Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

Dissertations

2005

This ointment disappointment: Caryl Churchill's

The skriker and the struggle against patriarchy
Ruthellen Cunnally
Iowa State University

Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd

Part of the English Language and Literature Commons

Recommended Citation
Cunnally, Ruthellen, "This ointment disappointment: Caryl Churchill's The skriker and the struggle against patriarchy" (2005).
Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 14453.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/14453

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"This ointment disappointment": Caryl Churchill's TheSkriker

and the struggle against patriarchy

by

Ruthellen Cunnally

A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Major: English (Literature)

Program of Study Committee:

Susan Carlson, Major Professor
Kathy Hickok
Madeleine Henry

Iowa State University

Ames, Iowa

2005
 u

Graduate College
Iowa State University

This is to certify that the master's thesis of

Ruthellen Cunnally

has met the thesis requirements ofIowa State University

Signatures have been redacted for privacy

 Ill

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

Chapter 2: The Evolutionary Development of Churchill's Plays 3

Chapter 3: Who or What is The Skriker? 21

Chapter 4: The Skrikerand the Failure of the Ethic of Caring 35

Appendix A: Comparison of Patriarchal and Matriarchal Systems 64

Appendix B: Matriarchal Point of View 67

Works Cited 72
 Chapter 1: Introduction

"Achieving things isn't necessarily good, it matters what you achieve"

(Churchill interview, Betsko and Koenig, 78).

Achieving things is something that Caryl Churchill does well. A currently active

playwright, she has a body of work that encompasses 60 plays stretching back to 1958 and

continuing to her most recent production that premiered in 2002. Her work includes radio

plays, traditionally structured dramas and collaborative productions that incorporate dance,

song and puppetry (Dollee). Churchill's plays have a decidedly political point of view,

reflecting her feminist and socialist ideology (Betsko and Koenig, 78). As we will see in

more detail when I begin my analysis of her play The Skriker, she uses both the content and

form of the work to convey her message. The size of her oeuvre and length of her career

allow us to chart evolutionary trends in her political, social and artistic growth.

By tracing the development of Churchill's craft as a playwright over time I intend to

establish a background for my in-depth examination of TheSkriker. I will argue that in The

Skriker Churchill portrays a world being destroyed by the enforcement ofa social and

political system governed by patriarchal binary oppositions. Her negative views of

contemporary social systems are evident in her earliest plays and her pessimism about the

possibility of change has grown overtime and is reflected in a novel way in this play.

While Churchill's earliest productions were studentplays,written and produced as

she was completing her degree at Oxford, it was as a writer of radio dramas that she honed

her craft and '^rst learned to empower audiences," using language and soundto engage their
imagination and enable her listeners to see the action (Kritzer, 17). These radio scripts also
provided an early venue for Churchill to explore the themes ofsocial identity, gender
politics, economic and familial power structures, and systems of authority that are central to
her better known works written for the stage. Although the radio dramas provided a medium

thatsharpened her skills at creating visually evocative language, there was also a practical

reasonfor her decade (1962-1973) of radio scripts. As a young wife and mother she found

thatthe radio provided a possibility for herto contmue as a writer while dealing with the
artistic isolation as well as the physical and emotional demands of family life (Aston, Caryl

Churchill, 4).

In 1972 Churchill was commissioned to write the play Owners, produced that fall at

the Theatre Upstairs in the Royal Court. This playmarked the end of her experience as a

radio writer and the beginning of her career as a playwright. Churchill describes her

professional life as "divided quite sharply into before and after 1972, and Owners was the

first play of the second part" (Churchill, Plays: One, xi). We can find anothersignificant

divide in Churchill's work, which defines another kind of progress. Her earliest plays

including Owners, Objections to Sex and Violence, Moving Clocks Go Slow and Perfect

Happiness were written in a traditional manner as the work of a solitary author, hi 1976

Churchill began working collaboratively with both The Joint Stock Company and Monstrous

Regiment, hi her work with these groups Churchill was introduced to new ideas and

techniques for creating feminist theater, changing the shape and form of her work. Both of

these evolutionary changes are key to the structure she uses in crafting The Skriker.
 Chapter 2: The Evolutionary Development of Churchill's Plays

1. Learning a Feminist Format for Playwriting

Owners, ChurchiU's first play, producedat the Royal Court Theater, is written in a

traditional theatrical style. The play consists of two acts: the first consists of six scenes while

the second act has eight. There are parts for seven actors and the play is meant to be cast

using people who physicallymatch the descriptions writtenfor the roles. There is no casting

which crosses the lines of gender, age, race or physicality. The settings are realistic and

include a butcher shop, a room in a fiat, an office and a hospital cubical. Although this play

conforms to traditional theatrical structure, it already shows evidence of the fluidity ofform

that becomes more common in Churchill's later plays, as can be seen in the production note

that Churchill includes at the beginning of the script.

Originally the play opened with Scene Two, followed by what is now Scene One.

We swapped them round in rehearsal as it seemed a more effective opening to the

play. Then we realized that causes a problem of chronology, since Scene Three

follows directly on Scene One. It doesn't seem to matter. But the play could be

performed in the original order {Owners^ 6).

That her plays consist of a variety of scenes that can be performed in almost any order, "it

doesn't seem to matter" (a stage direction I can not imagine George Bernard Shaw or Edward

Albee ever writing) is a wonderfully post-modem idea that surfaces in her work even before

she is influenced by her collaboration with Monstrous Regiment and The Joint Stock

Company. Churchillnot only follows the Brechtian call to destroythe fourth wall separating
the audience from the actors, she also destroysthe logical flow of time with its linear

movement of action through the play.

The post-modem, Brechtian elements of her plays' structures changed in a more

radical maraier after she beganworking with Monstrous Regiment and The Joint Stock

Company. TheJoint Stock Company, known for its collaborative method of production,

commonly held pre-writing workshops in which the actors, authors, and directors used

improvisational exercises to establish the shape andtone of the play. Churchill found these

workshops exhilarating. Discussing her experiences while writing Light Shining in

Buckinghamshire in 1976 for The Joint Stock Company, she stated:

I'd never seen an exercise or improvisation before and was as thrilled as a child at a

pantomime.... In a folder I find a scenario I wrote for a day's work: a characterfor

each actor with a speech from before the war, a summaiy of what happened to them

and what their attitude should be at an improvised prayer meeting, and how they

ended up at the restoration. This before-during-afler idea was something I took

forward into the writing This is a slight account of a great deal, and one thing it

can't show enough is my intense pleasure in it all. (Churchill, The Joint Stock Book,

119-121)

In discussing her first work with The Joint Stock Company, Churchill notes that the

play is not improvised, nor were the lines made up by the actors. Like any other play. Light

Shining in Buckinghamshire consists of a written text, but the text was shaped by the

improvisational workshops that preceded the actual writing. Indeed the play itself is

presented as a series of improvised scenes, which Aston calls "Churchill's Brechtian

montage" {Caryl Churchill, 56). The twenty scenes distributed through two acts are named,
rather like book chapters, instead of numbered (what would usually be labeled Act 1, Scene

3 is listed as "Margaret Brotherton is tried"). The sixactors intheproduction notonly play

multiple parts, butthe same partis played by different actors in different scenes. To

Churchill this casting "seems to reflect better the reality of large events likewar and

revolution where many people share the same kind of experience.... When different actors

play the parts what comes over is a large event involving many people, whose characters
resonate in a waytheywouldn't if theywere more clearly defined" {Light Shining in

Buchinghamshire, 184-185).

Her other main collaboration occurred with Monstrous Regiment, which had been

established "as a permanent collective committed to bothfeminist and socialist ideals

(Goodman, 69). Although Monstrous Regiment did not use theworkshop process employed

byThe Joint Stock Company, nonetheless Churchill felt that when she worked with this
company "she wascentrally and beneficially involved withthe performers ... andthe

benefits of that collaboration affected her approach to fiiture work" (Goodman, 93).

Vinegar Tom, written for Monstrous Regiment and &st performed in 1976,is set in

seventeenth century England. The play contains a series of contemporary songs that are

performed between several of the scenes by actors in modem day costumes. Feminist critic

andplaywright Michelene Wandor found this mixing of styles jarring (Aston, Caryl

Churchill, 26) and David Zane Mairowitz complained that the play was not strong enough to

withstand the force of estrangement created by the introduction of songs with "medically and

physically graphic" lyrics delivered in a way that deliberately breaks the rhythm of the text

(Merrill, 81). But other critics, including Ned Chaillet and Gillian Hanna, saw this as

Churchill's attempt to escape the male canonical tradition and create a feminist aesthetic
(Aston, Caryl Churchill, 26). For Lisa Merrill, Churchill's use ofthe musical interludes
contributes to thebreak with thepatriarchal forms of theater that sheis exploring. Along

withher final scene, in which two women dressed as the authors of a fifteenth century

handbook. Malleus Maleflcarum: The Hammer ofWitches, perform a music hall comedy
using the fifteenth centuiy text, these musical interludes create a Brechtian epic theater
production that embodies the 'Very estrangement oralienation which Churchill intends"
(Merrill, 81).

Her work with thetwo companies made it possible forherto use the structure ofher

plays as well as their content to explore ideas ofgender, economics, history, time and place.
Churchill's work took on a new and freer form: Rather than the traditional two or three act

play structure, she developed a more episodic mode oftheatrical exposition. The episodic
nature ofher plays, the intertwming ofdifferent forms oftheatrical experiences and her play
with language in a non-linear discourse that began with Vinegar Tom and Light Shining in
Buckinghamshire, continues inplays that were written without the collaborative atmosphere
of Monstrous Regiment or TheJoint Stock Company. In The Skriker, Churchill hascreated a

drama with no written scene or act changes. The action, which is made up of a series of short

vignettes including dialogue, mime and dance, defies any ofthetraditional and comfortable

categories of performance.

This Brechtiandisconnect between the play and the audience, the mixing of styles,

stepping outside the traditional definitions of canonical theater, are characteristics that

Churchill continuesto use in her exploration of ideas. Cloud Nine, written in collaboration

with The Joint Stock Companyin 1979, startedas a workshop about sexual politics. During

these workshops Churchill saw "the parallel between colonial and sexual oppression" {Cloud
Nine, 245). To highlight this parallel, Churchill setthefirst actoftheplay inVictorian

Africa and the second act in late 1970s London. In addition to the unusual use of time in the

play, Churchill made some atypical choices in the character/actor selections. In Cloud Nine

the mother/wife character ofBetty and the black servantJoshua are both meant to be played

bywhite males because bothcharacters are trying to be what the white manwants them to

be, this casting highlights the fact that neither character values his/her actual identity. When

the characters from Act 1 reappear in Act 2, they are playedby different actors, and while the

characters have aged only 25 years, the historical placement of the play has moved 100 years,

from Victorian Africa to 1970s England. Moving farther from the realism typical of

traditional theater, Churchill has created plays that reject the linear progression of western

narrative structure.

In A Mouthful ofBirds, written collaborativelywith David Lan for the Joint Stock

Company in 1986, Churchill added dance to her production, using the choreography ofIan

Spinks to "assert [her] desire to keep experimenting with form" (Aston, Feminist Views, 19).

