Javiera Seplveda

Professor Carola Oyarzn

Drama LET1745
12 June 2014
Timelessness in Top Girls
In the play Top Girls, there are several elements to take into account when trying to
understand its purpose, beyond the textual elements. Caryl Churchill makes use of some
techniques to develop the play with an emphasis on some common ideas that revolve around the
main plot of the play. One of these resources is the notion of timelessness, that is, the
deconstruction of the feeling of present, resulting in a crossover of reality and fantasy. In that
sense, it is important to analyze how this notion of timelessness is manipulated in order to
highlight certain aspects that are continually related to the status and role of women at the time in
which Top Girls was performed.
Throughout the three acts that compose the play, it can be seen that the central idea of it
concerns the diversity of difficulties that women have to face in order to accomplish their desires,
which is portrayed by a multiplicity of stories related to the character of Marlene, a woman who
has been promoted in her job. The author deals with these ideas by presenting in the first act a
reunion of different women who are celebrating Marlene and her promotion. However, the
women present at this reunion are several iconic figures from other times in history (Pope Joan,
Isabella Bird and Lady Nijo) and even fictional characters (Patient Griselda and Dull Gret). The
presentation of these characters is what reflects the idea of timelessness, since there is a
convergence of women that are already dead or that do not belong to the real world, but it seems
that for the main plot this contrast of different times is rather irrelevant, considering that what
each character talks about shows certain aspects, such as patriarchy, that apparently have not
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changed that much in regards of what women need to do in order to success in life. Some
illustrations that exemplify this idea are seen in the stories of Joan, Griselda and Lady Nijo. In the
case of Pope Joan from the ninth century, it can be evidenced that she disguised herself as a man
her whole life so as to fulfill her desire of becoming the Pope, to the point that she no longer
identified herself as a woman and therefore she was not able to notice her pregnancy since she
wasnt used to having a womens body (Act I 16), condemning and rejecting her biological sex.
Parallel to this situation, the fictional character of Patient Griselda from the medieval stories of
authors such as Boccaccio, Petrarch and Chaucer, showed that she submitted to her husband,
abandoning her right to be a mother when her husband separated her from her daughter, not
allowing her to raise her and even intending to kill her. An interesting point is the fact that
Griselda defended his husband alleging that her submission was for the sake of showing true and
unconditional love for him, justifying the situation because A wife must obey her husband . . .
[and] /It . . . was Walters child to do what he liked with (Act I 21, 23). Similarly, Lady Nijo, a
nun and concubine of the Japanese Emperor in the thirteenth century, confesses that whatever
achievement she might have accomplished were because of her complete submission to the
wishes of her father and then the Emperor, as seen when she says that she strictly followed the
instructions of her father Serve his Majesty, be respectful, if you lose his favour enter holy
orders (Act I 3).
In the light of all this evidence, it can be seen that Churchill makes use of this feeling of
timelessness and crossover of reality and fiction to show that regardless of the time in which all
these women lived or came from, the issues regarding their gender and whatever situations they
may have gone through because of it have continued to develop in different forms, portraying the
different notions about women according to the standards imposed by men throughout history.