Critical Q

Question 1

‘It is a dramatic

Answer 1

genealogy of Marlene’s historical community.’ Michelene Wandor

Traces the history of Marlene’s community - the history of female oppression

Question 2

‘Offers neither

Answer 2

condemnation nor comfort’ Lin Gardener
The status of females is neither uplifting nor negative.
it does not say that feminism and women hood is doomed.

Question 3

In order to ‘rise from

Answer 3

her proletarian roots to the executive suit, Marlene has to become the male oppressor.’ Frank Rich

Question 4

The belief ‘unequivocally that success

Answer 4

in a system which ignores humanity must necessitate an analysis of motive and achievement’. Philip Roberts

Question 5

Churchill described as ‘being more connected

Answer 5

with socialism and with a more connected way of looking at things’ Philip Roberts

Question 6

Margaret thatcher ‘may be a woman but

Answer 6

she isn’t a sister, she may be a sister but she isn’t a comrade’ Churchill

Question 7

‘if any unifying female experience

Answer 7

binds the women, it is not an empowering one’. Churchill

Question 8

‘Historical women gather around a dinner table

Answer 8

in a spectacle that might at first appear to represent female solidarity across cultures and history but which soon dissolves into conflict and chaos.” Rebecca Cameron

Question 9

Churchill having ‘thought of calling the play ‘Heroines’:

Answer 9

: ’but was afraid that one wouldn’t see the irony of the title. Perhaps people don’t see the irony of calling it Top Girls’’.
Phillip Roberts
None of these women are in fact heroic, least of all the successful women.

Question 10

The first scene is a “grand synthesis of these women trans historical experiences,

Answer 10

strengths and strategies of resistance as inspiration to the struggling women of the present.” Ameilia Howe kritzer

Strategies of resistance are where the women have assimilated into the society.

Question 11

Feminists of the 60s and 70s began to recognise that

Answer 11

“the sisterhood of women could not be taken for granted” and that middle class white western women “had falsely assumed that they could speak and set the agenda for all women.” Christian Bolt

Question 12

‘Top Girls coincided with that moment when women needed to look more closely

Answer 12

at the complexities of feminism; to question the politics of bonding, of sisterhood, through a politics of difference’ Elaine Aston

Question 13

‘guests talking over each other [underscores] their individualistic

Answer 13

lonely struggles’ Jeffries

Question 14

‘questions the celebration of the first scene by examining the fate of undereducated, labouring

Answer 14

women left in the wake of the Thatcherite individualism which enabled Marlene’s success’ Dr Buse

Question 15

‘the economic situation has created two choices for women: the relative economic poverty

Answer 15

of child-rearing or the emotional alienation of success within the structures of capitalism’ Case

Question 16

‘women have gained their success in terms of the old male system

Answer 16

of competitive individualism rather than the more collective manner envisaged by the feminist movement’ Fletcher

Question 17

‘portrait of an individualistic society in which

Answer 17

the few thrive at the expense of many.’ Billington