmodern one, by using fragmentation. She fragments the plot by putting it not orderly. The beginning or the Act One shows the condition of the
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Actually it is all about the positioning of each Act and Scene. As has been mentioned earlier in Review of Related Theory, plot is pounded into small slabs of events and circumstances (Sim, 2001: 126). The plot is only arranged not linearly. It runs from the present to the past and go back to the present until it goes back again to the very past of the story. This plot arrangement helps Churchill to trigger her audience to be an active spectator. The audience is stimulated to re-arrange the plot before they come up with the conclusion of the message. The condition is different if Churchill uses the linear plot.
The audience could not be as active as when she uses fragmentation. It is because they are impossibly triggered by something with a clear-cut form. The setting of this play also has contribution in helping the audience to re-arrange the story into a whole before interpreting it.
B. Fragmentation as a Medium to Revalue Women’s Position
The significance of the usage of fragmentation being briefly elaborated in the previous section is explained in the next section. Before coming up with the idea of how the fragmentation becomes the medium in revaluing women‟s position, it is better to understand how women are seen in the traditional view and some liberation movements which signify the revival of the women to voice equality and their rights.
1. Women as Seen in the Traditional View and Women’s Liberation Movements
Before analyzing the significance of the fragmentation as a medium in revaluing women‟s position, it is better to know about how women is stereotyped in the traditional view and also the women‟s movement following it. Women had been stereotyped as
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inferior compared to men (Eagleton, 2003: 100). They are seen differently from not only men, but also other women, in terms of class, race and ethnicity, or even sexual orientation.
To get to know the figuration of women in the past, Churchill has helped the audience to get a knowledge about it by her decision of using some characters from various periods of time. In terms of their daily living, society had created stereotypes about them. Women were not supposed to go to school nor any educational institution.
That was because education only belonged to the men and parents only threw their concern with the education of male rather than female children. This fact is also portrayed in Churchill‟s Top Girls as follow.
JOAN. I dressed as a boy when I left home.* ISABELLA. You dressed as a boy? MARLENE. Of course, / for safety. JOAN. It was easy, I was only twelve. Also women weren‟t / allowed in the library. We wanted to study in the Athens (Churchill, 1990: 62).
Pope Joan who is born as a female needs to disguise as a man during her childhood so that she can attend school and study. Joan is portrayed to be a Pope from the ninth century (Churchill, 1990: 74). It means that since that time, women were prohibited to attend any educational institution.
In Top Girls, it is also shown how women are not supposed to drink alcoholic beverages either in private or public sphere.
MARLENE. I think a drink while we wait for the others. I think a drink anyway. What a week. The WAITRESS pours wine. NIJO. It was always the men who used to get so drunk. I‟d be one of the maidens, passing the sake (Churchill, 1990:56).
Nijo who is told to be a woman from the thirteenth century admits that only men who
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MARLENE. So what‟s this about you and Frank? JOYCE. He was always carrying on, wasn‟t he? And if I wanted to go out in the evening he‟d go mad, even if it was nothing, a class, I was going to go to an evening class. So he had this girlfriend, only twenty-two poor cow, and I said go on, off you go, hoppit. I don‟t think he even likes her (Churchill, 1990: 136).
From Joyce‟s speech, it is clear that women who have become wives are permitted to go outside home in the evening. They could not do that because people believe that evening is the time when the husbands come home from work so that they should be home to serve their needs. Women who have become wives should obey the husband and do anything the husband asks without any question. It is like Griselda who has to do everything Walter wants without any question nor objection, including to kill her own child (Churchill, 1990: 76) and preparing her husband‟s second wedding (Churchill,
1990: 78).
In Marlene‟s era, it is also impossible for a woman to get a high salary when she has a child.
MARLENE. I know a managing director who‟s got two children, she breast feeds in the board room, she pays a hundred pounds a week on domestic help alone and she can afford that because she‟s an extremely high-powered lady earning a great deal of money (Churchill, 1990: 134).
The woman being mentioned by Marlene above sounds more like an impromptu creation of her than a real career woman whom Marlene might actually know. It is proved by the fact that Marlene does not state the name of that career woman. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier in the previous part, all of Marlene‟s co-workers are single and she also insists Jeanine (whom she interviews earlier) not to tell if she is already engaged nor telling her plan to get married and have children.
Those are some simple examples of traditional views on women. Actually there are
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still some stereotypes of women portrayed in Top Girls. It includes women, wives in particular, must obey the men which is portrayed by Lady Nijo and Patient Griselda, and also women could not travel throughout countries nor continents unless they are in a special condition like Isabella Bird.