Churchill and Lan's use of dance, music and sound adds layers of texture and sensuality to a

decreasing amount of text. The play consists of 32 short scenes that take up only 31 pages of

print. Some of the scenes are as short as one line: "10. Possession: DIONYSOS appears to

DOREEN. DOREEN is possessed by AGAVE. AGAVE. I put my foot agamst its side and

tore out its shoulder. I broke open its ribs." Ten of the scenes are partially or entirely dance:

"11. Fruit Ballet: Whole company as their main characters. This dance consists ofa series

ofmovements mainly derivedfrom eatingfruit. It emphasizes the sensuous pleasures of

eating and the terrors ofbeing torn up" (A Mouthful ofBirds, 28). Another scene enacts a

murder through an escalating battle of sounds:

 8

MRS. BLAIR turns her radio up.

DOREEN turns her radio up.

MRS. BLAIR turns her radio up and thumps.

DOREEN turns her radio up andthumps andshouts. {A Mouthful ofBirds, 62).

The scene continues in this manneruntil Doreen murders Mrs. Blair. hi these scenes,

Churchill establishes meaning without dialogue or monologue. Using sound and movement,

she connects with her audience in a visceral and unambiguous way. Her distrust of language,

which is further developed in The Skriker, is emphasized here. The purity ofthe violence
between Doreen and Mrs. Blair is not muddied by words or left open to interpretations.

Eliminating words also eliminates the necessity to situate meaning inthesignified and
signifier; instead we are leftwith a direct representation of the sign.

Churchill continued to expand on her distrust of language in The Skriker, where she

found herselfwriting dance into theplay in the form of stage directions (Aston, Caryl

Churchill, 97). hiterwoven into the text of the play are instructions such as:

A MAN comes in carrying a white clothand a bucket ofwater.... The MAN

spreads the cloth on thefloor andstands the bucket ofwateron it. He waits. He isnY

satisfied. Hepicks up the cloth and bucket and walks about lookingfor a betterspot.

Meanwhile the KELPIEgoes... the MANputs the cloth and bucket down in another

place.... A PASSERBY comes along the street, throws down a coin, and then

starts to dance to the music. {The Skriker, 10-11)

These create a series of dance/pantomimes that occur around the action of the main

characters and highlight the other-worldly quality of the play. The dance that is written mto

this play is complementary to the overall musical quality of Churchill's work. In additionto
writing dance into the stage directions, Churchill choreographs the language ofher plays by
incorporating a rhythmic base to the script includmg overlapping dialogue denoted by the use
of diacritical marks in the text:

A speech usually follows the one immediately before it BUT: 1: when one character
starts speaking before the other has fmished, the point ofinterruption is marked / ...
2: a character sometimes continuesspeakingright through another speech.. .3:

sometimes a speech follows on from a speech earlier than the one immediately before

it, and continuity is marked *. (Top Girls, 52)

Commenting on the theatricality of Churchill's work, Kritzer notes Churchill's "continual

imaginative challenges to theconventions oftheatre" as well as herability to bring a

playfulness and"subversively comic rather than authoritarian and confrontational" (1)

quality to works dealing with themost intractable aspects of contemporary life.

Commentingon the unusual styles her plays take on Churchill states: I do enjoy the

form of things. I enjoy finding the form that seems best to fit what I'm thinking

about. I don't set out to find a bizarre way of writing. I certainly don't think that you

have to force it. But, on the whole, I enjoy plays that are non naturalistic and don't

move at real time. (Churchill, New Statesman interview, 42)

Beginningwith Owners, produced using the time-honored conventions of solitaiy

playwriting, and continuing throughher collaborations with Monstrous Regiment and The

Joint Stock Company, Churchill has established herself as an innovative writer. She has

drawn on her experiences with the theater collectives to create a new style for her plays

making the form ofthe production an integral part of the message. By deliberately crossing
 10

the rigid linearity ofthe traditional binary oppositions ofwestern culture, she has fostered a
feminized and matriarchal structure in her plays to reflect her message.

2. The Creation of a Feminist/Socialist Ideology

In a 1984 mterview Churchill stated: "Of course, socialism and feminism aren't

synonymous, but I feel strongly about both and wouldn't be interested in a form ofone that
didn't include the other" (Betskov, 78). Churchill's ideologies grew slowly outof herlife
experiences: "what politicized me was being ... a wife ... athome with small children."
Churchill's life changed more radically when she and herhusband decided they could no

longer "shore up a capitalistic system (they) didn't believe in" (Itzen, 279). Following
another miscarriage in thenumerous series of miscarriages thatChurchill had experienced,

herhusband had a vasectomy andthe family took off for six months traveling to Africa and

the wilds of Dartmoor. During this time Churchill was free from her family responsibilities

to concentrate on her writing. Hie social and political content of her work at this time "was

entirely to dowith self-expression of my own personal pain andanger. It wasn'tthought

out" (Itzen, 279) but grew outof herexperiences and dissatisfactions with the life of a
traditional middle-class wife and mother.

Elaborating fiirther on the kind of society she would like, Churchill described a social

order that is "decentralized, non-authoritarian, commimist, nonsexist—a society in which

people.can be in touch withtheir feelings and in control of their lives"(Churchill, Ms.^ 56).

Herplays, dealing withtheconflict between the Utopian society that shedescribes andthe

actual world that we live in, investigate societally pressing issues of gender, race, social and

economic status and power. Churchill's skillfiil use of text and theater turns topics that one
 11

would expect to be heavy dramas full of Sturm und Drang into incredibly fiinny farces.
Perhaps her understanding that the society she desires "always sounds both ridiculous and
unattainable when you put itinto words" (Churchill, Ms., 56) directs her pen to humor, albeit,
dark humor.

This dark humor and sense of the absurd was evident in her years as a writer of radio

plays. Writing for amedia (radio) that relied solely on sound helped her develop afluid use
ofdialogue and imagery while honmg her feminist sensibilities. Her choice to write for the
radio was largely based on the constraints ofcreating while fiilfilling the role offiill- time
mother and wife. Struggling to combine her need to write with her role as mother Churchill
hired a woman to care for her three young sons inorder to gain the tune she needed. This did
not prove to be asatisfactory solution, because like so many other women in the 1960s she
feh conflicted by the contradictory demands ofwork and parenting. Her guilt was
exacerbated by an incredible pressure to produce, causing Churchill to state, "Ifelt guilty ifI
did not accomplish something while I was paying someone else to baby-sit" (Keyssar, 203).
Churchill's earliest professionally produced stage play, Owners, was written inthree
days after her discharge from the hospital follov^g "aparticularly gruesome late
miscarriage" (Keyssar, 203). This play deals specifically with an exploration ofgender and
economics growing from her socio-political beliefs. In Owners Churchill distorts the
traditional order of gender andeconomic power to illuminate the illogic and inconsistencies

ofboth capitalism and patriarchy. Also incorporated into this work is anexploration of
clashes that arise from conflicts between eastern and western philosophies. In her

introductory note to theplay in Plays: One, Churchill wrote about "wanting onecharacter

withthe active, achieving attitude of 'Onward Christian Soldiers', the other the 'sitting
 12

quietly, doing nothing' ofthe Zen poem. The active one had to be a woman, the passive one
a man, for their attitudes to show up clearly as what they believed rather than as conventional
male andfemale behaviour" (4). Written 33 years ago. Owners is still a powerful and

thought-provoking piece oftheater according toa review ofa 2005 production by Robert
Hurwitt. He called theplay "penetrating, provocative and shockingly hilarious at almost

every twist and turn ofits continuously surprising plot" (Hurwitt). Owners is anearly
example of Churchill's ongoing fight against the restrictions imposed by thebinary
oppositions that create all aspects of western culture.

The binary oppositions between the roles of author and mother also carry over into

herwork. Herplays are populated bychildren andtheconflicts that these children cause in
the lives of the adult characters, hi Owners Marion wants to take possession of Lisa and

Alec'syoungest child and Alec dies saving a child that is nothis. At the opening of Traps
"SYL is walking up and down witha baby on her shoulder, getting it to sleep" (Traps, 73).

When Alice is interrogated in Vinegar Tom, her only concernis for her son, "But what's

going to happen to him. He's only got me" (Vinegar Tom, 171). Top Girls revolves around

Marlene's relation (or lack of) with her daughterAngie. A battle for the possession of a child

is waged betweentwo mothers and "an ancient and damaged fairy" in The Skriker. Even

Churchill's two most recent plays contain children and the exploration of parent/child

relations: Far Away opens with a young girl's visit to her aunt and then follows her into a

surreal, horrific future, while Number explores the relationships between a father and several

copies of his cloned son.

The theme of children becomes even more complicated in Cloud Nine where much of

the play focuses on the lives of Edward and Victoria, revealing their experiences as both
 13

childrenand parents. In act 1 of CloudNine, while Edward and Victoriaare children,

Edward is played by a woman and Victoria by a doll; in act 2, Cathy, a five-year old girl, is

played by a man. In discussing these casting choices, Churchill stated, "Edward, Clive's son,

is playedby a woman... partlyto do with stage convention of having boys playedby

women... andpartlywith highlighting the way Clive tries to impose traditional male

behaviour on him" whereas "Cathy is played by a man partly as a simple reversal of Edward

being played by a woman, partlybecause the size andpresence of a man on stage seemed

appropriateto the emotional force of young childrenand partly as with Edward, to show

more clearly the issues involved in learning what is considered correct behaviour for a girl"

{CloudNine, 245-6). Through her imusual casting, Churchill highlights the fragility of

gender and age distinction. Children are both mirrors and sponges, absorbing the

requirements society places on them and reflecting them back.

In her criticism of society Churchill often uses historical settings to foreground

modem issues. Vinegar Tom deals with witchcraft in 17th century England, Light Shining in

Buckinghamshire (Churchill's first play for The Joint Stock Company, written in 1976) takes

place during the English Civil War (1647-40), Act 1 of Cloud Nine takes place in Victorian

Africa, and the opening scene of Top Girls gathers a historically disparate group of women

for a contemporary dinner party. An analysis of Vinegar Tom can highlight the way

Churchill uses the past to comment on the present.

In this drama Churchill wanted "to write a play about witches with no witches in it; a

play not about evil, hysteria, and possession by the devil but about poverty, humiliation and

prejudice" {Vinegar Tom, 129). This play, written for Monstrous Regiment, consists of

twenty brief scenes separated by songs. The songs are sung by actresses in modem dress and
 14

are written in a contemporary style. They serve not only as a Brechtian device to break the

traditional foiulh wall and remind the audience that they are watching a play, but also bridge

the distance between the 17th century women depicted in the text and the modem men and

women of the audience. Speaking of the songs in Vinegar Tom, Sue Bearden, an

administrator for Monstrous Regiment, told Catherine Itzen, "We didn't want to allow the

audiences to ever get completely immersed in the stories of the women in the play. We

wanted to make them continually aware of our presence, of our relationship to the material

... the songs had to contain what we sensed as a connection between the past of the play and

our present experience" (Itzen, 27).

The powerlessness and lack of autonomy for women in the seventeenth century is

demonstrated by the pimishment they receive if they try to move out of sharply delineated

boundaries. In her attempts to be independent and sexually active, Alice is first labeled a

whore: "You're not a wife or a widow. You're not a virgin. Tell me a name for what you

are" {Vinegar Tom, 136) and then a witch. Economically, socially and politically

marginalized, the women in Vinegar Tom are considered aberrant for not conforming to the

societally proscribed roles allowed them. Additionally the women serve as an escape valve

in times of stress, becoming the scapegoats for the sins of society; these women relieve the

men of responsibility for creating or fixing the evils of their world. Using the hysteria of

witch hunts, Churchill was able to draw "connections between medieval attitudes to witches

and continuing attitudes to women in general" (Vinegar Tom, 129).

