Arcadia v. Top Girls Time

Arcadia v. Top Girls

Time and the Persistence of Intellectual and Ideological Memory in "Arcadia" and "Top Girls"

Both Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" and Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls" stress the persistence of the past in the present. Both plays feature commonly known nonfictional historical or mythical characters as part of the action that takes place on the stage, in addition to a cast of fictional and contemporary characters. However, in "Arcadia" the events of the past and present take place as parallel narratives, in the same house, but the two sets of characters do not interact as emotionally aware human beings. Rather, the characters interact through the use of shared spaces, objects, and works of reference, such as the mathematical quandaries posed by "Fermat's Last Theorem." In contrast, while "Top Girls" evolves in a more straightforward, linear and chronological fashion, its characters from the past interact directly with individuals from the present time, in the same place, and teach these characters about the role of women in history.

In Stoppard's play, in contrast the characters from the different time frames never directly speak to one another, although there are some shady references to the different sets of characters seeing or hearing shades of one another's presence at times in the play. But these shades are not the core of the narrative of "Arcadia." Rather, the audience gains a sense of dramatic propulsion forward as events from the historical past and contemporary present evolve simultaneously in a complementary fashion -- but the primary focus and interest of the main characters is always in the world around them. The academic Bernard Nightingale might be interested in Byron, but not because he has a personal relationship with Byron so much as he is determined to give a good lecture on the poet's life.

In "Arcadia," the narrative begins to evolve as the rapid succession of the first two scenes indicate to the viewer that the tutor Septimius and his charge Thomasina are in the same house as the two academics studying the English Romantic era during which the university-age tutor and the thirteen-year-old girl live. The period time is different, but the place is the same, and the lives of the two different peoples are of the same social milieu. Their concerns are immediate, but similar in nature -- both sets of characters are interested in math, literature, and their own self-advancement. Both sets of the characters of "Arcadia" although not directly aware of one another's presence, touch each other's lives through the use of the same books, and the discussion of the same theories, thus suggesting a commonality rather than a contrast of human concerns of the mind, and of the heart over narrative time -- people have literary spats, question wrongly and rightly their role in society and the universe, and live, love, and die across the ages, in similar fashions.

But rather use Stoppard's covert suggestions about the historical importance of the house, and the different characters' relationships with the past and present Lord Byron, the characters in Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls" directly engage with characters from the present. These 'girls' are openly and immediately obvious as famous successful women from various times of human history and places through the past 1200 years. In their interactions with the characters of the present, women such as Pope Joan and Lady Nijo teach the contemporary family featured in the play about the various implications their lives hold for contemporary women. The education is not covert as in "Arcadia," but overtly didactic and feminist in nature.

Although it moves as two rather than one linear narratives, however, Stoppard's tale of past and present parallels still has a narrative force. One of the most interesting ways in which Stoppard deploys time in his play to move the narrative forward, is when, for example, the academic Bernard advances the theory that Lord Byron was a murderer. The viewer first realizes this is unlikely by observing the past, and later the present day academic Hannah Jarvis realizes that this is not the case by discovering evidence in the house after Bernard has left to give his erroneous lecture. And even while Stoppard's past and present only interact in a tangential fashion, certain emotional as well as plot parallels occur as well -- Septimus flatters his employer, even though he gave a bad review to Mr. Chater's first poem, and Hannah's book on the Romantic lady Caroline Lamb was panned by Bernard, even though he flirts with her. Also, the mathematical queries provoked by Thomasina further destabilize the viewer's intellectual certainty of what is past and present.

Girls" is more visceral than intellectual in its feminist conviction that the past and present are interlinked. Quite early on, the ideological parallels between the characters of different times become clear. For instance, Lady Nijo and Pope Joan seem represent two completely different ways for early medieval woman to achieved power. Nijo was a famous Chinese courtesan and Joan repressed her sexuality to become Pop. But both had to deny the full range of their desires to succeed, much like less attractive and successful women like the patient Griselda.