The significant women‟s movement that can trigger the women to take action globally is the 1960s and 1970s movements. On May 1968, there are student riots in
Paris and worldwide to voice a freedom to „revolt‟ as what Kristeva has said in her interview to Petit (Petit, 2002: 12). That cultural and sociological phenomenon later happens in London and across Europe. Then in the 1970s, there is another women‟s liberation movement which focuses on uniting women as „sister‟ and politicizing them according to the slogan „the personal is political‟ (Tycer, 2008, 13). This movement is also known as the second wave feminism emphasizing on the struggle for equal pay, education, and an end to sexual doubled standards and exploitation of women in all area, for example the beauty pageant Miss World (Eagleton, 2003: 111).
Then, in the 1980s, in feminism as in other critical approaches, the mood changed. Firstly, feminist criticism became much more eclectic, meaning that it began to draw upon the findings and approaches of other kinds of criticism - Marxism, structuralism, linguistics, and so on. Secondly, it switched its focus from attacking male versions of the world to exploring the nature of the female world and outlook, and reconstructing the lost or suppressed records of female experience. Thirdly, attention was switched to the need to construct a new canon of women's writing by rewriting the history of the novel and of poetry in such a way that neglected women writers were given new prominence (Barry, 2002: 122-123).
Not only in written literature, the changed mood can also be found in the play. For example Churchill who mixes up feminism and postmodernism in her Top Girls which was firstly performed in 1982. Feminist playwrights, one of them is Caryl Churchill, have found postmodernist techniques particularly useful to express distinctly ethnic
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and/or feminist concerns by means that it can help them to restructure the order of representation (Schmidt, 2005: 22-25). Women need to be „recognized‟ for what they are, not what society wants them to be.
2. Fragmentation as a Medium to Revalue Women’s Position
Women after all this time have been placed after the men. It means that they are the inferior whose power is lower than men. Hence, through Top Girls, Churchill tries to restructure, or revalue as the writer calls it, their position to be either the same or higher than men. It is in line with the „Postmodern Feminists‟ attention to difference, language and power, which have much to offer discussion on this issue‟ (Marchand and Parpart,
1995: 127). Above all, they emphasize the need to situate women‟s voices experiences in the specific, historical, spatial and social contexts within which women live and work.
Churchill in her Top Girls adopting postmodernist technique by using fragmentation.
In her play, rather than unite the story in one clear set, she fragments Marlene‟s characteristics, the settings and the plot. She uses fragmentation as her medium to underline her concern on women issues, by means on women‟s position.
In the previous part of this chapter, it is clear that Marlene portrays different characteristics from Act One to Three. In Act One, she becomes a good listener and responsive to all her friends‟ stories. In Act Two, she shows the audience that she is a high qualified woman worker who successfully beats Howard as her competitor to be promoted as a Managing Director. While in Act Three, the audience is shown the fact that Marlene needs to abandon Angie and rarely visit her family to get that successful life.
That fragmented character of Marlene can not be separated from the language that
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she uses in her speech in each act. In Act One where she holds her dinner party, she uses a quite polite language and tone in speaking with her imaginative friends compare it to the language and which she uses when speaking with her family and co-workers. She treats people surrounding her differently based on their power level. She thinks that all her imaginative friends have equal power to her. It is equal because all of them has succeeded in breaking down the classic stereotypical ideals about women from their own period of time. Therefore, feeling the equality in the sense of power, Marlene tends to use the supportive language and tone. Different from speaking with her family and co-workers, she uses more male-language, the rude or abusive one.
Lakoff and also Dale Spender (1980) argued that women‟s language style was characterized by the use of elements which signalled subordination. These features consist of: mitigating statements, hedges, tag questions and elements which signal indirectness, tentativeness, diffidence and hesitation. In contrast to this, male speech was characterized as direct, forceful and confident, using features such as interruption (Eagleton, 2003: 134).
The F-word and other rude words she uses are considerably male-language because it indicates speaker‟s power and confidence. Marlene thinks that it is okay for her to uses those male-language because among all of her family members and co-workers, she has higher power than them.
Marlene‟s dinner party which appears in the Act One seems to be inspired from July
Chicago‟s The Diner Party which is performed in the 1978 (Eagleton, 2003: 32). Both invite the „great women‟ from separated centuries and continents and put them up together in one moment.
From all of Marlene‟s imaginative friend‟s stories, it is seen how the concept of time can be used in interpreting women‟s lives whether they are longed or passed.
