A Play On Transgression: Gender, Marriage And Race In Cloud Nine

Caryl Churchill(1938--)is one of the most outstanding and highly regarded female playwrights in contemporary Britain,who attracts the attention from both the critics and academic circles.Cloud Nine is a masterpiece produced by Churchill in1979,which is one of the most popular plays with the highest commercial value in her life.Cloud Nine wins her an international fame and the first Off-Broadway Theater Award,and establishes Churchill's important position in the British and American drama world.Although many scholars at home and abroad have analyzed this play from the aspects of feminism,dramaturgy and historicism,the study from the perspective of transgression to analyze the abnormal phenomena in the play is relatively limited.Therefore,this thesis makes a comprehensive study on the phenomena of transgression in Cloud Nine,including gender,heterosexual marriage and race transgression,in order to show the playwright's deep thinking on the essence of gender,marriage and race in the human life.This thesis consists of six parts: introduction,four chapters of text and conclusion.The introduction part briefly introduces the playwright Caryl Churchill's life experience and her main works,the plot of the play Cloud Nine,the literature review at home and abroad and the approaches and significance of this thesis.The first chapter focuses on the theoretical support of the transgression theory.This chapter starts with the idea of “transgression”,then has a theoretical overview of the transgressing of erotic,rational and moral limits from Sade,Nietzsche,Bataille,Foucault,Bakhtin and other thinkers.Finally,it can be seen that the thought of transgression can provide us with a new possibility to observe the world.The second chapter analyzes the gender transgression in Cloud Nine.Many characters in the play,both men and women of all ages,who are not conform to the images of traditional men and women in the gender norm.They do not have the gender trait that should belong to their own gender identity,but show the obvious opposite gender trait or both gender traits,thus making the traditional sense of puremen and women no longer exist in the play.The feminized Edward,the masculinized Betty and Lin,and the androgynous Cathy do not obey the gender norm in the traditional society,but transgress the gender limit,which conveys the playwright's diverse thinking about human gender identity.The third chapter analyzes the heterosexual marriage transgression in Cloud Nine.The playwright Churchill first concerns the phenomena of “heterodoxy” against heterosexual marriage in the play,which have no opportunity to make their voice in the male-centered society,thus showing that the conventional heterosexual marriage pattern ignores the complexity of human emotional needs and diversity of emotional expression to some extent in the human society.There are some heterosexual marriages in the play with different problems: the British African colonial ruler Clive and his wife Betty's marriage is full of problems;gay Harry's wrong match with lesbian Ellen is forced by Clive;and Martin and Victoria's marriage subverts the traditional role of marriage,and even exists in name only.Another group of characters in the play with strong self-consciousness,such as single mothers Betty and Lin,gay couple Gerry and Edward,lesbian couple Victoria and Lin,are all transgress the limit of marriage through self-struggle to pursue their own real emotional need,and bravely explore a new way of family life.The fourth chapter analyzes the race transgression in Cloud Nine.Race issues have existed for a long time in the history.Under the influence of western white supremacy and white center consciousness,the racial bias overspreads everywhere,especially in the British colonial African continent.The African servant of the British African colonial ruler Clive's family,is eager to be the white,so he internalizes the white's ideology and abandons his dark-skinned parents.His alienation shows his transgression of race vividly.The large gap between the white and the black which leads Joshua,the representative of the indigenous African people to transgress the race limit by emulating the white to pursue the white's ethnic identity and status.The race transgression phenomenon in the play reflects the playwright's strong dissatisfaction and deep reflection on colonialism and racial discrimination.In conclusion,the playwright Churchill expresses her profound reflection on the basic components of human society--gender,marriage and race,through portrayingthe phenomena of transgressing the limit in several important relationships in human society.The phenomena of transgression break the stereotype of gender,heterosexual marriage and race in traditional society,and help readers and audiences to reconsider the nature of gender,marriage and race and explore the various problems that exist therein,then consciously find solutions to these problems.Meanwhile,characters' transgressive behaviors are their way of resistance to protect their own interests and rights,and the phenomena of transgression in the play express the playwright's diversified thinking on the above problems.