Cloud Nine and Women Beware Women - Essay Example

?Compare and Contrast– Cloud Nine and Women Beware Women Many of the ical plays raises questions regarding gender, sexuality and relationships in both positive and negative perspectives. Here we take into consideration the two plays, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine and Howard Barker’s Women Beware Women, and focus on the similarities and the differences both have. These plays tend to use the dynamics of power, money and lust to bring to light the impact of the negative relationships. The conflict raised in the scenario because of the characters’ attitude to pursue their desires explores the power of emotions and violence. Both the plays explore the depths of lust, power and money through the struggles of the characters, who are in a quest after it. In this article, we discuss by comparing and contrasting the various themes, characterization and ideology of the two plays, particularly investigating the question of gender. Women Beware Women: The play Women Beware Women was originally written by Thomas Middleton in 1657 and later on, in 1879, Howard Barker, one of the prolific playwrights of that period, revamped it to the modern world audience. The play was primitively observed as a Jacobean tragedy, until when Barker replaced the Jacobean Puritanism with the ‘modern’ adaptation, putting forward his views on the redemption power of sex. According to the Barker’s version of the play, Women Beware Women tells the story of Bianca, a rich daughter, who elopes with her love, Leantio and lives secretly in his mother’s place. Despite her husband’s exhortation, the Duke of Florence determines to lure her with the help of Livia, a wealthy widow in the neighborhood. Bianca is seduced by Duke and turns to be his mistress leaving her husband. Parallel to it goes the story of Isabella, who engages in an affair with her uncle, Hippolito, with the help of his sister Livia, and later is forced for a marriage with a rich foolish Ward. On the night before the wedding of Bianca, she is raped by Sordido, as a punishment for her acquisitive complicity for the Duke’s seduction. However, the Ward is not ever a fool and has pretended to be so for hiding his despair for Isabella. By the end, Livia is reformed as a liberated woman with a highly igniting passion towards Leantio. Cloud Nine The two-act play Cloud Nine is written by Caryl Churchill in 1979 with the workshops of Joint Stock Theatre Company. In the first Act, the characters are set in the backdrop of Victorian era, when the British colonialism was in full swing. However, in the second Act, the setting is changed to a reformed culture in London during 1979, when the Victorian ideology of restrictions are loosened yet several other forms of repression exist in the society. In Act I, Clive, the British colonial administrator, lives with his wife Betty, son Edward and daughter Victoria. Meanwhile, Harry Bagley, an explorer and Mrs. Saunders, a widow arrives seeking protection from the natives. Matters start changing dramatically in the family when Clive ogles with Mrs. Saunders, while Betty fancies Harry, whereas Harry gets intimate with the servant Joshua. The governess Ellen reveals her lesbian nature which is confronted by Clive, forcing her into a marriage with Harry, even after his gay sexuality is disclosed. The play forwards with the marriage celebration, where Mrs. Saunders is kicked out by Clive for her disgusting behavior with Betty for kissing Clive. The Act ends with Joshua pointing a gun at him when he starts to initiate a speech for the couple. Act II happens a few decades later in a setting in London and the characters are grown up. Betty, after leaving Clive, lives with her daughter Victoria, who is now married to Martin, an authoritarian husband. Edward, in the new scenario, is openly gay, leading a relationship with Gerry, whereas, Victoria begins a lesbian relationship with Lin. However, Edward discovers that he is bisexual and moves in with Lin and Victoria. Finally, Victoria leaves Martin and goes for living together with Lin and Edward, in a ‘Menage a trois’. The act ends with the reconciling of Gerry and Edward while Betty learns about her son’s sexuality through Gerry. Comparison: In both the plays, sexuality and gender oppression are clearly portrayed through the characters. In Women Beware Women, the author exhibits sexual oppression in various instances of Bianca and Isabella, who are exchanged for the desire of sex and money by the other characters. For instance, Bianca is plotted to fall prey for the lustful desire of the Duke through Livia, who deliberately engages the affair for no personal gain. When she lures Bianca into her house, to be raped by the Duke, it is evident that sexual desire and power leads the situation. Duke uses his power and money to let Bianca comply for his lustful desire and forcefully takes her. Similarly, in Cloud Nine, Churchill shows the sexual oppression in the patriarchal society, where the women are oppressed by social relations and material conditions. Clive tries to take sexual advantage of the helpless widow, Mrs. Saunders for pursuing his lecherous desires. Though she is under troublesome situation and seeking for support and protection, the patriarchal dominance, which was prevalent in the society, places the women in a precarious situation of being oppressed by the men. There exist incestuous relationships in both the plays, which bring out different perspectives of gender and which are totally conceived from the lustful desires of the heart. Women Beware Women portrays the relationship of the uncle and niece who are intimately but at the same ‘immorally’ attracted to each other, just to satisfy their lust. Their love is indeed mutual and deeply felt, nevertheless, their familial relationship turns it as perverse and forbidden. Likewise, in Cloud Nine, incest relationship is portrayed