Copyright by Margaret Frances Savilonis 2004

Copyright by Margaret Frances Savilonis 2004 The Dissertation Committee for Margaret Frances Savilonis certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: “. give us the history we haven’t had, make us the women we can’t be”: Motherhood & History in Plays by Caryl Churchill and Pam Gems, 1976-1984 Committee: Stacy Wolf, Supervisor Charlotte Canning Ann Daly Jill Dolan Mary Kearney “. give us the history we haven’t had, make us the women we can’t be”: Motherhood & History in Plays by Caryl Churchill and Pam Gems, 1976-1984 by Margaret Frances Savilonis, B.A.; M.F.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2004 “We want to know how life feeds into art, not simply how art feeds on itself.” - Morris Dickstein, “Literary Theory and Historical Understanding” in The Chronicle Review 23 May 2003 “To talk about how things are out there in the world is not necessarily to imply that things are ever only one way or that such knowledge is transcendentally uncontaminated by interest and desire.” - Terry Eagleton, “Two Approaches in the Sociology of Literature,” 1988 “Mr. Frank Grimshaw attacked the Equal Opportunities Commission for seeming ‘to encourage mothers to return to work too early, to seek new careers, too ‘fulfill’ themselves professionally.’” - London Times 27 May 1979 “‘When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers,’ Oscar Wilde wrote. So it would seem to many of the women who looked forward to ‘having it all.’ The rigors of building careers, cultivating intimate relationships and caring for children have proved more difficult than anyone could have anticipated in the first heady days of feminism.” – Newsweek 31 March 1986 “‘Those women who are at the top of their game could have had it all, children and career, if they wanted it,’ suggests Pamela Madsen, executive director of the American Infertility Association (A.I.A.). ‘The problem was, nobody told them the truth about their bodies.’ And the truth is that even the very best fertility experts have found that the hands of the clock will not be moved.” – Time 15 April 2002 “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 . .” - Marlene in Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, 1982 “Of course you have to pretend it’s all a drag. Well, hardly the fashion, is it? Kids.” - Dusa in Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi by Pam Gems, 1976 Acknowledgments In 1994 I wrote the paper that laid the groundwork for this dissertation. Since that time, there have been many people whose friendship and support has proved invaluable. I would like to express my sincerest thanks to all of them, and extend particular thanks to the following people. Thanks to Kirsty Coombs at Cassarotto Ramsay, Ltd. for her help in discussing and acquiring unpublished scripts from Pam Gems, and to Becky Kemp for sending me copies of the program and production stills from the original production of Dusa, Fish, Stas & Vi at the Hampstead Theatre. Thanks as well to Pam Gems for generously providing the unpublished script for Arthur & Guinevere. Many professors over the course of my education at Suffolk University, The University of Georgia, and The University of Texas at Austin provided training and inspiration that have shaped my professional and personal life. I would especially like to thank Dr. Anthony Merzlak, who helped me cultivate a deeper appreciation for literature and provided me with my first real introduction to Theatre History. I am indebted to him for his constant commitment to me and his faith in me. I would also like to thank Dr. August Staub, Dr. Stanley Longman, and Dr. Melanie Blood for introducing me to these playwrights’ work and for directing the independent studies that began this project. Thanks to my dissertation committee, Dr. Charlotte Canning, Dr. Ann Daly, Dr. Jill Dolan, and Dr. Mary Kearney, for their insightful feedback on the dissertation. vii My warmest thanks go to my advisor, Dr. Stacy Wolf, for providing consistently thoughtful and thought-provoking responses to my work. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to work her on this project. I am indebted to friends and family, particularly Jessica Hester Leo and Mark Hunter, who are not only wonderful friends, but also terrific colleagues who provided smart and thorough criticism of the dissertation in its earliest stages; to Susan and Lee Bender for their encouragement and generosity; and to my Aunt Fran and my grandmother, Margaret, who have always provided inspiration, guidance, and support. I would like to thank my mother, Peggy, especially for her overwhelming generosity, her friendship, and for her invaluable assistance as a babysitter (and dogsitter) so that I could manage my research and writing time efficiently. Most importantly, I want to thank my husband, Dirk