As Aston notes, "looking back at Ownersand forward to Vinegar Tom it is possible to

seehow important the experience of working with the feminist company Monstrous

Regiment was to the emergent 'women writer'" (Aston, Caryl Churchill, 31). Both plays are
 15

heavily imbued with Churchill's growing socialist-feminist ideology. However, onlyafter

working with a groupof avowed feminists could Churchill break out of the patternof

patriarchal narrative to develop her voice as a feminist author. In an interview with Lizbeth

Goodman, Churchill said that her experience with Monstrous Regiment left her "stimulated

by discovery of shared ideas and the enormous energy and feeling of possibilities in the still

new company" (Goodman, 93).

Shortly after writing Vinegar Tom with Monstrous Regiment, and Light Shining in

Buckinghamshire for The Joint Stock Company, Churchill was commissioned to write a

second play for The Joint Stock Company, hi accordance with the philosophy of The Joint

Stock Company, Churchill participated in a series of workshops exploring sexual politics

during the process of crafting Cloud Nine. These workshops involved the full company and

took place before writing the play. In describing these events, Churchill states:

The starting point for our research was to talk about ourselves and share our very

different attitudes and experiences. We also explored stereotypes and role reversals

in games and improvisations, read books and talked to other people. (Cloud Nine,

245)

Much of what Churchill finally wrote came out of these exercises. Writing this script,

Churchill found herself returning to "an idea that had been touched on briefly in the

workshop—^the parallel between colonial and sexual oppression, which Genet calls 'the

colonial or feminine mentality of interiorizedrepression'" {CloudNine, 245).

To representthe parallel relationship between colonial and sexual repression on stage,

Churchill created anotherjuxtaposition of historical and contemporary periods. Act 1 of

CloudNine is a periodpiece, set in Victorian Africa, but Act 2 takes place m London of
 16

1979, an interval of 25 years in the life of the characters, but 100 in historical time. The play

is almost the reversal of a popular ad campaign for VirginiaSlims cigarettes,which began in

1969. "Phony sepia-toned photos, picturing the sorry lot of a circa 1900's woman, were

juxtaposed against colorphotographs of a far happier modem woman wearing stylish

contemporaiy clothing," andoverthe entire adwas the tag-line, "You've come a longway,

baby" (Shaw). Contraryto Virginia Slims, Churchill's play seems to be telling us "you

haven't come anywhere yet, baby."

By expanding her feminist awareness to include colonialism as well as gender

repression, Churchill redefines Simone de Beauvoir's Other to include everyone who is

oppressed by the white male hegemony that controls western civilization. Women are Other

not because they are not male, but because they are not the white-socially-economically-

politically empoweredmales. As Churchill's political ideology expands from her contact

with groups like Monstrous Regiment and The Joint Stock Company, her plays expand in

representing the disenfranchised and oppressed populations that are subjugated by capitalist

white male dominance.

The mixing of time periods to universalize the conditions and treatment of women is

taken even further at the beginning of Top Girls, written in 1982. The play opens with a

dinner party that Marlene is throwing to celebrate her promotion at the Top Girls

Employment agency. Her party is attended by a group of women dravra from history, myth

and art, including:

ISABELLA BIRD (1831-1904) lived in Edinburgh, travelled extensively between the

ages of 40 and 70.

 17

LADY NUO (b. 1258) Japanese, was anEmperor's courtesan and latera Buddhist

nun who travelled on foot through Japan.

DULL GRET is the subject of the Bruegel painting, Dulle Griet, in which a woman in

an apron and armour leads a crowd ofwomen charging through hell and fighting the

devils.

POPE JOAN, disguised as a man, is thought to have been Pope between 854-856.

PATIENT GRISELDA is the obedient wife whose story is told by Chaucer in the

Clerk's Tale of The Canterbury Tales. (Top Girls, 52)

Whenthese women, who are separatedby a thousand years and 6,000 miles, comingfrom

widely differing social, religious and economic backgrounds, discuss their livestheytell very

similartales. The overlapping dialoguethat Churchill has written for this scene mixes with

the overlapping tales of abuse, lost children and betrayal, but all told with humor and a sense

of joy that fills the stagewith life. HereChurchill establishes a connection between women

from different times and places. What she hinted at with the insertion of modem songs in

Vinegar Tom, and suggested by placing the family in CloudNine in two distinctlydifferent

timeperiods, becomes unambiguously clearin this dinnerparty. The constraints of

patriarchal society and its concomitant degradation of women, fix)m Chaucerian times to the

present, from feudal Japan to medieval Europe to modem London, is met v^ith acceptance,

resilience and humor by women who often fail to realize the injustices to which they are

subjected.

Four years after Top Girls Churchill again collaborated with The Joint Stock

Company on A Mouthjul ofBirds. Although this was her fourth play with them, Churchill

chose a different process in its creation, working collaboratively with co-writers David Lan.
 18

In her previous collaborations, Churchill would withdraw following the group workshops to
write her play inisolation. For AMouthful ofBirds there was no period ofwithdrawal; rather
the "improvisations and movement exercises went on continuously, and text was written and
given to the actors from day to day after the initial five weeks" (Kntzer, 173). This was also
the first time that Churchill collaborated with choreographer Ian Spinks.

InAMouthful ofBirds Churchill and Lan created a modem retelling of Euripides'

TheBacchae. As Kritzer states "the revision of myth constitutes a major element of feminist

writing" (172). Classical mythology, a basis ofmodem society, provides narratives,

characters and examples forthepossibility ofhuman action and interaction. Inherited from
the ancients, these storiesprovidesupport for the existent patriarchal society. In orderto

create a feminist/matriarchal counterpoint to ourcontemporary male-ordered society it is

necessary to revise these myths andendow them withfeminist/matriarchal interpretations. In

herprevious plays Churchill reached back into historical time to create a link to modem
social and gender issues; with^ Mouthful ofBirds, she finds ancientand mythological

origins for the difficulties of modem life.

In the workshop where this production was developed, Churchill focused on the idea

of violence and women. The traditional societal view maintains that women are passive and

peaceful while men are violent. Churchill wanted to challenge this stereotype by exploring

violence in women: "There is a danger of polarizing men and women into what becomes

again the traditional view that men are naturally more violent and so have no reason to

change. It seems important to recognize women's capacity for violence and men's for

peacefiilness" (A Mouthful ofBirds, 5). Her co-writer Lan, an anthropologist and writer, was

interested in spirit possession and states of ecstasy. He "chose to see possession as any form
 19

of behaviour that is not entirely under one's own control" (A Mouthful ofBirds, 6).

Focusing on seven individualswho all experience a moment of "ecstatic possession," this

play explores the relationships among ecstasy, violence, self-control and gender.

A Mouthful ofBirds is divided into three parts. The first opens with the "visually

ambiguous presence of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and theatre" (Kritzer, 174).

"Dionysus dances. He is played by a man. He wears a white petticoat" {A Mouthful ofBirds,

\9). Second comes a series of brief scenes that introduce the seven major characters in

ordinary situations. This section of the play ends with each of the characters offering a series

of three excuses. The first sets of excuses are ordinary and unassuming, reflecting the scenes

tiiat introduced the characters: "I'm sorry I can't make the conference. I've sprained my

-ankle" but each set of excuses escalates. The final set, "I can't go to the disco. The army's

closed off the street" {A Mouthful ofBirds, 23), expresses a character in the grip of an

ecstatic experience and thereby provides a segue into the next section of the play.

In the third part of^ Mouthful ofBirds each character experiences an ecstatic

possession, participating in what Churchill calls an "undefended day," a day "in which there

is nothing to protect you fi-om the forces inside and outside yourself' {A Mouthful ofBirds.

5). Included in this part is a retelling of The Bacchae with Agave and her Bacchae

performing a ritualistic dismemberment of Pentheus, along with a recitation ofthe life of

Herculine Barbin, a nineteenth century French hermaphrodite. Not only does the

"undefended day" free the characters from the constraints of moral or social responsibility,

but it also seems to eliminate the narrative restrictions of time, place, and gender. Freed from

the constraints of linear andpatriarchal binary oppositions, AMouthful ofBirdsemploys

dance, comedy, narrative and violence to create a feminist revision of The Bacchae.
 20

Over the years, Churchill's social andpolitical consciousness has expanded, from

reflecting her personal painto encompassing the painand marginalization of all people

existing outside the power baseofpatriarchy. Herplays have moved farther from the

traditional narrative base of westem theater to find new forms of non-linear feminist

productions that incorporate a variety ofcreative media into their structure. Her plays have
moved from contemporary settings to historical andmythological ones and dramas that

include a mixture of elements from contemporary life, historical times and mythology.

In the next section of this paper I will focus specifically on Churchill's 1994 play. The

Skriker. Understanding Churchill's development as an artist and feminist will make it easier

to analyze this play. In The Skriker Churchill combines narrative text with dance and

pantomime to create a performance that incorporates many of the elements associated with

feminist drama. Set partly in modem Londonand partly m a mythic underworld. The Skriker

is populated by characters from English folklore who interact with the young women of

London, and paints a picture ofa bifurcated world that is unsuccessfiil on all levels. The

Skriker is Churchill's flmny but ultimately bleak vision of a world destroyed through

patriarchal practice.
 21

Chapter 3: Who or What is The Skriker?

The three main characters in Churchills' play are the Skriker, "an ancient and

damaged fairy," and two young women, Josie and Lily. While this is not a plot-driven play,

the basic story follows the Skriker as she stalks the two young women. As the play opens,

Josie is in a mental hospital, presumably for murdering her infant daughter. She is visited by

Lily, her pregnant friend/sister. Another patient in the hospital appearing in the guise of a

middle-aged female patient is the Skriker. Throughout the course of the play, the Skriker

attempts to attach herself first to one, then to the other of the two girls. A shape-shifter, the

Skriker appears to the girls in a variety of personae including male and female, young and

old, himian and non-hxmian, as she tries to get them to accompany her to the underworld.

In addition to these three main characters, the play is also populated by a host of

creatures taken from British folklore: Yallery Brown, Kelpie, Jennie Greenteeth,

Rawheadandbloodybones, Black Annis, and the Spriggan. These creatures use dance, mime,

and tableaus to provide an ongoing counterpoint to the main activity of the play. They are

the citizens of the Skriker's underworld; they accompany her on her joumeys to the upper

world. The Skriker's minions are silent, but she is very verbal, spouting several long

rambling monologues, includmg the five-page monologue that opensthe play. Her language

is disjointed, filled with word associations based on sound that cause her meaningto

continually shift and slide, "here youstand in an enchanted wood youor wouldn't you"(51).

In articles, reviews and critical evaluations of The Skriker, the title character has been

called an "archetype", withoutmuch agreement as to whatthis archetype signifies. To

 22

IstevanNagy she represents Satan while ClaudiaBamett sees her as the personificationof the

Mother archetype of Jung combinedwith the Great Goddess. In either of these

manifestations she should possess a power that I will argue does not exist in the character of

the Skriker. The overall feeble and defenseless nature of the Skriker becomes evident when

explained by Katherine Perrault usingthe methodology of chaos theory. As the mention of

chaos theory would indicate, this play does not present an easy analytic task to critics,

theorists or reviewers. Key productions of the play offer a first set of commentary on these

issues.

