Feminism in Top Girls and The Handmaids Tale Essay

Both Top Girls and The Handmaid’s Tale relate to contemporary political issues and feminism. Top Girls was written by Caryl Churchill, a political feminist playwright, as a response to Thatcher’s election as a first female British Prime Minister. Churchill was a British social feminist in opposition to Thatcherism. Top Girls was regarded as a unique play about the challenges working women face in the contemporary business world and society at large. Churchill once wrote: ‘Playwrights don’t give answers, they ask questions’, [6] and I think she is proving it in Top Girls: she brings up many tough questions over the course of the play, including what success is and if women’s progress in the workplace has been a good or bad thing.†¦show more content†¦Therefore, in Top Girls there is no release of emotions, no catharsis for the audience. There is no happy ending at all, as it actually ends with the beginning of the story: Act 3 is happe ning one year before Act 1 and 2. Churchill has also used historicization as another device of the Alienation Theatre. She introduces female historical figures in Act 1, for example, Lady Nijo, a 13th century Japanese courtesan to the Emperor, or Pope Joan, the 9th century female Pope disguised as a man. [2] The author uses historical characters, i.e. women who seemingly have achieved different types of success in different times, to comment on what was actually going on in the end of 20th century and to make the audience see that nothing has changed in women’s situation throughout the years. By contrast, Atwood sets The Handmaid’s Tale in the future: 21st and 22nd centuries, which makes it a sci-fi novel. Nevertheless, the problems she is talking about are all current issues. The critic Barbara Hill Rigney says that ‘for Atwood, writing itself becomes a political act; the writer is always a reporter of the truth, even when her subject is fiction’. [4] I agree with this statement as through the ‘tale’ of a Handmaid from a fictional society of Gilead, she makes the readers reflect on anti-feminism, totalitarianism, religious extremism issues nowadays. There is a lot of tension and excitement through analepsis, as Offred talksShow MoreRelatedHow Are the Two Female Protagonists Offred from â€Å"the Handmaids Tale† by Magaret Atwood and Celie from â€Å"the Color Purple† by Alice Walker Oppressed by Men, in What Ways Are Their Situations Similar and How Do They Deal4443 Words   |  18 Pagesfrom â€Å"The Handmaid’s T ale† by Magaret Atwood and Celie from â€Å"The Color Purple† by Alice Walker oppressed by men, in what ways are their situations similar and how do they deal with the pressure and abuse?† Abstract The purpose of this essay is to look at how the two protagonist women, Offred from â€Å"The Handmaid’s Tale† and Celie from â€Å"The Color Purple† are treated in literature. This essay aims to answer the question: â€Å"How are the two protagonist women Offred from â€Å"The handmaid’s tale† and CelieRead MoreThe Life and Achievements of Margaret Eleanor Atwood Essay1687 Words   |  7 Pagesremembered, The day I became a poet was a sunny day. I was walking across the football field; it was my normal way home from school. I was scuttling along in my usual furtive way, when a large invisible thumb descended from the sky and pressed down on the top of my head. A poem formed. It was quite a gloomy poem: the poems of the young usually are. It was a gift, this poem — a gift from an anonymous donor (Atwood- ‘Waterstones Poetry Lecture†). It’s amazing sometimes, how your life could be flipped in anRead MorePresentation of Marl ene, Top Girls in Comparison to the Presentation of Serena Joy, Handmaids Tale.1751 Words   |  8 PagesThe main themes in both Top Girls and The Handmaid’s Tale are feminism, politics and women’s role in society. Top Girls is based on social realism and political drama. Churchill once said â€Å"Playwrights don’t give answers, they ask questions†.[1] It could be said that Churchill is asking the audience to acknowledge how much a woman has to sacrifice in order to succeed in the stereotypically male dominant workplace. However, it could also be said that she could be asking the audience to acknowledge