Top Girls by Caryl Churchill

Top Girls

In Caryl Churchill's 1982 play Top Girls, a young woman named Marlene has determined that she is going to become a successful businesswoman at any cost, even to the point where she abandons her illegitimate child with her sister Joyce in order to fulfill her ambitions. At the center of the plot is the disagreement between these two women about what in life is of most important and where a person's priorities should be. Although the two characters do not appear together in the whole of the play, the arguments that the two women have are represented in the conflict that serves as the difficulty throughout: Marlene represented the new women who is determined to succeed at all costs and Joyce the traditional, maternal position that society would rather the woman fulfill.

As the play begins, Marlene is having a dinner party and she is surrounding by some of history's most successful women, many of whom are long dead. The obvious connection becomes then that Marlene is among colleagues; she has achieved a level of success that puts her on the same plane as these women and thus the viewer understands that she is highly important and successful herself. This is made even clearer later on in the play when Marlene is confronted by a woman, Mrs. Kidd. The woman's husband Howard was up for a promotion that Marlene ultimately received and Mrs. Kidd asks and then insists that Marlene step down in order to allow the male to take that position. By refusing Mrs. Kidd's request that she stop performing "man's work" Marlene makes a very strong statement about herself, that she believes herself more than capable of performing the job satisfactorily. She belongs with these women because, like them, she is unafraid to perform tasks which are seen as masculine and unladylike because they are necessary to satisfy her sense of ambition.

In the first scene, the women at the table all discuss how they lost their children. For example, Lady Nijo had been raped by the former Emperor of Japan and gave birth to a child of royal blood whom she was never able to see. She sacrificed herself in order to give her child a better future. For her, the priority was her children and not herself. The character Griselda was informed that her children had been murdered in order to prove her loyalty and devotion to her husband. For her, the priority was not her children, but her spouse. Finally, there is Pope Joan who was the ruler of the whole Roman Catholic Church. When she gave birth, the world learned that she was a woman and it led to her death. Her being a mother was not a gift, but a burden to her and destroyed her career and her life as well. Here again, the issue at hand is whether or not Marlene has done the right or wrong thing by abandoning her child with her sister in order to follow her own desires. She relinquishes the responsibility, like Lady Nijo without having had done so out of sacrifice. Even though her acts were what caused the child's birth, she refuses to take accountability for the little one.

For sixteen years, Marlene's daughter Angie has been Joyce's responsibility. The girl is surly and unpleasant, quite immature, insulting of her friend's mother, and Angie also states that she wishes to kill her "mother" Joyce. It is also implied that Joyce had been carrying her own child at the time that Angie was forced upon her and that the stress of the situation lost her that child, who may have been a far greater and kinder individual. Angie is bitter and, according to Joyce, not that intelligent and unlikely to amount to much. She cannot help but wonder about the child she may have had. Marlene has spent the same sixteen years fulfilling her own ambitions and avoiding her maternal responsibilities.