The concepts of „experience‟ and „memory‟ have, as we have seen, been subject to
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careful scrutiny but they remain central to feminist attempts to interpret women‟s lives and the significance of women‟s life cycles (Eagleton, 2003: 47).
From Marlene‟s diner party sene, it is also seen how women longed for a better life although all the „great women‟ in Top Girls have had to successfully break down the stereotype ideals of women. They do traveling, drinking alcoholic beverages, become a nun, disguising as a man just for an education, become a Pope ,and even become a leader to fight against the devils. But then, there are also portrayal of women‟s traditional value that they must obey their husband if they are married.
The fragmented setting and plot in Top Girls has significant role in being a medium to revalue women‟s position. Top Girls‟ plot and setting goes like this: the play begins with Marlene‟s dinner party scene on a Saturday night, then it jumps to Marlene‟s interviewing Jeanine on Monday morning in Top Girls Employment Agency, then it goes to Joyce‟s backyard on a Sunday evening, and then it switches again to Marlene‟s office where she has an Angie‟s visit, her co-workers‟ interviewing two girls who seeks for a job, and a visit from Mrs. Kidd who asks her to give up her promotion and give it to Mr.
Kidd, and the last scene is actually the very first scene which shows Marlene‟s visit to
Joyce‟s home and in this scene the audience is shown the fact that Angie is Marlene‟s biological daughter.
By using fragmentation, the audience is involved in the story by means that the playwright triggers them to work their imagination and leap their fantasy and go beyond the story. The fragmented and non-linear plot is used to „voice the playwright‟s view‟
(Dancyger, 2006: 154). The lack of narration has become a key to help the playwright to voice their view towards something. In this case, since there is a lack of narration, the play provides variety of interpretation.
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There is no unconditioned ground to reality - no absolute perspective, no God‟s eye view of the world - only a plurality of forces that form themselves into groups, break aplete wholeness. The positioning of the characters and the use of language in their dialogues are wrapped in the fragmented scene (plot) to simply address the issue. Top
Girls does not directly mock male‟s dominance but more on showing how Marlene can be a high achieving woman in the supposedly man‟s world.
The first act shows a happiness of Marlene‟s celebration of her getting promoted to the higher level in her office. The audience is shown that all the participants in the Act
One are extraordinary women with all their high achievement. It is supported by
Marlene‟s saying „To our courage and the way we changed our lives and our extraordinary achievements‟ (Churchill, 1990: 67). But then, there is a mood shift from celebration to a exploration of a shared pain session which is started by Joan. Joan‟s story of her sex‟s getting revealed in the public procession and her loss of child leads to another story of the same subject. Lady Nijo also shares the same experience which she needs to give up her children. From that scene, it is clear how the women are terrible like what Marlene has said: „Oh God, why are we all so miserable‟ (Churchill, 1990: 72).
As the play opens with the present time‟s scene to the past life, from Act Three, it is clear that Marlene does not come from the higher hierarchy, but only from the working class in which her sister Joypart, and reform in other combination (Hart, 2004: 46).
It is different if the playwrights uses the linear plot as it could not make the audience be more active and participatory because they have make the message of the story clearer through the linearity. It is unlike the non-linear one because the audience is asked to re-arrange the fragments and observe the hidden message before uniting them into a comce is still committed to.
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JOYCE. You say Mother had a wasted life. MARLENE. Yes I do. Married to that bastard. JOYCE. What sort of life did he have? / Working in the fields like MARLENE. Violent life. JOYCE. an animal. / Why wouldn‟t he want a drink? MARLENE. Come off it. JOYCE. You want a drink. MARLENE. I don‟t want to talk about him. JOYCE. You started, I was talking about her. She had a rotten life because she had nothing. She went hungry. MARLENE. She was hungry because he drank the money. / He used to hit her (Churchill, 1990: 138-139).
Marlene completely realizes that her life is not what she has expected for so long. She escapes from her current life and commits to no marriage nor have children nor being inferior under her husband like what Joyce portrays. At that time she expresses her frustration by saying “Don‟t you fucking this fucking that fucking bitch fucking tell me what to fucking do fucking” (Churchill, 1990: 133). She does not like being in a working class. Therefore she decides to go to the men‟s world at her age of thirteen and promises herself not to have a life like her mother (Churchill, 1990:139).
After having a successful life like what she has got in present time, Joyce seems to get jealous of Marlene. First, she thinks that Marlene would never make it if she decides to raise Angie by herself. But then, Marlene makes a justification by saying:
MARLENE. I know a managing director who‟s got two children, she breast feeds in the board room, she pays a hundred pounds a week on a domestic help alone and she can afford that because she‟s an extremely high-powered lady earning a great deal of money (Churchill, 1990: 134).
