Notes Introduction 1. Nagy argues that the publication of play texts is unnecessary as it encourages people to simply read plays. Ironically, without allowing work to be pub- lished there are fewer chances for having them staged. (P. Nagy, speaking at the University of Hull, 20 November 2002). 2. The preoccupation with motherhood has been dominant in contemporary Irish women’s drama as well, where the traditional imagery of Mother Ireland often gave the subject an allegorical and political meaning, which was absent in mainland U K. For an analysis of the work of Marina Carr, Anne Devlin and Christina Reid, see my article ‘The Troubles and the Family: Women’s Theatre as Political Intervention’, in Representing the Troubles, eds. Eibhear Walshe and Brian Cliff (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004). 3. I utilize the term proto-feminism to refer to work produced before the emer- gence of second-wave feminism, and post-feminism to collate the different feminist inquiries emerging in the nineties, predominantly via a genera- tion reaching adulthood after the heyday of the Women’s Liberation Movement. I address liberal feminism as a quest for gender justice that has required a re-examination of the rules that govern the public world, so that it does not block women’s access. Later strands in feminism have cri- tiqued this inclusive approach, pointing out that liberal feminists were uninterested in demanding the alteration of the social system as a whole. Especially in an American context, this strand is also termed bourgeois fem- inism by Marxist/socialist feminists, whose interventions have focused on challenging class society, the supremacy of private property and capital- ism itself. Radical feminism, on the other hand, has provided an argument against the patriarchal system as such, that they perceive as oppressing women and which cannot be reformed. As a development of the latter, cultural feminism has located the existence of women’s specific culture at the centre of their analyses. Cf. R. Tong, Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 2–5. Also see S. Andemahr, T. Lovell, C. Wolkowitz, eds. Feminist Theory: A Glossary (London: Arnold, 2000). 4. Cf. J. Kristeva, ‘Women’s Time’, in The Kristeva Reader, ed. T. Moi (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986b). 5. C. Clément, ‘The Guilty One’, in Cixous and Clément, The Newly Born Woman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). 6. It is crucial to stress that, traditionally, individual playwrights have been more likely to acquire canonical status than work produced collaborative- ly. In parallel with ongoing concerns in Performance Studies and in the light of significant critical attention to experimental companies such as Forced Entertainment, however, this approach is likely to change in the future. 174 Notes 175 1 Rethinking Motherhood: Instances of Proto-Feminism 1. E. Wilson, Women and the Welfare State (London: Tavistock Publications, 1977), p. 66. 2. M. Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain, 1914–1959 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), p. 284. 3. Cf. the work of Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott and Benjamin Spock on the importance of constant attention and love in the upbringing of children. While it was considered permissible for mothers to leave their babies in the care of fathers or grannies in cases of emergency, ‘the exacting job [of moth- erhood was] scamped at one’s peril’. J. Bowlby, quoted in D. Riley, War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (London: Virago, 1983), p. 101. 4. A. Myrdal and V. Klein, Women’s Two Roles: Home and Work (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956), p. 117. H. Gavron, The Captive Wife: Conflicts of Housebound Mothers (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966). 5. B. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (London: Gollancz, 1963), pp. 68, 9. 6. Ibid., pp. 180, 293. 7. A. Sebba, Enid Bagnold: The Authorized Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), p. 181. 8. K. Tynan, Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Writings (London: Longmans, 1961), p. 127. 9. L. Taylor, ‘Early Stages’, in British and Irish Women Dramatists since 1958, eds. T.R. Griffiths and M. Llewellyn-Jones (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993), p. 13. Using terms launched independently by Elaine Showalter and Patricia Erens, Taylor distinguishes three phases in women’s writing. The first – ‘feminist-reflectionist’ – refers to works that investigate the female condi- tion yet fail to challenge the status quo in a radical way. The second – ‘fem- inist/revolutionary’ – denotes works that succeed in questioning both ideol- ogy and dramatic form, such as Caryl Churchill’s 1979 Cloud Nine. The third category – ‘female/ritualistic’ – is utilized for experimental works, often cen- tred on visual and non-verbal means of communication, such as Ann Jellicoe’s The Sport of My Mad Mother discussed later in this chapter. 