This essay analyzes Caryl Churchill's 1982 play Top Girls, focusing on the central conflict between the protagonist Marlene, an ambitious businesswoman who abandons her illegitimate daughter, and her sister Joyce, who raises the child in her place. The paper examines how Churchill uses historical female figures at Marlene's dinner party to frame questions of sacrifice, motherhood, and personal ambition. It explores the significance of characters such as Lady Nijo, Griselda, and Pope Joan as mirrors for Marlene's choices, and considers the play's refusal to deliver a clear moral verdict on whether a woman's self-fulfillment or maternal duty should take precedence.
In Caryl Churchill's 1982 play Top Girls, a young woman named Marlene has determined that she will become a successful businesswoman at any cost — even to the point of abandoning 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 matters most in life and where a person's priorities should lie. Although the two characters do not appear together for the majority of the play, their arguments are expressed through the conflict that drives the drama: Marlene represents the new woman who is determined to succeed at all costs, while Joyce represents the traditional, maternal role that society would prefer women to fulfill.
As the play begins, Marlene is hosting a dinner party surrounded by some of history's most successful women, many of whom are long dead. The clear symbolic connection is that Marlene belongs among these colleagues — she has achieved a level of success that places her on the same plane as these figures, and the audience understands from the outset that she is a woman of considerable ambition and accomplishment.
This impression is reinforced later in the play when Marlene is confronted by Mrs. Kidd, whose husband Howard was passed over for the promotion that Marlene ultimately received. Mrs. Kidd asks, and then insists, that Marlene step aside so that the male candidate may have the position. By refusing Mrs. Kidd's request to stop performing "man's work," Marlene makes a powerful statement: she believes herself entirely capable of performing the job, and she will not defer to gender expectations. She belongs with the historical women at her dinner table because, like them, she is unafraid to perform tasks considered masculine or unladylike when those tasks are necessary to satisfy her ambitions.
In the first scene, the women at the dinner table each discuss how they lost their children. Lady Nijo, for example, had been raped by the former Emperor of Japan and gave birth to a child of royal blood whom she was never permitted to see. She sacrificed herself in order to give her child a better future; for her, the priority was her children, not herself. The character Griselda was told that her children had been murdered in order to prove her loyalty and devotion to her husband. For Griselda, the priority was not her children but her spouse. Finally, there is Pope Joan, who ruled the whole of the Roman Catholic Church. When she gave birth, the world discovered she was a woman, and the revelation led to her death. For Pope Joan, motherhood was not a gift but a burden — one that destroyed her career and her life.
Each of these stories casts a shadow over Marlene's own situation. The central question the play raises is whether Marlene has done the right or wrong thing by leaving her child with her sister in order to pursue her own desires. She relinquishes responsibility — but unlike Lady Nijo, not out of sacrifice on the child's behalf. Even though her own actions caused the child's birth, she refuses to accept accountability for the little one.
"Joyce raises Angie while Marlene pursues her career"
"Churchill leaves the moral verdict to the audience"
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