The production, which opened in London on January 20,1994, at the Cottesloe

auditorium of the Royal National Theater, was met with mixed and mediocre reviews. "TTie

•Skriker stands in the Churchill canon as arguably the play the critics least understood and

were most hostile to" (Ashton, Feminist Views, 28). The reviewers did not know how to

react to a play which did not fit neatly into their preconceived notions of what theater should

be. John Peter in the Sunday Times pondered on this point when he wrote:

I'm not sure what it is I am involved with. What sort of play is this? Critics like to

be able to classify things, partly because it shows how much they know and partly

because they like to guide their readers. With The Skriker, I just don't know. (97)

Peter concludes that the play is "a magic play-poem about magic" (98). Other critics were

less generous in their conclusions. Benedict Nightingale in the Times states that "she has not

quite succeeded" and David Nathan in the Jewish Chronicle endshis review by claiming that

"she cannot be serious" (93). Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph is so confused by this

play that he speculates about 'Svhat Caryl Churchill was taking when she wrote The Skriker"
 23

and then suggests that "it might be as well to issue the audience with some of the same stuff'

(96).

Not all reviewers were so negative. Judith Mackrell credits Churchill's language with

creating a "brilliantly shifting center of reality" in a performance where "movement and

language don't just complement each other, they are luminously inseparable" {TR, 95). In an

interesting review in the Mail on Sunday, Louise Doughty starts by stating her initial dislike

of the play, but ends by commenting, "I found that for days afterwards images from it kept

popping into my mind. I have now concluded I liked it very much indeed" (77?, 98).

Interestingly, the more positive reviews were written by women. It is possible that the

feminist nature and structure of the play, which I vsdll discuss at length later, makes this play

more accessible to women.

The play did not appear in New York until May 1996, and there the production again

met with mixed reviews, but on the whole the critical reception was friendlier. The headline

in the Daily News stated "7%e Skriker Strikes Out" and Howard Kissel, after comparing the

play to "an attempt by college students to create experimental theater," concludes his review

by calling it "the worst sort of artsy-craftsy twaddle" (273). However, Kissel's dislike of the

play did not stop him from admiring the production. He called "the acting suburb, especially

by Angie Phillips and Caroline Seymour as the girls and Jayne Atkinson as the Skriker. The

production is full of haunting stage pictures and sound effects" (273).

Michael Feingold foimd nothing admirable aboutthe play. Not only did he dislike

the script ("I'mnever wholly convinced that Caiyl Churchill knows how to write a play") but

he decried the production's

 24

pretensions and arbitrariness .. .underscored by Mark Wing-Davey's expectably

coarse, loud production You've never seen somuch crap on stage inyour life, all
as trite and uglyas it is unnecessary; more of Marina Draghicis' crummy abandoned-

warehouse setpieces; more of JohnGroumada's ear-wounding spasms of

construction noise; more of ChristopherAkerlind's slash-and-shadow lighting that

does everything but illuminate ... little actingsurvives the onslaught. (274)

At the other end of the critical spectrum, Jeremy Gerard calls the play "at once a

majorachievement andimlike anything else seen on stage." Gerard ends his review in

Variety by lamenting the shortness of the runfor this *truly original work" in which "the

presentation... is astonishing" (275). A positive response to the production is provided by

BenBrantley, who callsthe technical production "dazzlingly ambitious" (272) and laudsthe

"crack design team" (273) that put it all together. Althoughnot split along gender Imes

(there wereno reviews written by women for the New York production), the New York

reviewers were just as divided in their opinion of the play as were their London counterparts.

I am not surprisedto find such a mixed attitude on the part of the critics towards a play that

(as I intend to argue) attacks the concept of binary opposition. In attempting to shim the

divisive polarities of patriarchal bmaries the play makes it inevitable that just such

divisiveness will be stirred up.

Consistent in the reviews of both the London and New York productions was praise

for the actress playing the title role (Kathryn Hunter in London and Jayne Atkinson in New

York). Hunter was called "mesmeric, chameleon-like" (Coveney), "a triumph of style over

content" (Hirschom), "an astonishing performance even for this protean artist" (Wardle). In

New York Ben Brantley called attention to "Ms. Atkinson's superb interpretation, as notable
 25

for its command ofa very difficult language as for its amazing changes of character" (272)

while Gerard commends Atkinson for playing the Skriker"m a performance of mesmerizing

loquaciousness" (273).

A command of difficult language and loquacity is required at the opening of The

Skriker when the title character delivers a four and a half page monologue. The monologue

flows in a poetic outpouring of Joycean stream of consciousness illogic. Words and phrases

follow each other suggested by similarities in their sounds ("enchanted orchard, cherry

orchid, chanted orchestra") creating a seemingly nonsensical stream of verbiage. Breaking

the connections between Saussure's signified and signifier, the Skriker's speech has no

apparent semantic meaning, existing as a purely auditory experience. On closerstudy,

however, the text of a children's story—a fairy tale—emerges; the Skriker is reciting a

twisted version ofthe Rumplestiltskin legend:

So I spin the sheaves shoves shivers into golden guild and geld and if she can't

guessing game and safety match my name then I'll take her no mistake no mister no

missed her no mist no miss no me no. {Skriker, 1)

These sound linkages which are nicely described by John Gross as '^^erbal paper chains—or

perhaps a better analogy would be hooks and eyes" (Gross, 96) are dismissed by other

reviewers as "a massive mouthful of words" (Taylor, 94). It is this "massive mouthful of

words" that drives much of the play. The slipperiness of the language mirrors the

slipperiness of the Skiker. The text veers in unexpected directions, taking its cue from the

sounds of the words rather than their meanings, just as the Skriker resurfaces in new and

unexpected forms: "a shapeshifter fairy... of whom it is very difficult to say anything

certain" (Kagy).
 26

In spite ofthe above referenced statement, Istevan Nagy, Claudia Bamett and
Katherine Perrault manage to find a lotto say about The Skriker. Inthree veiydifferent

essays, that I will discuss now, they conclude that the Skriker is either the devil, a parasite, or
an illustration of the ultimate powerlessness of women.

Nagy he regards the opening monologue as a traditional prologue, seeing elements of

prediction as well as biblical and literary allusions inthe evasive text that "puts the spectator
or reader in a mood in which they are able to tuneinto theplotand the lives of the characters

to bepresented ... the Skriker's monologue is able tocreate the strange, half-rational, half-
irrational aura of the scenes to come" (Nagy). Reading this monologue as an '^inhindered

flow of words" that "addresses the readers' subconscious rather than their conscious, rational

mind" Nagy extracts meanings that foretell the action oftheplay and define thecharacter of
the Skriker as a demonic presence.

Basedat leastpartially on the biblical references to Satanthat he fmds in the opening

monologue—^"but if the babyhas no namebetternick a name, better OldNick than no name"

(2) and "out came my secreted garden flower of myyouth and beauty and the beast is six six

six o'clock in the morning" (1)—Nagy argues that the Skrikeris a personification of the

devil. The Skriker's attempts to bribe Josie and Lily with love, glamour and wish fulfilhnent

are further evidence of her demonic nature. Even the love she offers is suspect, according to

Nagy. "The borderline between goodand evil is dependent on what we love. The love the

Skriker is so desperate to have seems to be the love of evil and destruction." According to

Nagy's interpretation "the Skriker bears a fiightening resemblance to another great tempter

of history, Satan" (Nagy).

 27

Nagy finds further support for his interpretation of the Skriker as devil in what he

calls 'the 'subplot' of dumb shows" that takes place around the main action oftheplay. In
these pantomimes, human characters interact with fairies from the Skriker'srealm. The

humans are searching for something, but contact with the fairies invariably leaves them

damaged; one girl returns with a bandaged wrist, a man ends up in a wheelchair, another

women is dismembered.

Everyone who is weak enough to get in touch witha faiiy comes to grief. So do Josie

and Lily. However, it would be far too easy and imjust to blame all the miseries on

the Skrikerand her company. They may appear as beautifiil, kind and amiable beings

to Josie and Lily but ultimatelythe choice is whetherthe sisters should embracethem

or reject them. They fail to make the.right choice and they fall. (Nagy)

Nagy's theological interpretation of Churchill's play, though interesting, fails in

several ways. Recasting Satan as "an ancient and damaged fairy" seems to disempower the

force of evil he is meant to represent. Western imagery in general and Christian

representations specifically, show Satan (as well as God) as masculine/patriarchal creations.

As a shape shifter the Skriker inhabits male and female persona (she even appears as an

inanimate object), yet in all of her appearances she exemplifies feminine/matriarchal power,

making her an unlikely choice for a representation of Satan. As I intend to offer a feminist

interpretation of this play, I do not accept the Skriker as a representation of the patriarchal

image of evil.

A struggle between good and evil without any representation of good (God) lacks the

tension necessary to drive the moral value implied in such a struggle. Neither Josie nor Lily

has the power to represent the force of good that is fighting the encroaching and seductive
 28

evils offered by the devil. In a biblical reenactment of the struggle between goodand evil,

Josie and Lily should represent the souls being fought over, buffeted between theextremes of
the heaven/hell possibilities. Without a God, there canbe no deviland The Skriker does not

present us withboth sides of the equation. The patriarchal equation that Nagy uses requires

an equation with two sides: if there is hell, there must be heaven, if there is a godthere must

be a devil and if there is evil, then there must be good. By replacing the patriarchal reading

with a feminist one, we can eliminate the binary oppositions that are needed to maintain the

tension between polarities in Nagy's reading. The Skriker becomes free to shapeshifl

through manifestations that cross opposing binarylines without being labeled evil or

deficient. She can m all honesty state, "I am a good fairy" (17).

A related interpretation is proposed by Claudia Bamett in her 2000 essay:

'"Reveneangance is gold mine, sweet': Alchemy and Archetypes in Caiyl Churchill's The

Skriker. Rather than a struggle between good and evil with the Skriker representing Satan,

Bamett interprets the play as depicting a struggle between the natural and supematural

worlds. This interpretation still leaves us with a basic struggle between bifwcated needs. In

this case the Skriker, rather than representing pure evil, represents the needs of one

commimity in conflict with another community. In this interpretation the Skriker gains moral

footing. Her actions stem not from a desire to harm or destroy, but from a need to preserve

one population by exploiting another. The Skriker, an inhabitant of the supematural realm,

moves between the two worlds searching for ways to enhance her domain.

For the Skriker, the two worlds she inhabits are diametrically opposed ... the two

worlds do not comfortably coexist; their relationship is not symbiotic, but parasitic,

and rebirth in the under world depends upon a sacrifice in London. (Bamett, 45)
 29

Barnett's Skriker is not Satan, but an incarnation of Jung's archetype of the Mother and the

Great Goddess, with all of the contradictoiy characteristics that both convey. Quoting from

Jung, Bamett describes the mother archetype as having

maternal solicitude and sympathy; the magic authority of the female; the wisdom and

spiritual exaltation that transcend reason; any helpful insight or impulse; allthat is

benign, all that cherishes and sustains, thatfosters growth andfertility. Theplace of

magic transformation and rebirth, together withthe underworld and its inhabitants,

are presided over by the mother. Onthe negative sidethe motherarchetype may

connote anything secret, hidden, dark; the abyss, the world of the dead, anything that

devours, seduces and poisons, that is terrifying and inescapablelike fate. (48)

It is easy to find examples of these traits in the character of the Skriker. Maternal solicitude

can be traced to her desire to have a baby;

SKRIKER: You keeping the baby:

LILY: Yes of course.