in the Act II, when Edward discovers his bisexual nature and indulges in a live-in relationshp with his sister Victoria in a ‘menage a trois’, thus bringing out odd perspectives about gender. Repression among the genders is expressed in the plays as the characters of both Jacobean and Victorian Age are taught to live in a culture where sexual repression is required to gain reputation in the society. For instance, sexual identity and expression of sexuality in Cloud Nine is repressed by the characters for the sake of the society. The homosexual characters tend to hide their sexuality for the fear of rejection and condemnation, while the heterosexuals’ desires of lust, especially Clive and Betty’s flirting towards Saunders and Harry respectively, are maintained in a secretive manner to preserve their societal class status. Similarly, in Women Beware Women, the women are often repressed of their feelings for conforming to the patriarchal society. The repressed sexual feelings of Bianca get exposed when she is forcefully taken by the Duke while the repressed passion of Livia is liberated finally through her love with Leantio. The manipulative nature of the patriarchal society is evident from the impending marriage of Isabella, as she has to comply with her father’s decision to marry the Ward, despite her unwillingness. Though she protests explaining her lack of love for him, she is compelled into a marriage, as the marriage is supposed to bring money and power to the family. In the same way, the governess Ellen in Cloud Nine is condemned for her lesbian sexuality and forced by Clive into a marriage with Harry, who is indeed a gay. The oppressive and domineering nature of Clive among the family members, who are submissive to his actions, shows his manipulation and importantly suppressive behavior of male gender against their opposite gender in the society. For instance, Victoria is played by a dummy in the Act I, which “embodies the social role imposed on her and depicts the social inequality practiced by the representative of patriarchy.” (Yilmaz 2012, p.58). Thus, in both the plays, the female characters are manipulated by the male genders, exhibiting the patriarchate nature of the society in those times. Contrast Though both the plays hold a wide range of similarities, there also exist certain contrasting aspects which are worth to consider. The play, Cloud Nine is scripted with a cross-gender and cross-racial casting which challenges the societal stereotypes of male-female identification. Also, the play is enacted as a two-act style portraying the society at two different periods of time. On contrast, Women Beware Women is clearly structured with better sexual identity among the characters. Unlike the homosexual characters of Cloud Nine, all of the roles in the play are purely heterosexual, lusting after one another. In the Women Beware Women, fetishisation of woman is observed through the characters of Livia, Bianca and Isabella, who tend to gratify their desires through forbidden relationships. Also, the play shows how women become their own enemies for other women in the male-dominated society. The roles of Livia and Maud tend to manipulate and deceive Bianca, leading her to fall for the seduction of Duke. Also the overprotective nature of Leantio caused her to vent out her repressed feelings to the Duke. Finally, the rape of Sordido lets her become insightful about the meaning of desire. “Bianca, who had been vain and frivolous, suddenly becomes insightful and tormented, looking for the meaning of desire and rejecting the easy link between sex and power.” (Dawson 1987, p.318). Barker tries to portray his view that sexual domination over feminine gender is actually linked with power and money, which is indeed the redemption power of desire. On contrast, in the Cloud Nine play, liberation to the notion of gender and sexuality is insisted. The characters, though subjugated in the Act I, are finally liberated in exploring their class-barriers, social-feminism and sexual politics. She tends to analyze and perceive the gender stereotypes and oppressions in the society, leading the characters towards their emancipation from the patriarchal grip. Thus, Barker did not approach the Jacobean tragedy in a more liberated way as Churchill had set her Victorian adventure in Cloud Nine. Conclusion The author Barker’s ideology in the Women Beware Women is that sexual domination and power is necessary for the women to get liberated from the patriarchal society. He takes sexual power and money as dominating criteria for fulfilling the desires of heart and flesh. However, he seems to end up exploiting the fantasies of the male society which sees women as an object of desire in order to establish their power. The feminist approach of Churchill clearly portrayed the concepts of sexual repression, oppressive violence and gender identity in both the periods of time. Barker believes in the redemption power of sex which is contrasted with the Churchill’s view of feminism and emancipation. The portrayal of gender linked sexuality in both of the play parallels between the sexual repression and dominance, but in Churchill’s Cloud Nine liberation of gender sexuality is accelerated with the acceptance and transformation in the society. References: Dawson, BA. (1987). “Women Beware Women and the Economy of Rape.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 303-320. [Online] Available from http://www.siff.us.es/fil/publicaciones/apuntes/mjlara/WBW_economy_of_rape.pdf.(Accessed on November 20, 2013) Yilmaz, N. (2012). “Gender Politics and Feminism in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine.” University of Barcelona. [Online] Available from http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/28893/1/MA%20Dissertation.%20Gender%20Politics%20and%20Feminism%20in%20Caryl%20Churchill's%20Cloud%20Nine.NeslihanYilmaz.pdf(Accessed on November 20, 2013) Read More