10. Ibid. 11. E. Bagnold, The Chalk Garden (London: Samuel French, 1956), p. 14. 12. Bagnold, in Sebba, p. 197. 13. The Chalk Garden, p. 22. 14. Ibid., p. 23. 15. Tynan, p. 127. 16. Ibid., p. 128. 17. C. Spencer, ‘Review of Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden’, The Daily Telegraph (4 April 1992). The Chalk Garden was also adapted for the screen in 1964, starring Dame Edith Evans, Deborah Kerr and Hayley Mills. 18. After the initial run starring Frances Cuka as Jo and Avis Bunnage as Helen (27 performances, première on 27 May 1958), the play was revived at the Theatre Royal in 1959 and subsequently transferred to the West End. Following a run of 368 performances, this production continued for over a year in New York, from October 1960. In 1961 A Taste of Honey was turned into a successful New Wave film by Tony Richardson, starring Rita Tushingham as Jo. 19. Griffiths and Llewellyn-Jones, p. 4. 176 Notes 20. R. Williams, ‘New English Drama’, in Modern British Dramatists: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. J.R. Brown (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1968), pp. 32–33. 21. D. Shellard, British Theatre since the War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 70. 22. S. Bennett, ‘New Plays and Women’s Voices in the 1950s’, in The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights, eds. E. Aston and J. Reinelt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 41. 23. T.C. Worsley, ‘The Sweet Smell’, New Statesman (21 February 1959), p. 251. 24. J. Littlewood, ‘Plays for the People’, in The New British Drama, ed. H. Popkin (New York: Grove Press, 1964), pp. 557–60. 25. S. Delaney, A Taste of Honey (London: Methuen, 1988), p. 12. 26. Ibid., p. 35. 27. Ibid., p. 55; S. Lacey, British Realist Theatre: The New Wave in Its Context, 1956–1965 (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 95. 28. A Taste of Honey, pp. 71–72. 29. Ibid., p. 75. 30. N. Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 136–37. 31. Ibid., p. 165. 32. A Taste of Honey, p. 55. 33. Ibid., p. 56. 34. M. Wandor, Look Back in Gender: Sexuality and the Family in Post-War British Drama (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 42. 35. S.-E. Case, ‘The Power of Sex: English Plays by Women, 1958–1988’, New Theatre Quarterly, vol. VII/27. (August 1991), p. 238. 36. L. Taylor, p. 19. 37. D. Lessing, ‘Author’s Note’, Play With a Tiger (London: Davis-Poynter Ltd, 1972), p. ii. 38. M. Wandor, Looking Back in Gender: Post-War British Drama (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 70. 39. H. Keyssar, Feminist Theatre (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 47. 40. Cf. C. Chawaf, ‘Linguistic Flesh’, in New French Feminisms: An Anthology, eds. E. Marks and I. de Courtivron (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1981), pp. 177–78. 41. H. Cixous, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, in New French Feminisms, pp. 250–51. 42. A. Jellicoe, The Judith Wilson Lecture, Some Unconscious Influences in the Theatre, 10 March 1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 17. 43. A. Jellicoe, ‘Covering the Ground’, in Women and Theatre: Calling the Shots, ed. S. Todd (London: Faber, 1984), p. 84. 44. J. R. Taylor, Anger and After (London: Methuen, 1962), pp. 74–75. 45. Jellicoe, preface to The Sport of My Mad Mother (London: Faber, 1964). 46. K. Tynan, preface in The Observer Plays (London: Faber, 1958), p. 12. 47. A. Artaud, ‘The Theatre of Cruelty’, in The Theatre and Its Double (London: Calder Publications, 1993), p. 70. 48. J. R. Taylor, p. 76. 49. A. Jellicoe, ‘Ann Jellicoe Talks to Sue Todd’, The Sport of My Mad Mother (London: Faber, 1985), p. 12. Notes 177 50. J. R. Taylor, p. 75. Also cf. Artaud, ‘Abandoning our Western ideas of speech, it [theatre language] turns into incantation.’ p. 70. 51. Wandor, 1987, p. 44. 52. Jellicoe, quoted in Wandor, 1987, p. 43. 53. Hindu hymn, used as a motto of the play. 54. A. Jellicoe, The Sport of My Mad Mother (London: Faber, 1985), pp. 111–12. 55. Keyssar, p. 46. 56. The Sport of My Mad Mother, p. 157. 57. Ibid., p. 165. 58. Ibid., p. 167. 59. Ibid., p. 168. 60. A. Jellicoe, ‘The Rising Generation’, in Playbill Two, ed. A. Durband (London: Hutchinson, 1969). 61. Jellicoe, in Todd, p. 90. 62. Ibid., p. 96. 63. Cf. J. Arden, Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven (London: Calder and Boyars, 1971); M. Duffy, ‘Rites’; C. Luckham, ‘Trafford Tanzi’, in Plays by Women, vol. 2., ed. M. Wandor (London: Methuen, 1983). 64. Duffy, endnote to ‘Rites’, p. 27. 65. Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven, pp. 10, 11. 66. Ibid., p. 55. 67. Ibid., p. 63. 2 Irreversible Choice: Female Professional Success 1. S. Rowbotham, A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the United States (London: Viking, 1997), p.