SKRIKER: Because I'm looking for one. (15)

Her use of m^ic proliferates, she can grant wishes and uses magic to reward her favored girl

by making coins come out ofLily's mouth, or punishthe one out-of-favor, making toads

come out of Josie's mouth. In her use of language she creates connections that defy and

transcend reason, changing the ordinary "listless and pale" into the extraordinary "listless and

pale beyond the pale moonlight of heart sore her with spirits with spirit dancing the night

away" (3). At the same time she is hidden, we never really know who she is. Is she the old

woman, the little child, the young man or some form we have yet to see? She seduces the

two girls, coercing them into her hidden abyss, tempting them and terrifying them at the
 30

same time so thattheyare miserable withher, butas Josie explams, wanther back when she

is gone: "But when you've lost her you want her back. Because you see what she can do and
you've lost your chance and it could bethe only chance ever in mylife" (28).

Along withthe Jungian Mother, Bamett sees elements of the Great Goddess in the

Skriker. Using terms from Barbara G. Walker's The Crone: Women ofAge, Wisdom and

Power, Bamett says of the Great Goddess thatsheis "bothugly andbeautiful, Virgm and

Crone, darkness and light, winter and summer, birth giver and death bringer" (47).

Incorporating the binaries that are used to illustrate feminine attributes, the Great Goddess

becomes an incarnation of feminist power.

For Bamett the Jungian mother aspect of the Skriker fuels her need to nurtureher

world, but in orderto accomplish this task, she requires a sacrifice from the natural world.

By seducing first Josie and then Lilyinto entering her dark, hiddenunderworld, she takes

from them the nourishment that she needs to sustain her own people. She is able to capture

Josie and Lily by using her powers as the "many-named, multi-formed Goddess. Changeable

as nature itself (47). As a shape-shifter, the Skriker crosses the borders of gender

(spearing as man and woman), age (coming to Lily and Josie as a young child, a middle-

aged woman, an old man and everything in between), and life (appearing as both animate and

inanimate objects). The power of the Great Goddess and the Jungian Mother combine to

create a powerful and malignant feminist force bent on protecting her supernatural and

matriarchal society from the destmctiveness of the natural/patriarchal world.

This elevation of the matriarchal society over the patriarchy creates what Bamett calls

"a revisionist fairy tale with a feminist twist" (55). Basing her analysis of fairy tales on
 31

Bruno Bettelheim's work, Bamett describes the traditional function of these stories to initiate

children into societally accepted roles and behaviors and concludes:

The child learns, from the fairy tale, to be good. The Skriker teaches a different

lesson: Virgin, mother, and crone are terms describing a progression (or regression)

rather than alternatives. The child cannot maintain her innocence, for every girl

grows old and becomes the fairy tale witch. The fault is society's rather than the

girl's. (55)

I agree with Bamett that the world of the Skriker contains two separate but connected

societies. I disagree, however, with her assessment of these two worlds as antagonistic.

Instead of the parasitic relationship she describes, I would suggest a more symbiotic

relationship. It is obvious that the Skriker's world is damaged and suffering:

It looks wonderful except that it is all glamour and here and there it's not working—

some ofthefood is twigs, leaves, beetles, some ofthe clothes are rags, some ofthe

beautifulpeople have a claw hand or hideousface. (28-29)

It is also obvious that the Skriker is stalking Josie and Lily because she needs the energy and

life force that she can extract by bringing them into her realm. But things are not so

wonderful for life above ground either. The Skriker is searching for help in a society that

abandons its young women. Lily and Josie have no older females to guide them; there are

apparently no social services, family, friends or relatives to provide help. They have only

each other and neither of them is strong enough to support them both. They need the Skriker

as much as she needs them. If a symbiotic bond could be established, nourishment could

flow to and from each realm. Unfortunately, Churchill does not hold out much hope for

establishing such a bond.

 32

Katherine Perrault is less interested in the relationship between the Skrikerand the

two young women she pursues, but is intent onusing chaos theory to reveal '^inderlying
structures of integration and order—creating a representation of the feminine experience that

is true to nature" (45). Recognizing Aristotelian poetic structure as theprimary basis for
narration of "thestory oftheworid according to men" (46), Perrault rejects linear narrative

as a means of creating feminist literature andtheater. Just as modem science has called into

question traditional scientific and historical beliefs inthe linearity and regularity ofthe
universe, so must feminist literaryexpression reject the same concepts in narrative.

Citing Stephen Kellert's defmition of chaos theoiy as "thequalitative study of

unstable aperiodic behaviour in deterministic nonlinear dynamical systems," Perrault

identifies The 5'^n'feras just sucha qualitative study, calling it "an analysis, indeed, an

indictment—ofthe Hflmaging patterns and processes of the past perpetuatedin contemporary

society" (48). The Skriker takes themes that seemfamiliar to us and defamiliarizes them by

presenting them to the audience through a seemingly nonsensical manipulation of language,

overlapping and intersecting planes of reality. The resultant chaos serves to create "a

dynamic re-visioning of history that manifests the necessity for change with language [that]

does not contain, [but] carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible" (52).

The chaotic world that the Skriker creates when she abandons linear narrative and

replaces it with circular dialogue (linking words by sounds instead of meaning) forces the

audience to make connections outside of the normal course of history. The "dynamic re-

visioning of history" that Perrault discusses is embedded in the Skriker's world, where the

natural and the supernatural are interwoven and inseparable. By ignoring the constraints of

Aristotelian poetics which require a restoration of balance, The Skriker demonstrates a

 33

different kind of orderwith a chaotic system having no initial balance andno corresponding

catharsis and/or sense of closure. In The Skriker Churchill's "intent is to disrupt the typical

response ofthe audience onmultiple levels, through associative language, music, movement,
mythic/archetypal images ... to engage them not justfor the 'moment' inthe theatre, but for
also thefuture, to evoke continuing thought and active response in reaction to the alarum she

is raising" (Perrault, 55). Using chaos theory asher methodology, Perrault deconstructs The
Skrikerto illuminate the ultimate helplessness of the women (the Skriker as well as Josie and

Lily), theirinability to overcome the"overwhelming constraints of patriarchal ideology,"

exposing "the image of the damaged feminine psyche, which in turn impairs society as a

whole" (57). The damage done to women (and other disenfranchised members of society) by

-patriarchal rule is so deeply entrenched in our society that we cannotsee it unless we remove

the controls of Aristotelian narrative. In The Skriker Churchill has fashioned a world without

the restrictions of linear narrative, revealing the deadly trajectory that patriarchal society is

following.

Starting with the articles by Nagy and Bamett I have examined possible explanations

for the relationships between the Skriker and Josie and Lily. Although Nagy and Bamett

provide different characterizations for the Skriker—^Nagy as devil and Bamett as Jungian

Mother and Great Goddess—^they both regard the Skriker as predatory. While I agree in part

with Bamett's description of the Skriker, I do not agree that she is predatory. Even as the

Skriker victimizes Josie and Lily, so she too is a victim. As Perrault demonstrates through

her application of chaos theory, all of the women in the play are damaged. If we accept

Bamett's version of the Skriker as a Great Goddess and Mother archetype, then she is a

damaged version of the archetype. I will argue that her need for Josie and Lily does not
 34

represent an opposition between the natural and supernatural worlds, as suggested by Bamett,
but ratherreflects an interaction between theseworlds that is necessary to the health of both.

In a healthier time (a matriarchal time) thecontact between thetwo worlds benefited

everyone. The Skriker, still believing that she can heal the rift that is harming both worlds,
thinks she is moving along a safe path, when in fact she is heading over a cliff. Just as Nagy

sees the Skriker'sopening monologue as a prologue that foreshadows the action to come, I

will argue that the damage and declme inthe Skriker's supernatural world foreshadows the
damage and decline in the natural world.
 35

Chapter 4: The Skriker and the Failure of the Ethic of Caring

In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss,

But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being.

Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all. (Hesiod, Theogony, 88).

According to one reading of Greek mythology theuniverse was the creation of Gaia,

a feminine force who assembled the unformed and chaotic primordial energies into land and

sky, earth and sea, human and animal, male and female. Inthis creation myth Gaia includes

"all levels of the cosmos within herself* (Harris and Platzner, 152). She separates herself in

heract of parthenogenetic construction &om the masculine elements in her nature and

establishes the male/female binary tensions that underlie the character of Western civilization

from the archaic Greek period to the present.

Gaia's rule as head of a matriarchal society was violently supplanted by her male

creations. In a strugglefor control Gaia,who "clearly identifieswith her children and her

commitment is to the contmuity of the cycle," is overthrown by Uranus, 'Svhose interest is m

the acquisition of personal power." Defeated first by Uranus andthen by Zeus, Gaiathe

Great Goddess is "transformed by the patriarchal system into a hideous old hag" (Harris and

Platzner, 153). The patriarchy removes the generative power from the Great Goddess and

she is left with her chthonic, death-wielding aspect as the primary expression of her abilities.

It is this chthonic quality of Gaia that Churchill emphasizes when she introduces the

Skriker as "a death portent, ancient and damaged" (1). The Skriker describes herself as

"hundreds of years old as you people would work it out... been around through all the stuff
 36

you would call history... one of many, not a major spirit but a spirit" (16). I contendthat

the Skriker, though calling herself "not a major" spirit, is actually a modem representation of

Gaia, the Great Goddess. Damaged by the patriarchy, her powers of generation and

regeneration minimized and devalued, her negative qualities exaggerated, she has been so

deformed that her attempts to nurture and heal have become perverted and dangerous. I will

explain this reading through reference to Carol Gilligan and her work on the different bases

for male/female systems of morality. Gilligan posits two different tracks of moral

development. The traditional track, based on the concept ofjustice, is associated with male

behavior. An alternate track, that Gilligan identifies as based on the principle of kindness

and caring, is associated with female behavior. Gilligan offers these two tracks as different

but equal, and she does not establish a hierarchical ranking or any other system of evaluative

positioning. It is my contention that the Skriker is acting in good faith based on a moral

system that values caring. Her behavior only seems evil or immoral when it is appraised

from a justice-based moral system.

Although Gilligan is proposing multiple systems of moral development that are of

equal value, traditional assessments of moral development have accepted only one system.

The traditional interpretations of moral development, rooted in our patriarchal society, have

placed a higher value on characteristics associated with male moral development. The

ascendance of patriarchal rule altered the direction of human history and society. The

dictionary definition of patriarchyas "social organization marked by the supremacy ofthe

father m the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of

descent and inheritance in the male line" (Webster's, 863) only touches the surface ofthe

meanings inherentin the concept of patriarchy. The inclusion of the words "supremacy" and
 37

"legal dependency" in the common definition hints at the political power implied bythe

concept. Changingthe gendered words in this definition so that father becomes mother,

wives become husbands and male becomes female, does not result in the definition of a

matriarchal society. Binary divisions between genders that influence power and status are

not deeply embedded in the definition of matriarchy, defined by the same dictionary as "a

system of social organization in which descent and inheritance are traced through the female

line" (Webster's, 733). This definition with its emphasis on descent and inheritance depends

upon familial connections rather than power. Matriarchal societies are less invested in the

concepts of linear progression and universal truth. They see the world as cyclical rather than

linear and accept multiplicities of truth rather than focusing on one. The idea of multiple

manifestations of truth allows matriarchal societies to step out of the boundaries imposed by

viewing the world as a series of binary oppositions. In order to understand the Skriker and

her actions, we must first understand that she is working under a different set of social and

moral regulations that cause her to act and react in ways that seem wicked and immoral.

A comparison of patriarchal and matriarchal systems can be foxmd in Appendix A.

This list of values is divided into sections comprising philosophy and world view,

commimity interaction, religious systems, moral systems, and sexuality, taken from a web

site titled The Witches Well:A Witches CommunityResource. This site provides information

about and for the modem day practice of Wicca, the religious practice associated with nature

and witchcraft, and it clearly identifies with a matriarchal worldview. Although witchcraft

and matriarchy are not synonymous, there is a significant connection. All matriarchal

societies are not ruled by witches, but all witch/wiccan societies are matriarchal. There is
 38

also a connection between witchcraft and Churchill's plays. Vinegar Tom is about a witch

hunt in seventeenth centuryEngland and certainlythe Skrikerhas witch-like powers.