Bender, and my daughter, Emma Rose Bender, who make it all worthwhile; without their patience, love, and senses of humor, I would not have been able to achieve this goal. viii Preface Morris Dickstein writes, “setting things in context is always worth doing. It helps us enlarge the picture . historical interpretation is an indispensable way of shedding light on culture and weighing the theories and practices through which it has always tried to make sense of itself” (B10). Because this dissertation is rooted in a similar belief, I would like to begin by establishing a context for the project itself. I first read, in quick succession in 1993, all but one of the plays by Caryl Churchill and Pam Gems discussed in this dissertation, almost 20 years after their original writing, production, and publication. At the time, representations of mothers and the practice of mothering in these works, as well as the playwrights’ examination of the ways in which, historically, women’s biological capacity to reproduce has contributed to gender-based social stratification, leapt out at me quite forcefully (and still do). Because mothers in these plays do not figure as demons or angels, as the characters work against such types because the focus is not on the effects they have on their children but, instead, on the effects the job of mother has on them, I began to think about motherhood as a social issue in ways that I had not previously considered. I believe that many people’s understanding of theory comes from literature, performance, and other media; without reading theoretical texts, people process theory through other means. As James H. Kavanagh writes, “Ideology is a social process that works on and through every social subject, that, like any other social ix process, everyone is ‘in,’ whether or not they ‘know’ or understand it” (311). Because at the time I had read very little feminist theory, the plays themselves were a significant part of my introduction to it, particularly socialist feminist theory, and these works helped me begin to define my own feminist position. Specifically, the plays drew my attention to how motherhood is a feminist issue because they made me look more closely at how the institution of motherhood is (and has been) culturally defined and how women negotiate those definitions, as well as how societies do or do not facilitate the practice of mothering. Furthermore, these works inspired me to investigate the ways in which feminist theorists have (or have not) made room for mothers and mothering, and I found an extremely complicated and often contradictory range of views. As Patrice Diquinzio suggests, “Mothering is . a very contentious issue in American feminism . [which] has never been characterized by a monolithic position on mothering” (ix). Similarly, Brid Featherstone, considering not only American but also British feminism, writes, “From very early on . there were considerable battles in relation to the meaning of family or motherhood” (47). My own interests ultimately fell into two major categories: first, how, as Betty Friedan suggests, “The inequality of woman, her second-class status in society, was in historical reality linked to that biological state of motherhood” (Second 77), regardless of whether women do or do not, can or cannot, produce children; and second, how women’s choices about balancing motherhood and work outside the home, engaging in private and public x lives, are affected by the social, religious, and legal structures that shape definitions of women and motherhood. My own experience, unquestionably, is informed by being a U.S. citizen; as a result, although Churchill and Gems are British playwrights, my readings of their plays, and my interest in their approach to motherhood, cannot be separated entirely from cultural conversations about motherhood in the United States. As a result, my investigation of the cultural context out of which these plays grew includes a consideration of not only British but also American constructions of reproduction, mothers, and motherhood from a variety of sources. Popular images of mothers and motherhood cross cultural boundaries, as there is a regular exchange of ideas between these (and other) countries. As Sheila Rowbotham suggests, “national boundaries cannot contain the movement of feminist ideas” (xiii), and American and British Feminist movements of the 1970s unquestionably shared an exchange of ideas, though their approach to motherhood was different in some ways, a point I will investigate in subsequent chapters. Additionally, most of the plays discussed have crossed national boundaries as both written and performed texts, and the playwrights have been interviewed and profiled in U.S. magazines such as Vogue, Variety, and Ms., though Churchill (and her work) is better known to American audiences than Gems.

Load more