That „high-powered lady‟ Marlene has been mentioned earlier sounds like a self-created figure because in the previous Act, it is clear that her co-workers are all single and she also suggests Jeanine not to tell the employers that she (Jeanine) is engaged and planning to get married. Second, Joyce insults Marlene‟s stupidity of getting pregnant in her
PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 43 teenage life without telling who the father of the baby is. Using the improper grammar,
Joyce shows her getting more emotional to Marlene by saying “you was the most stupid, for someone so clever you was the most stupid, get yourself pregnant, not go to the doctor, not tell (Churchill, 1990: 134).
Instead of providing a clear-cut moral lesson, the play hangs the ending in the air and leads to an open interpretation. It is ended with the scene which shows Angie‟s waking up, walking, and screaming „Frightening‟ (Churhill, 1990: 141). Since the audience is free to interpret the play, it is possible to interpret Angie‟s repeating the word
„frightening‟ in the end of the play to signify her fear of her own current life. By means that she probably has heard what Joyce and Marlene have talked about so that she is frighten of the fact that her being deserted by her biological mother and therefore she has a feeling that Marlene is her real mother, like what she has said in the previous Act.
The debate of „us‟ and „them‟ (Churchill, 1990: 140) in the last scene has shown the audience that the two sister shares different different perspective of live. While Joyce consistently commits on being „us‟ which means the working class or the oppressed one,
Marlene who actually comes from the working class sacrifices her family by leaving them since her young age and deserting her biological daughter to chase her successful career so that she could become one of „them‟ or the powered society.
The postmodern feminist focus on the fluid, changing nature of social relations does not have to inhibit political action. Instead it strengthens the many stances we can adopt (Marchand and Parpart, 1995: 151).
From the postmodern feminist view, this play has proven that there needs to have a change in society on how they put women in their societal hierarchy. Women are not always supposed to be lower than men. Women should have a chance to develop. It is in
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all agreement with the women‟s movement in the 1970s which they „emerge critiques of development and patriarchy influenced some development practitioners concern‟s with women‟s issue‟ (Marchand and Parpart, 1995: 13). World has been constructed and interpreted almost always through men‟s eyes.
From Marlene, the audience can learn how a powerful woman is not acceptable in the men‟s world.
MARLENE. Naturally, I‟ll be tactful and pleasant to him, you don;t start pushing someone around. I‟ll consult him over any decisions affecting his department. But that‟s no different, Mrs Kidd from any of my other colleagues. MRS KIDD. I think it is different, because he‟s a man. ... MRS KIDD. It has crossed my mind if you were unavailable after all for some reason, he would be the natural second choice I think, don‟t you? I‟m not asking. MARLENE. If he doesn‟t like what‟s happening here he can go and work somewhere else. MRS KIDD. Is that a thread? MARLENE. I‟m sorry but I do have some work to do. MRS KIDD. It‟s not that easy, a man of Howard‟s age. You don‟t care. I thought he was going too far but he‟s right. You‟re one of the baalbreakers that‟s what you are. You‟ll end up miserable and lonely. You‟re not natural. MARLENE. Could you please piss of? (Churchill, 1990: 112-113)
From that short conversation, it is clear that a powerful woman can make any man feel that their lives are jeopardized. Mrs. Kidd keeps on asking Marlene if she could give the promotion to her husband instead of letting him keep on lamenting his lose from a woman. Furthermore, Marlene‟s positive characteristics, which is her being always enthusiastic has become a step to an ascending career ladder.
MARLENE. I think the eighties are going stupendous. JOYCE. Who for? MARLENE. For me. / I think I‟m going up up up. JOYCE. Oh for you. Yes, I‟m sure they will (137).
Marlene always has a bright outlook for her future. Using the repetition “up up up,” she emphasizes her enthusiasm for her brighter future. This shows how Marlene portrays
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a new woman ideal because unlike Joyce who consistently lives her life as a working class, Marlene chases her successful life since she was in her teenage life.
From the Postmodern Feminist‟s skepticism, it is known that there are questions to the field of gender and development, and not only acknowledges the importance of minority women‟s experiences in development issues. This Postmodern Feminist thinking can provide the basis for a more sensitive, and transformative, approach to the development of women in all across universe, not only North but also South (Marchand and Parpart, 1995: 15). Postmodern feminist the construction of feminist theory that allows for multiple identities, diversity, multiple realities and does not set out to victimize women (Marchand and Parpart, 1995: 128). Postmodern feminism puts both political action and agency into perspective and reveals multiple political activities by women which might otherwise have gone unnoticed. In sum, postmodern feminist thinking, provides a way to connect seemingly disparate events and issues.