A similar comparison of matriarchal/patriarchal traits (see Appendix B) is included

on the web site Matriarch.info. Both these two lists are evidence of the popularization of

ideas about matriarchal/patriarchal conflict first voiced by Johann Jakob Bachofen andthen

elaborated on by ErichFromm. FromBachofen'sinsights, Fromm came to believe that

*Svoman's nature develops from social practices; specifically, howthe activity of mothering

produces certain nurturing, maternal character traits associated with women" (Kellner). It
was from Fromm's analysis that matriarchal society became associated with positive

attributes like caring, sharing and earthly happiness, while patriarchal society was associated

withnegative characteristics, including aggression and the accumulation of material wealth.

The traits reflected on these lists are useful to us in our exploration of the struggle between

the matriarchy and patriarchy as it is played out in The Skriker.

Centuries of patriarchal social and political rule have resulted in the devaluation and

vilification of traits associated with matriarchal/feminist philosophy. Labeled as witches,

women who tried to follow a matriarchal pattem of livmg were reviled, tortured and

murdered in the past and are mocked and demeaned in current culture. Using this resource,

published by a self-proclaimed witches' community, helps us distinguish the primary

differences between the two disparate worldviews in terms developed outside of patriarchal

control.

Since Chiu'chill is a self-identified feminist, it is not surprising that themes of

witchcraft enter her plays. In an earlier play. Vinegar Tom, she had "dismissed witchcraft as

a means of demonizing social outcasts" (Wardle, 95), leading some reviewers to see her
 39

acceptance of the demonic in The Skriker as a contradiction. The Skrikerandher cadre are

social outcasts. They are as unsuccessful at breaking throughthe societal structures as the

women in Vinegar Tom. Whether her characters are supernatural creatures or merely women

who are destroyed by unfair accusations of witchcraft, they all represent females who are

demonized, marginalized and socially unsuccessful. Ratherthan a contradiction, the two

plays illustrate the same lack offeminine authority.

The Wiccan list of values mentioned above includes a binary for the matriarchal/

patriarchal definitions of morality:

Moral System

P—Regulated by law fi-om God, prophets, priests, ministers, or others in authority

M—"An ye harm none, do what thou wilt"

This closely parallels the difference between male and female morality as described by Carol

Gilligan. The patriarchal system of morality is monolithic and unchangeable. Behavior is

controlled by laws set in stone, literally in the case of the code of Hamurabi, with no

consideration given to underlying causes of behavior. "Situation ethics" are considered

suspect and unreliable. The matriarchal system, however, focuses on situations. The goal in

this system is not to uphold a pre-established set of rules, but to create rules that fimction for

the best outcome possible in any given situation.

What then is the moral and ethical base to which the Skriker belongs? Her universe is

non-linear and her method of communication and behavior shuns logic and progression. It

seems inappropriate to judge her motivations using linear logic and morality. Before we can

make a judgment on her motivation and influence we need a better idea of what she is

seeking to accomplish. If we judge her using traditional masculine moral strategies, then it is
 40

easy to see how Nagy could decide that she represented the devil and how Bamett thought
her to be dangerously parasitic. We need to look for ways otherthan the masculine to

evaliiate her behavior. Gilligan is helpfiil in this arena.

Carol Gilligan's work on female moral development grew&om her dissatisfaction

with the stages of moral development posited by Lawrence Kohlberg. Using Kohlberg's

stages of moral developmentas a starting point, Gilligan explores the reasons why women

are often seen "as either deviant or deficient in their development" (Gilligan, 549).

Kohlberg's system is grounded in the concept of a universal underlying truth that guides the

morally developed individual to select the only correct response in situations that appear to

be morally ambiguous. Kohlberg believes that people pass through six phases of moral

development. Moving from pre-conventionalto post-conventional moral reasoning,

Kohlberg's classification system as outlined by Robert Barger is shown in Table 1.

According to Kohlberg very few people ever reach the sixth level of moral development.

Table 1: Kohlberg's classification system

Level Stage Social Orientation

Pre-conventional 1 Obedience and Punishment

2 Individualism, Instrumentalism, and Exchange

Conventional 3 "Good boy/girl"

4 Law and Order

Post-conventional 5 Social Contract

6 Principled Conscience
 41

At this level moral and ethical behavior is based on "respect for universal principles and the

demands of individual conscience." Most ethical behavior remains in the conventional level

of development. This stage is characterized by an orientation ''to abiding by the law and

responding to the obligations of duty"(Barger). Normal moral development in men

generally bringsthemto Kohlberg's fourth level. For women, however, "moraljudgment

leads them to be considered as typically at the third of his six-stage developmental sequence.

At that stage, the good is identified with 'what pleases or helps others and is approved of by

them'" (Gilligan, 552). Gilligan goes on to state

that women fall largely into this level of moral judgment is hardly surprising... that

prominent among the twelve attributes considered to be desirable for women are tact,

gentleness, awareness ofthe feelings of others, strong need for security and easy

expression of tender feelings. And yet, herein lies the paradox. For the very traits

that have traditionally defined the "goodness" of women, their care for and sensitivity

to the needs of others, are those that mark them deficient in moral development. The

infusion of feeling into their judgments keeps them fi-om developing a more

independent and abstract ethical conception in which concern for others derives fi-om

principles ofjustice rather than from compassion and care. (552)

The problem here, as Gilligan goes on to establish, is that the description of morality comes

fi'om two separate definitions. "This repeated finding of developmental inferiority in women,

may, however, have more to do with the standard by which development has been measured

than with the quality of women's thinking per se" (Gilligan, 557). Masculine morality, as

characterized by Kohlberg, stems fi-om patriarchal ideas about right and wrong and the

pursuit ofjustice. Using the matriarchal/patriarchal dichotomies identified on the chart in

 42

Appendix A, we can see how patriarchal individuals are goal-oriented, striving to move in a

straight line and to find the universal truth that the quest for knowledge will unveil. This

description dovetails nicely into Kohlberg's moral system with its idea that justice is an

absolute, a universal knowable and attainable good. In a feminist perspective, such as

Gilligan's, with an acceptance ofa multiplicity of views that situates morality in whatever

decision does the least harm, the idea of a single, knowable and attainable moral good is

irrelevant.

In her studies of women, Gilligan found that rather than a search for justice, the

prominent force for women is "the wish not to hurt others, and the hope that in morality lies a

way of solving conflicts so that no one will get hurt" (553). Gilligan's studies point to

kindness and caring as the primary factors imderlying female moral and ethical development.

Responses to moral and ethical dilemmas that come from a system based on kindness would

differ significantly from responses that grow from a justice-based system. The differences

would be great enough to make the adherents ofthe kindness-based system seem morally

backwards to the followers of the justice-based system. In a patriarchal society, the male

system by default represents the correct response, while women's responses are easily

labeled as not only different but "as either deviant or deficient" (Gilligan, 549). Gilligan

notes the ubiquitous nature of the concept offemale moral inferiority when she cites the

following observation from Freud:

I cannot evade the notion (though I hesitate to give it expression) that for women the

level of what is ethically normal is different from what it is in men. Their superego is

never so inexorable, so impersonal, so independent ofits emotional origins as we

require it to be in men. Character-traits which critics of every epoch have brought

 43

against women —^that they show less sense ofjustice than men, that they are less
likely to submit to the great exigencies of life, thatthey are more often influenced in
theirjudgments byfeelings of affection or hostility—all these would be amply

accounted for by the modification in the formation of their super-ego whichwe have

inferred above. (Freud, in Gilligan, 551)

Although Gilligan would not haveany argument with Freud's statement thatwomen are

different from men, it is the automatic assumptionthat this difference equals moral inferiority

that is problematic. Freud "hesitates" to state thatwomen are different, because theylack

traits "required" in men, traits whose absence leave them open to criticism "brought against"

women in "every epoch."

-In our binary society, with its-insistence on a positive and negative aspect for all

concepts, it is impossible to have a difference that is not value-laden; it must be right or

wrong, good or evil, superior or inferior,male or female. In our patriarchal society, the

characteristics accompanying male behavior are superior; the male is the societal default

setting against which all behavior is judged. As Simone De Beauvoir states, "to pose

Woman is to pose the absolute Other, without reciprocity, denying against all experience that

she is a subject, a fellow human being" (1407). Traits that vary from the male ideal are

therefore indications of delayed development at best, or, more likely evidence of inherent

inferiority.

Looking at the world view through the popularization of Fromm's ideas on

matriarchal society, it seems inevitable that a patriarchal society would define difference as

negative. The patriarchal world view with its linear hierarchy polarizes existence into

good/bad binaries and cannot avoid polarizing gender into good/male and bad/female. If,
 44

instead, we were to apply a matriarchal philosophy emphasizing the circularityand cyclical

nature of the universe where differences are embraced as dualities (or even triplicities and

beyond) ratherthan binary oppositions, we could viewmale and female characteristics as

different in nature but not in value. Of course one of the ironies of the "Comparison of

Patriarchal and Matriarchal Systems" chart is that the system itself, which purports to

promote matriarchal systems, is constructed as a patriarchal binaiythat implicitly vilifies

masculine characteristics. The chart is still useful if we reread it as a listing of traits valued

by the patriarchy as opposed to traits devalued. A more fully matriarchal system would

incorporate all of these traits in a value-neutral system that accepts all modes of experience.

Escaping the patriarchy is not an easy task.

Escaping the patriarchy, at least in its narrow definition of appropriate moral

development, is what Gilligan attempts. "Gilligan sets out to demonstrate that there are two

trajectories of moral development—^the justice track, which is followed by many males and

some females, and the care track, which is followed by some females" (Meyers, 547).

Gilligan does not contend that one track is superior to the other, merely different. She also

does not state that one system is always female and the other male, rather her research shows

*that one-third of her female subjects focus on care, one-third of her female subjects focus on

justice and one-third switch back and forth between justice and care. However, of her male

subjects two-thirds focus on justice, one-third switches back and forth between justice and

care, and none focus on care" (Meyers, 547). The Skriker is not only a shape shifler, but a

moral system shifter as well. As an opportunistic fairy, she uses whichever system is most

advantageous at the moment.

 45

At the time of Gilligan's studies in the late 1970s women hadfull admission to both

levels of moral development, butmen were notable to access fully the care track. One of the
side effects of the women's rights movement, along with opening paths for women into

previously all-male professions, was to create openings for men inpreviously all female

ones, hi 1950 less then 1% of the nurses in the United States were male, and no military

nurses were male. Currently6% of the nurses workingin the generalpopulation are male,

and over 35% of the nurses in all branches of the military are male (Boivin). As men gain

entry into female professions, they also have more opportunity to fall into the caring track of

moral development. I suspect that if Gilligan's studieswere redone today, the care track

would reveal more male participants.

Using two biblical stories to underscore the difference between an ethic ofjustice and

an ethic of caring, Gilligan compares the story of Abraham and Isaac with that of the women

who confront Solomon over the parentage of a child. Abraham, following a masculine ethic

ofjustice, is willing to sacrifice his son to "demonstrate the integrity and supremacy of his

faith" (Gilligan, 581). Contrarily, the true mother who faces Solomon is willing to abandon

the truth and even forsake any hope ofjustice in order to insure the continued health and

safety of her child.

