She introduces herself and praises Angie's aunt Marlene. They start talking and Win tells Angie about her professional trajectory. She offhandedly mentions getting married but indicates that her husband has been imprisoned. However, Angie falls asleep during Win's story. Marlene comes into the office and sees Angie asleep.
One of the gifts Marlene has brought is the dress that Angie wears in Act 1. Joyce grumbles that Marlene's surprise visit has caught her off-guard, and we learn that Angie has orchestrated the visit and invited Marlene without telling Joyce. In this scene, we learn more about Joyce and Marlene's past as the sisters begin sharing a bottle of whisky. At one point, Angie asks her aunt to tuck her in, and Marlene does.
When the sisters are alone, Joyce scolds Marlene for leaving town when she was younger and leaving Joyce to look after their mother and Angie, who is actually Marlene's biological child.
Joyce and her husband Frank offered to take the child, after being married for three years and having no children of their own. However, Joyce blames the stress of raising Angie for her subsequent miscarriage. Marlene and Joyce begin to argue about British politics, with Marlene taking the pro-Thatcher conservative side, and Joyce siding with the socialist left wing.
Joyce thinks that Angie falls into the "stupid, lazy, and frightened" category, but Marlene brushes off her concerns. Joyce accuses Marlene of being one of "them". Later, Marlene tries to tell her sister to relax and says she did not mean everything she said. Joyce does not accept the gesture and holds onto her claims. She does not want to be friends with her sister - it is clear that their opposite life choices have driven a wedge between them.
These changes in the 60s affected the future parents of the 80s, with children raised in mother-only families more likely to drop out of secondary school, form single-parent families themselves, and live in poverty as adults, and so the cycle continues!
Today the limit on abortion is 24 weeks and an abortion can be given on the NHS, but waiting lists are long. There is generally very little stigma assosciated with abortion these days, unlike in the 60s and 70s.
One reason for which the lower classes became poorer was the mine strikes. The NCB or national coal board had plans to shut down many of the coal mines in this country, they had in the 12 months before the strikes already closed 23 pits resulting in the loss of 21, miners jobs, and they planned to close even more in the five years after which would mean that , out of , miners jobs would be lost.
The actions of the NCB resulted in a miners strike between and as families that already were struggling to stay afloat would be even further into poverty due to the loss of jobs.
One in ten miners that had protested were arrested. The unemployment in Britain doubled to over three million between and which hit the working class hard.
The characters in Top girls mostly fall into the working class, however characters such as Isabella Bird would be in the upper class. The Swinging Sixties saw the re-kindling of female radicalism. This was the decade that saw the first sales of the contraceptive pill and a law that legalised abortion. In Jean Shrimpton appeared in a mini skirt at the Melbourne Races and Twiggy set a new style for body and hair.
Then, as Secretary of State for Employment, she paved the way for equal pay after being inspired by the women machinists at Fords of Dagenham who went out on strike for an equal wage in This paves the way for the Equal Pay act two years later.
This was the decade of feminism. Nawal El Saadawi published her controversial Women and Sex, the first book to challenge the position of women in Arab society. In several key pieces of legislation were passed. The Sex Discrimination Act made it illegal to discriminate against women in education, recruitment and advertising. The Employment Protection Act introduced statutory maternity provision and made it illegal to sack a woman because she was pregnant.
The Equal Pay Act finally took effect, though it failed to encompass equal pay for work of equal value. In , Louise Brown made international headlines, as the first test-tube baby in the world. Several key pieces of legislation are passed: The Sex Discrimination Act, which came into force on 29 December This makes it illegal to discriminate against women in education, recruitment and advertising; the Employment Protection Act introduces statutory maternity provision and makes it illegal to sack a woman because she is pregnant; the Equal Pay Act takes effect.
The Domestic Violence Act enables women to obtain a court order against their violent husband or partner. The early s saw a proliferation of women-only organisations. This was the decade of power woman with her shoulder pads and high ambitions.
