The Representations Of "The Female Other"

Caryl Churchill,one of the representative feminist playwrights in contemporary Britain,has gained many awards,such as "Obie Award","Evening Standard Award","West End Theatre Award" and "Susan Smith Blackburn Prize",for her dramatic achievements.Her plays are mainly concerned with contemporary gender,class and race issues through innovative dramatic techniques.Influenced by the second wave feminist movement since the 1970s,Churchill has been devoted to creating feminist plays.These plays are noted for the representation of the gender issue,and they encapsulate her humanist care for women.This dissertation,illuminated by some core concepts in the gender theories of Michel Foucault,Judith Butler,Jacques Derrida,Pierre Bourdieu and Gayatri Spivak,analyses the issue of women's gender trouble and identity construction embodied by Churchill's representations of "the female other" in her four feminist plays Vinegar Tom,Cloud Nine,Top Girls and Fen and reveals Churchill's gender and class politics so as to elaborate on her dialectical attitudes towards feminist movement as well as her postmodern feminist ideas.It attempts to answer the following three key questions:1.What are the images of "the female other" in Churchill's feminist plays?2.What's the gender trouble embodied in these images and what has caused the gender trouble?3.What feminist theatrical characteristics and techniques does Churchill employ to represent the gender trouble,subvert the existent gender identities of "the female other" and reconstruct female subjectivity?Based on the analysis of these research questions,this dissertation argues that by constructing different images of "the female other" through postmodern feminist dramatic techniques in her feminist plays,Churchill probes into women's gender trouble and identity construction and presents her gender and class politics,thereby expressing her dialectical attitudes towards feminist movement as well as her postmodern feminist philosophical ideas.This dissertation is composed of four chapters.With reference to Foucault's"micro-power",concept and Butler's "gender norm" and "gender identification"concepts,the first chapter analyses the female stereotype of "the Evil Witch" in Vinegar Tom,It reveals Churchill's politics of her-story and the constitutive nature of the female stereotype.The second chapter analyses Churchill's representation of "the Angel in the House" and the queer through the drag performance in Cloud Nine.Butler's concepts of "gender performativity","gender parody" and "the abject" help to unveil Churchill's politics of parody that can undo the consistency of the concept of"women" and advocate multiple gender identifications.The third chapter analyses Churchill's representation of the different women in her-story,especially the"successful" career women,through the all-female cast in Top Girls.It mainly uses Derrida's concepts of "differance" and "re-signification" as well as Butler's concept of "alterity" to interpret Churchill's politics of difference which emphasizes the alterity among female individuals and criticizes the radical feminist's imitation of male values and the liberal feminist's emphasis on individualism and competition and negligence of the overall liberation of women.Churchill attaches great importance to the overall liberation of the underprivileged working-class women in her plays.In the light of Bourdieu's concept of "gender class" and Spivak's concept of "gendered subaltern",the fourth chapter analyses Churchill's representation of the collective images of the working-class women in Fen so as to interpret Churchill's politics of representation It reveals that the images of the working-class women demonstrate the gender and class oppression and exploitation of the working-class women resulting from the unpaid domestic labor,the gender division of labor and the globalization of capital.Churchill means to advocate female solidarity and united resistance against the capitalist patriarchy through the representation of these images.By analyzing the gender and class politics Churchill expresses through her representations of "the female other" in the above four chapters,this dissertation finds that Churchill has postmodern feminist philosophical ideas.Her postmodern feminist philosophical ideas can be summarized as follows:First,through the discipline and punishment of women,men's mainstream discourse hegemony constructs female stereotypes conforming to gender norms and the gender bias is embedded in the presupposed gender binary opposition hierarchy.Therefore,feminist movement should subvert men's discourse hegemony in the patriarchal culture and deconstruct the gender binary opposition hierarchy.Second,the power and violence imposed by man's mainstream discourse hegemony through gender norms compel women to identify themselves with the traditional gender roles and perform gender norms.In the course of gender identification,however,there exist differences and alterity.Feminist movement should break the consistency of the concept of "women" and respect women's multiple gender identifications.Third,feminist movement should oppose gender essentialism and advocate the diversified and independent development of the woman subject.However,radical feminism imitates male values and liberal feminism only emphasizes individualism and competition and neglects the overall liberation of women,which results in the broken sisterhood and the internal class differences and oppression.Feminist movement should keep a watchful eye on radical feminism and liberal feminism and attach great importance to the underprivileged women and the overall liberation of women.Fourth,the deconstruction of the concept of "women" makes it difficult to construct female collective power and fulfill female solidarity.However,the predicaments of the working-class women reflect women's gender trouble resulting from the unpaid domestic labor,the gender division of labor and the globalization of capital,thereby embodying the entirety of the oppression of women as a gender class.Therefore,great importance should be attached to the reinforcement of the working-class women's consciousness of class subjectivity.The working-class women should be united so as to resist the capitalist patriarchy based on class and fulfill socialist feminism.Finally,state policies can exert great influences on women's gender identities.In the Western countries,women should realize the dialectical relationship between state policies and Women's Liberation Movement,and require of the government through social movements to establish some institutions and lay down some policies which can confer great benefits upon women,thus improving women's social and economic conditions.Women's social movements can bring about changes in state policies.The state can help solve women's social problems quickly and effectively through legistration.Feminist movement should attach great importance to the improvement of state policies so as to better women's social status.The her-story,the identity politics,the all-female cast and the class issue embodied in Churchill' s feminist plays are the typical characteristics of feminist plays.In terms of these four characteristics of feminist plays,Churchill represents different images of "the female other" in different historical periods through postmodern feminist dramatic techniques such as epic structure,chorus,drag performance and open ending.These vivid women images incarnate the gender and class oppression and the oppression amongst women,thereby launching a social critique of the patriarchal male authority and the capitalist hegemony.Churchill's gender and class politics and her dialectical attitudes towards feminism are enlightening and provoking in our reexamination of feminist movement and are leading us to a deeper investigation into the issues of women's gender identity.