Embedded in the ethic ofjustice is the idea of fairness. Our social-political justice

system is based on the concept that if you transgress, if you break the rules of social conduct,

then you will be punished and your pimishment will be commensurate with your crime. In a

moral system based on caring, however, fauness has a very small part to play. The biblical

parable of the prodigal son illustrates of these points. In this story the younger son asks for

his inheritance in advance. He takes the money, squanders it and is reduced to abject
 46

poverty. In desperation he returns to hisfamily, asking only to be allowed to live as a servant

in his father's house. In a moral system governed by justice he might have been allowed a

place in the servants' quarters, or he might have beenturned away completely. Hisfather,

however, welcomes him home with open arms, dresseshim in fine clothes,provides a feast

to celebrate his return and restores all of the Ixixury and comfort he had enjoyed before

leaving home. The older son,whohad stayed home and had worked hard for his father, is

outraged by this reception, and pleads with his father, for the sake of justice,to turn his

brother out. Oveijoyed at his son's return, the father, working fi:om a moral track based on

kindness and caring, celebrates the return of his son instead of punishing him.

The moral track of kmdness is not without its pitfalls. Integral to moral development

is the concept of choice and responsibility. Womenwho believe they are powerlessare

unable to make a choice or take responsibility. As we shall see with Lily and Josie (and to a

lesser extent with the Skriker also) they become "childlike in the vulnerability of their

dependence and consequent fear of abandonment, they claimto wish only to please but in

return for their goodness they expect to be loved and cared for" (Gilligan, 555). The

emphasis within this moral track includes a need for others: you may be able to have solitary

justice, but you cannot have solitary kindness. Kindness and caring require a giver and

receiver, it is not an independent system. The push/pull that Josie feels in both wanting to be

rid ofthe Skriker and wanting to keep her at the same time, as well as the Skriker's need to

be wanted, can be seen in this interaction:

SKRIKER. Please, please keep me.

Pause

I'll give you a wish.

 47

JOSIE. I don't want a wish.

SKRIKER. I'll be nice.

JOSIE. It's cold all around you.

SKRIKER. I can get you out of here.

JOSIE. No. Where to? No.

SKRIKER. Josie

JOSIE. All right, I'll have a wish.

SKRIKER. Yes? Wish.

JOSIE. I wish you'd have her instead of me.

Pause. SKRIKER turns away.

Wait. I don't mind you any more.

SKRIKER. No, I'm not after you.

JOSIE. You won't hurt her? What do you want from her?

The Skriker pleads andbegs notto be sent away. She needs the companionship that Josie
offers andshe is willing to payfor it withwishes. Josie is scared of herandwants to be left

alone, but when thathappens she changes her mind. No matter howbadthe Skriker is she

still wants her back. Josie is also concerned for Lily; she needs to be reassured that her wish

did not harm her friend. Entrenched within the caring system is a need for community and a

concern for the members of that community which complicates moral choices. The necessity

to make choices that benefit yourself, others and the commimity as a whole can create

conflicts which are capable of implodingthe system and preventingthe individuals from

progressing to the higher stages of moral development.

 48

Aswith Kolhberg's stages, GilHgan's model ofmoral development through the ethics
of caring involves various steps, and it is possible for moral growth to stop or become

delayed at several places. Inaddition tothe ability tomake choices and accept responsibility
for those choices, moral growth requires the "recognition of the psychological andmoral

necessity for an equation of worth between selfand other. Responsibility for care then

includes both self and other, and the obligation not to hurt, freed from conventional

constraints, is reconstructed as a universal guideto moral choice" (Gilligan, 574). This

requirement places the Skriker in a precarious position thatshe is notalways able to

maintain. In order to complywith the moral restraint of caring she must find ways to behave

that will result in no harm to herself, her world, or to Josie and Lily. This is a requirement

that she can not accomplish.

By examining Kohlberg and Gilligan's work we can see two different tracks for

moral development and behavior. The traditional masculine idea ofjustice and fairness still

flmctions within a feminist framework, but only as one of many options instead ofthe only

available option. Gilligan's caring track establishes an alternativeway of measuringmoral

development and evaluating behavior. Gilligan, in a feminist move, choosesnot to elevate

one system as superior, but to suggest that both systems of morality can co-exist (even in the

same individual). Using the caring system as the basis for most of the Skriker's behavior, we

can uncover decent motivations behind actions that seem evil and/or reprehensible.

The Skriker is presented with a situation in which her responsibilities to provide care

for herself, for Josie and Lily, for the inhabitants of her supernatural world and, to a some

extent, the inhabitants of the natural world, are in conflict—an impossible moral dilemma.

The modem, natural world no longer believes in the supernatural world and this alienation,
 49

combined with the misuse of nature, has damaged and is destroying the Skriker's world. She

complains in her openingmonologue;

They used to leave cream in a sorcerer's apprentice. Gave the brownie a pair of
trousers to wearhave yougone? Nowthey hate us andhurthurtle faster and master.

They poison mein myrivers of blood poisoning makes my arm swelter. Can't get

them out of our head strong. {Skriker, 4)

InPeter Pan a faiiy dies every time a child says he or she doesn't believe in fairies.
Likewise in the universe of the Skriker,the supernatural world becomes sick and weak,

without the belief and devotion of the natural world. The relationship between the two

worlds is neither parasitic as Bamett suggests, norantagonistic as Nagy believes, but rather

symbiotic. Following Perrault's ideas about chaos theory and feminist theater. The Skriker
rejects patriarchal linear structures in narrative, history and social representation, in favor of
"an attempt to find organized principles in a diversity of forms" through 'the deconstruction
of linearity and introduction of difference as disrupting influences of societal norms"

(Perrault, 58-59). Aswehave already seen, within the ethic of caring we find a need for

other people. In the world of The Skriker this need transcends the interactions between

people to encompass the interactions between different realms, the natural world and the
supernatural world. In order to create connections between these two realms it is necessary

to bypass the logical constraints of patriarchic science andembrace a world open to

possibilities that defy sense and reason butare mcluded in a more primitve imderstanding of
nature.

The creatures that inhabit the Skriker's world are associated with nature and the

home, and while they are oftendangerous, they can sometimes be benevolent or helpful.
 50

Rawheadandbloodybones, the Spriggan and Jennie Greenteeth are allassociated with water.

The Spriggan and Jennie drown people who wander too close to the water they inhabit.
Rawheadandbloodybones lives inthepipes under the sink connecting him to both nature and

the home; hedrowns naughty children, butrewards the good ones. Brownies and Bogles are
also involved with home and hearth and while the brownies are primarily mischievous, the

bogles could be evil, but they can be helpful as well. Both brownies and bogles wdll leave if
you give them something (usually clothing for a brownie, but something small and personal,
like an eyelash, will work fora bogle). Black Annis, a female crone associated with the
forest, willeat children who wander into her woods. These creatures are all rooted in a pre-

technological existence with matriarchal connections. The dangers they pose comefrom

nature, instead of manufactured weapons associated with war and aggression; they use water,

teeth, and claws to cause damage.

It is easyto see how these stories couldfunction as warnings to children: don't go too

near the river or Jennie Greenteeth will get you, don't wander alone in the woods or you will

be snatched by the Spriggan, behave well at home or Rawheadandbloody-bones will drown

you. But Churchill invests these fairies with a larger, more global meaning: don't pollute the

waters, don't deforest the earth, don't destroy the delicate balance of our ecological system.

Modem abuse of the environment weakens and damages the fairies and their world ("they

poison me in my rivers"). Churchill describes the Skriker's underworld as:

Wonderful except that it is all glamour and here and there it's not working—some of

thefood is twigs, leaves, beetles, some ofthe clothes are rags, some ofthe beautiful

people have a claw hand or hideousface. But thefirst impression is ofa palace.

SKRIKER is a fairy queen, dressed grandiosely, with lapses. (28-29)

 51

The decay and damage evident under the fake glamour ofthe Skriker's world is a prediction
of what lies ahead for the natural world. Just as a canary taken into the mines succumbs to

the noxious fumes before the miners and serves as a warning, so the destruction of the

Skriker's world is a forecast of what will happen m the natural world if changesare not

made.

The centuries of neglect and abusehave takentheirtoll not only on the Skriker's

world but on the Skriker herself. From her start as the Great Goddess with "the whole of

Western culture in her unconscious" (N^) she has been reduced to "one of many, not a

major spuit buta spirit" (16). Inthis guise she is still attempting to salvage her own world,
which by extension would also save the natural world. In her diminished capacity it is

-difficult-to establish the connections she needs in order for a symbiotic relationship to

function. Both organisms in a symbioticrelationship must participate as givers and

receivers. The Skriker, serving as a representative of the supernatural world, wants to

establish (or more accurately, re-establish) the connections that allowed both worlds to

thrive. However, the relationship betweenthe natural and supernatural worlds was broken

when the modem, industrial, logocentric world ceased to believe in fairies. The long- term

effectsof this disruption are creating havoc and disintegration in both worlds, but the effects

have become evident first in the supernatural.

To heal both worlds, the Skriker attempts to reestablish their connection by stalking

two young and powerless women. As the play opens she is afterJosie who is in a mental

hospital recovering fi^om a breakdown, during which she apparently killed her baby (possibly

under the influence of the Skriker). Responding to Josie's wish, the Skriker turns her

attention to Lily, Josie's pregnant fiiend/sister. The Skriker is seeking love and accepteince.
 52

she wants to nurture and be nurtured, she wheedles, whines and begs. There is no sense of

power or control in her relentless pursuit ofthe girls. She isproceeding from a distorted and
damaged version of Gilligan's ethics ofcaring. Even her choice ofvictims is tainted by her
inability to understand the power dynamics ofmodem life. Josie andLily represent two

sides of the Great Goddess as she might exist in the natural world. Lily, a yoimgpregnant

woman is an iconof youth, birthandregeneration, while Josie, having recently killed her

own child presents the chthonic, death-wielding side ofthe goddess. Between the two girls,
the Skriker has found a form that mirrors power as she understands it from her reahn. But in

the world of modem London, the gn-ls are poor, weak and powerless. They attractthe

Skriker from the strength of their emotional needs.

The Skrikeris emotionallyneedy. She wants to be liked. She begs Josie "please,

please keep me" (10) and when the girls fight over hershe is delighted, "So you both want

me. That's nice" (27). She wheedles and cajoles, promising giftsto the girls, "ITI giveyou a

wish"(10), "I mightgive you nice things" (27), "Here I am as you can see, A fairy from a

Christmas tree. I can give you heart's desire. Help you set the world on fire" (22).

But what the Skriker gives rebounds to her. Josie wishes her away, so she goes to

Lily, Lily wishes for flowers and in granting the wish the Skriker absorbs sustenance:

Flowersfallfrom above. SKRIKER takes LILY's hand andputs it against herface.

SKRIKER. Fm warmer now, feel. (22)

There is power in the interchange: the Skriker and her world are nourished through an

interaction with the natural world. The Skriker's need for the natural world is demonstrated

in this interchange. Not only does she require spiritual nourishment, but the Skriker and her

minions face serious physical disability without acknowledgement and encouragement from
 53

the natural world. When Lilyaccepts the Skriker's gift, she is also giving a needed and

helpful gift tothe Skriker. Inthis one exchange there isa positive benefit to both the giver
and receiver.