The researcher agrees that patriarchal system has become a social structure which can hardly be broken down. It has existed since long time ago. There have been some women movements to voice gender equality but they seem to run ineffectively. Thus,
Churchill produces Top Girls to voice her view of gender equality. In Top Girls, Marlene is typically a new womanly ideal. This is what Churchill wants to show to all her audience that women must stay awake and conquer men‟s world. Marlene is the new identity of woman figure. In the past, women could not have higher power than men, but in the present and the future, women must have it to their own sake of better life. Power here means that women can also become a ruler in certain area, like in her working world.
Women also have their rights to make their life better by working hard to be on top. Just
PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 46 like Marlene, she is „motivated‟ by her past life which is the fact that she comes from a working class and chase her successful life although she needs to sacrifice more. She does that because she wants to change the way people see women. Women can have power just like men.
Churchill represents her expectation through the figuration of Marlene, the successful lady who needs to sacrifice her own family for her career. Marlene suffers in the life that she creates herself. Although she is portrayed as a successful woman, she has something missing in her life, it is her family. Deep down, Marlene is lonely in her being high power lady. That is why the researcher calls it as a suffering. She suffers for the sake of maintaining a good social actualization. It is obvious that patriarchal system is impossible to break down but Marlene tries hard and sacrifices her used-to-be happiness to make it happen. Logically, it is not normal for a female at that time could have such power to be on top. It challenges the presumably cultural perception of „normality‟ in the society.
It is seen that women need a new identity. Identity which is a necessary component of the subject‟s agency, „is obtained through an ongoing process of people‟s self-analysis interpretation‟ (Marchand and Parpart, 1995: 80). Thus, the researcher concludes that the fragmentation that Churchill uses is being her medium to revalue women‟s position.
When they revalue their identity, the societal position follows. Societal position here is the social structure of men and women in which women are seen as the inferior. It is in agreement with the spirit of postmodern feminism which women could have new identities and get themselves developed. They can also be as important as men by means that there is no term of superior nor inferior. Women and men are equal. It is also
PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 47 important to understand that what is meant by the word position here is women‟s position in the social structure. It is urgent to revalue women‟s position because patriarchal system should no longer exist as it only gives benefits for men.
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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
In order to revalue women‟s position, Churchill uses fragmentation as her medium to voice her idea. She fragments the main character of the play and also the setting and plot.
Churchill uses fragmentation as her writing style for a reason. There is a significance of the use of it in revaluing women‟s position. But before knowing what it signifies, it is important to know how women are seen in traditional view. Women in the past, generally, could not have a better education because they are prohibited to go to school. They also are not supposed to drink any alcoholic beverages because this practice is only accepted among men. Furthermore, before 1980s, women could not get equal pay and they could hardly fulfill the demand of working, parenting and taking care of their households as working women. Therefore, at that time there are some liberation movements to voice gender equality. Starting from the 1960s, there are so many women‟s movements in all around the Europe and America. They mostly voice for equal pay and education.
Adopting postmodernist technique by using fragmentation, Churchill tries to involved the audience into her story. She triggers them to work on their imagination to catch the message behind Top Girls. The audience need to re-arrange the plot, observe the motif behind it, and then uniting them to get the message. Fragmentation is the only proper tool to help Churchill voicing her view in the need of revaluing women‟s position.
As mentioned earlier, fragmentation style that Churchill uses has a significance in
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revaluing women‟s position. It is supported from the fragmented character, setting and plot. The way Marlene treats people surrounding her depends on their power level. It can be seen on how Marlene speaks before her friends and her co-workers and Joyce.
Since her imaginative friends have the same level as her, she tends to be a good listener, being a polite friend who never interrupts the conversation, and her language is pretty polite. It is different when she is with her co-workers and Joyce as she uses harsh words a lot because she has higher power than them. Furthermore, from the dinner scene, it is revealed that there is a difference between women‟s lives in the past and in the present.
While women in the past are seen as inferior, Marlene proves that modern woman can be as superior as men. It is seen on how she wins the promotion to be a managing director and gets Mr. Kidd stuck in his terrible depression. But to achieve it, there is a price to pay.
From Act Three, the audience learns that Marlene is actually not from a higher hierarchy.
She is also from the working class. Although she comes from the working class, Marlene does not give up but she works hard to be on top. Although she needs to leave her family, she thinks she needs to be successful in having a better life. She also wants to show that woman can rule the world.
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