Amendments to the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act established the principal of equal pay for work of equal value and allowed women to retire at the same age as men. Election wins in and made her one of the few prime ministers to win three successive terms. They were protesting against the installation of US cruise missiles. The designer Katherine Hamnett made her own personal protest by wearing an anti-cruise missile T shirt to a meeting with Mrs T.
The Group is founded by Lesley Abdela to push for equal representation of women in the House of Commons. Dr Sally Ride becomes the first American woman astronaut in space on board the space shuttle Challenger. The Sex Discrimination Act Amendment enables women to retire at the same age as men. It also lifts the legal restrictions which prevent women from working night shifts in factories. As the new century got underway women continued to make their mark. Olympic runner Kelly Holmes won two gold medals at the Olympic Games and Ellen MacArthur became the fastest person to sail round the world solo.
Caroline Hamilton and Ann Daniels reached the North Pole making them the first all-female team to trek to both poles. Clara Furse became the first female chief executive of the two-hundred-year-old London Stock Exchange, and in politics Margaret Beckett was the first woman to be appointed as Foreign Secretary.
Adoption laws were updated to allow unmarried and same-sex couples to adopt children together for the first time. Sheila Macdonald is the first woman to become an executor of a UK high street bank, the Co-operative. The Sexual Offences Act provides new legislation against abuse by people who work with children, and updates the laws of sexual abuse within families.
Kelly Holmes becomes the first British metre runner to win an Olympic title since and the first woman since She is also the first British runner to win two gold medals since the Olympics. Ellen MacArthur becomes the fastest person to sail single-handed around the world and at 28 years old, the youngest person to receive a damehood. Under the biggest overhaul of adoption laws in 30 years, unmarried and same-sex couples can now adopt children together for the first time more on adoption.
The Civil Partnership Act brings same sex-couples similar legal rights to married couples. Capitalism is a system of free enterprise. This system was put into power by Margaret Thatcher in the early 80s. Capitalism refers to the money you make.
There are far more private companies and self-employed people rather than state-owned businesses in a capitalist society. If you work hard, you earn more money and therefore become richer. This is more or less opposite of capitalism. It focuses on the care of the individuals in society as opposed to focussing attentions on the money and profits.
Browse Theatre Writers. Set in the early s, Top Girls depicts the lifestyle and life choices of its central character, Marlene. She is a successful career woman, who has just received a major promotion, and has unequivocally fought her way to the top.
Famously using iconic female, historical figures, the play explores the realities of being female and the potential price of achieving success. The play is nonlinear in its structure, highlighting the different sides of being a thriving career woman in the s. The unlikely group discuss their own histories and reflect on what being a female meant for them in their own time.
As the play moves on to focus on high-flying Marlene, it becomes clear that her professional success has irreparably damaged her personal life. Leaping back and forth in time, Marlene attempts to make sense of her life and come to terms with the mistakes she has made in the past. View All Characters in Top Girls. Guide written by Alexandra Appleton. Sign up today to unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. Join Now. New York, NY. Cheshire, CT.
Pericles Philadelphia, PA. When it was first performed in it had a cast of seven. We have a cast of nine, still preserving the convention of "doubling". Caryl Churchill has said she did not write it originally with the intention of doubling, but when it came to doing it at the Royal Court "it did seem to make a lot of sense to do it that way". It provides the stimulus, for actors and audience alike, of playing off the past against the present, seeing one character type against another, both for comparison and contrast.
As Bill Naismith has written: "Top Girls questions the roles that have been imposed on women, past and present. The doubling of parts by an actor can positively undermine the fixedness of roles. Most of the women in Caryl Churchill's Top Girls have achieved the feminist ideal - succeeding in a man's world.
But the play successfully uses comedy, drama and surrealism to question whether they have made too many sacrifices to reach the top. It focuses on Marlene, a typical woman of the eighties, who idolises Thatcher and would stick her stilettos in any man to be a success.
Realism is thrown out the window in the opening scene where she entertains five high achieving women plucked from history and fiction.
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