The Brilliance of Churchill’s Play ‘Top Girls’

 


A Marxist feminist play, Top Girls, critique a world where feminism is intertwined with capitalism. It is a three act play with characters from different class, country and time.

Centred around and led by women, the play questions the credibility of ‘equality’ in a capitalist controlled feminism. The play raises important questions such as who gets to benefit under such a system and who doesn’t?

Those women who get benefitted what is their current state? Are they happy? Or are they convinced that they are happy? If one’s value is rewarded through equality then about what the ones with ‘no value’?

Is feminism only for the bourgeoise and not for proletariat?

By bringing in women from various cultural context and making them interact with each other, the play shows what it means to be a human in a capitalist society.

Freedom and empowerment offered by capitalism is just an illusion. Between being overworked to being tossed out the moment one becomes ‘outdated’, the capitalist society pits women against each other in a brutal competition.

This practice is romanticized so much that a woman who thrives under such a system would be looked upon as a role modal for other girls. There is nothing wrong with putting your wits to use and achieving but if ‘equality’ is something only achievers can dream of then, is that really equality?

Why should a woman prove herself to earn respect? Just the fact that she is a human being should guarantee her dignity and respect.

Instead, women are forced to run a rat race mindlessly to earn monetary independence. Which again is fine except for the fact that she is no different from men because that’s what they do. She is just earning money like any other worker and like any other worker she’ll be replaced.

It is bad enough that men suffer under this system, why are we encouraging women to go through the same? How did this get mixed up with concepts like empowerment?

In East Asian countries, married women have very less chances of getting hired because the companies believe that she won’t be able to dedicate herself to them. Having a life outside of your company is disdained and women with families have one. You are expected to slave away for a handful of billionaires and you earn some money out of it. How is that empowerment?

You are working for a system that exploits you as you work. If empowerment is going to be defined by rich old men who keep getting richer and richer then, where are we?

Who are they to tell us what empowerment for a woman means? As an autonomous being, each and every person has the right to decide what empowerment means to them. Empowerment varies according to the needs of a person.

If your empowerment doesn’t match with the capitalist version of it, does that mean you are not actually thinking about empowerment?

No. Real empowerment is a world whether neither the housewife nor the career woman will be condemned. A world that neither discriminates against married nor unmarried woman.

The play gives a different perspective on feminism and how it is being perceived. A feminism that has allied itself to capitalism is one that stems from a mechanical approach to women rather than a compassionate one.

Feminism should not be a business that looks for exchange value but a movement that is compassionate and understanding towards women with no ulterior motives to use them.


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