But mostof the gifts the Skriker gives to Lily and Josie arenot helpftxl to them; they

either impose requirements orare hurtftil. Pleased with Lily, the Skriker arranges for coins
to fall out of her mouth when she talks. Vexed at Josie, she makes her bring up toads when

she speaks. The gifts or curses have more to do with the Skriker than withthegirls, as Josie
realizes when she says, "Toads, what you do that for, I'm not toads inside, it's you that's

toads" (21). Foracceptmg the Skriker's gift(even though shehadno choice) Lily has

incurred an obligation: "she's for you now" Josie tells her, "you took her money" (21).

Controlling through gifts, obligations, and punishment, the Skriker follows a circuitous route

to power. Incorporating both thepositive and negative aspects of the Great Goddess and the
Jimgian Mother Archetype, the Skriker's dealmgs withLily and Josieare based on needand

emotion, eschewing logic or any desire for justice.

In an attemptto fiilfill her emotional needs the Skrikerbrings her connection to

magic, mysticism andnature into the relations shetriesto establish with Lily andJosie. The

technology of the modem world is as mystifying and unknowable to her as the magic of her

realm seems to us. In the guise of a middle-aged American woman, she shares a drink with

Lily in a hotel baranddemands thatLily explain television to her, "So how does this work?''

(13). Lilytriesto explainthe practicalities of TV, "It has to be pluggedin so it's got power,

right, electricity, so it's on so youcanturnit on when youpress the button" (13). The

explanations are meaningless to the Skriker. The unknowable power of modem technology
 54

is apoison to her and her world. Ifshe could only understand, she might be saved, but as she
tells Lily, modem technology and society is killing her:
You people are killing me, do you know that? I am sick, I am a sick woman. Keep
your secrets, I'll find out some other way. I don't need to know these things, there
are plenty ofother things to know. Just so long as you know I'm dying I hope that
satisfies you to know I'm in pain. (15)

The science and logic oftechnology with itsImear methodology, theuse ofobservable data
to perform repeatable experiments that always provide the same result, these things are
destroying the Skriker. She comes from a world connected to nature, which isunpredictable
andvaried. The same experiment will produce different results eachtime it is undertaken.

Notscientifically observable data, but mystical ties to nature influence theresults. She
cannotimderstand the workings of television, but she can seethe unborn babythat Lilyis

carrying:

Lookat it floating in the darkwith its prettyempty head upside down, not knowing

what's waiting for it. It's beenso busy doubling and doubling and now it's just

hovering nicely decorating itselfwithhair and toenails. But onceit's bom it starts

agam, double, double, butthis tunethemind, think of the energy inthat. (16)

Electricity may be unknowable for the Skriker, butnature, the life-force, is easily seen. The

power inthe supernatural world does not come from electricity, motors, and machinery, it
comes fi-om the mind, 'think of the energy in that." The energy of the mind can create

magic.

As Bamett points out, the Skriker becomes an alchemist, able to create wealth from

dross. Unlike medieval alchemists (who were all male) the Skriker can produce nourishment
 55

from gold. One of the Striker's followers has placed a bucket of water on a cloth, "he skims

a gold film off the top of the water in the bucket whichhe makes into a cake" (18). Twisting

the Rumplestilstkin story that the Skriker recites in her opening monologue, instead of

spinning straw (useful for animal feed and insulation) into gold (shiny and pretty but with no

value as nourishment), water is turned into cake. The cake is reserved for a specific

recipient. After fending ofifseveral fairies who tried to take it, "the GREEN LADY comes

for the cake. The MAN gives it to her and she eats it. They go off together" (22). The

mating ritual revolves around the provision of food rather than a gold ring, the hard, shiny

and useless symbol of patriarchal ownership. Here is another example of an exchange of

gifts, just as the Skriker gained nourishment fi*om granting Lily's wish, so the MAN is gifted

with companionship in exchange for a cake, and the GREEN LADY is obligated to

accompany the MAN as the price of accepting the cake. The currency in the Skriker's world

revolves around gifts and obligations. No currency changes hand, no technology is used,

nature and personal interactions, tempered with magic, are the economy of the Skriker's

realm.

An economic system that ftmctions aroxmd gifts and obligations is difficult to

quantify. Does a cake always equal a mate? How many wishes are necessary to get warm

and then how long will one stay warm? Are all wishes of equal value? Consistency does not

seem to be valued in the underworld and there is danger in a world that lacks predictable

reliable responses to the same or similar stimuli. When Lily decides to follow the Skriker to

the underworld, it is largely because she knew what happened to Josie when she went there.

Josie "had a whole life" in the underworld, she was there for "years and years, longer than I

lived here" (35), but when she retumed, no time had past in the natural world. She believes
 56

"because of what Josie did I'll be back in no time. It could feel like hundreds ofyears and I

wouldn'tleave the babyfor five minutes butwhen I getbackshe won't knowI've gone"

(51). But when Lily makes it back from the Striker's realm, she finds her baby "lost and
gone for everybody was dead years and tears ago, it was another cemetery, a black whole
hundred yearns" (51-52).

Of course, in order for the Skrikerto entice Josie and Lily to follow her to the

underworld, shemust go through a fairly involved process of seduction. To gain theirtrust

andcompliance the Skriker uses her ability as a shape shifter, appearing to the girls in a

variety of different persona, covering different genders andages and including non-human

and inanimate versions of herself. The Skriker is described as "a shapeshifter and death

portent, ancient and damaged" (1). But to Lilyand Josie she is a ^WOMAN about 50...

dowdy, cardigan, could be a patient (9), "a poor old lady" (11), American woman of

about 40 who is slightlydrunlf' (12), a '^derelict WOMAN muttering and shoutingin the

street" (19), "pa?*/ ofthe sofa " (20), wearing a shortpink dress and gauzy wings" (22), "a

SMALL CHILD" (23), "afairy queen" (29), "a MONSTER" ''a smart WOMAN in mid

thirties" (36), "a MAN about (41), '"''a young woman about LILY's age" (46), "a MAN

about 40 " (48), and "a very ill old woman" (49). Identity is as fluid as everything else m the

Skriker's world. The binary oppositions of patriarchal society disappear as the Skriker

recreates herself in images that replace the static nature of the binaries with a multiplicity of

possibilities.

Our language does not have the words necessary to describe the Skriker's re

formations of herself. The breaking down of social systems that is occiirring in both the

above and below realms of the play is mirrored in the breaking down of language. Moving
 57

between the binaries of male/female, young/old, human/inhuman and animate/inanimate the

Skriker breaks free of the linear constriction of patriarchal space. Even though two of the

forms she inhabits are male, the essence of her being is feminine. Hie intensity of her

altereity canbe achieved only in a space that does notacknowledge thebinary divisions of
patriarchy. But howdo wemove outof our patriarchal system? If wetryto establish a

matriarchal rule, we are left with the same binary that we sought to escape. Matriarchy and

patriarchy aretrapped in a traditional social system that divides theworld into sets of

oppositional and antagonistic poles. These poles of opposition aremaintained bya language

system that does not give us words to reinvent society in a different form. Churchill, as she

plays with language in The Skriker, provides clues andmodels for language structures that

will break the bonds holding us in the-patriarchy.

To Monique Wittig, "matriarchyis no less heterosexual than patriarchy: it is onlythe

sex of the oppressor that changes" (2015). In this definitionwe have reached an impasse, a

place where our language fails to provide usefulterminology for matriarchal space, free of

binary oppositions. Talking aboutmatriarchal/patriarchal spaces, aboutmasculine linearity

and feminine circularity, we have only examples that demonstrate binary oppositions. Wittig

uses the term oppression to describe societal segregation based on gender, stating that

"consciousness of oppression is not only a reaction to (fight against) oppression. It is also

the whole conceptual reevaluation of the social world and its reorganization with new

concepts, from the point of view of oppression" (2020). A radical revision of language is

necessary to destroy the "social system which is based on the oppression of women by men

and which produces the doctrine of difference between the sexes to jiistify this oppression"

(2021).
 58

Wittig's understanding of the need for language revisions is relevant to theplay with

its ongoing struggle with language. The Skriker's speech is filled withverbal associations

that destroy and restructure traditional meaning. Examples of this abound: whenthe Skriker

introduces a new scene her statement "and now in the hotel bar none but the brave" starts out

as a description of a setting ("and nowin the hotel bar") andturns into a character description

("bar none but the brave") (12). The acceptable structures for Englishdo not allowa change

of meaning in the middle of a sentence via a transitional word that unites the two sections

and carries multiple meanings. Meanings are also manipulated by the Skriker using words

that sound alike. When she says "your Jung men and Freud eggs" (32), the meaning of the

young men and fned eggs become complicated by the association with Jimg and Freud.

Through this verbal play she aligns Freud and Jung along gender lines. Freud is associated

with female reproductive fimction (eggs), while Jimg takes the masculine role through his

juxtaposition vwth men. Churchill has cast Freud, founder of modem psychiatry, as the

mother, giving birth to a new science that opened language and human behavior to multiple

interpretations. Jimg serves as Churchill's father, who restricts the interpretations by

defining them as his archetypes. The act of definitions is also an act of limitation, since for

every quality that the definition includes there is a there a throng of qualities excluded.

The title of Wittig's well-known essay discussing the restrictions of language, "One

Is Not Bom a Woman," comes from Simone De Beauvoir's text, The Second Sex. Beauvoir

argued that the Western gender binary was not equal and complementary, as in the Yin and

Yang of Taoist philosophy, but weighted in favor of the masculine. Our language is

organized around the assumption that gender is masculine unless specifically denoted as

female. Woman as Beauvoir's Other must always be separately defined in order to be

 59

included (the doctor will be presumed to be male unless she is explicitly called the woman
doctor). The Skriker inher continual moiphing, changing gender, age and economic status,
isthe personification ofthe Other in her quest for connection and acceptance. Josie and Lily
as disenfranchised young women existing onthefringes of theirsociety are also

manifestations of the Other. While Beauvoir uses this term for all women, the characters in

The Skriker exist at the lower levels of the social/political power structures.

Because they are outside ofthe masculine locus of power, the Skriker and her world

areoppressed bythe rigid definitions and constraints of patriarchal society. In anattempt to

create agency, the Skriker takes onand discards personae, crossing theuncrossable borders

of our culture. She demonstrates through gender, age and economythe performative traits of

all of these aspects of life which Judith Butler considers crucial in describing gender. "There

is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; thatidentity is performatively

constituted by the very 'expressions' that are saidto be its results" (25). When the Skriker

appears to Lily as "a MAN about iO" (41), it is nota drag act, the Skriker is male because
the behavior is male, the "expressions" of gender are enough to create the gender.

To ask whether the Skriker is male or female is meaningless; the Skriker is whatever

the persona of the moment calls for. She is "an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that

not onlyhas produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature

that questions the definitions of lightand darkand givesthem new meanings" (Anzaldua,

182). The Skrikeris attemptingto fimction as a link betweenthe two worlds. Her

interactions with Lily and Josie are designed not to destroy the girls, but to use them to create

a mixture and blending that allows one to navigate both worlds. It is in this joining that the

possibilityof salvationoccurs, but the joining can only occur in matriarchal space. It
 60

requires a relinquishing of the linear binary polarities embedded inthepatriarchy. Thus, the
Skriker, Josie and Lily become mixed, carrymg the imprintof many different possible

incarnations within themselves.

Anzaldua brings us the term mestiza (originally used as a peqorative descriptionfor

Latin American woman of mixed Native American and European ancestry, but used by

Anzaldua in as a positive descriptor) to describe a woman caught between many worlds, all

pulling herin different directions and none allowing her to achieve herfull human potential.
Constricted by the "borders and walls that are supposed to keep undesirable ideas out"

(Anzaldua, 180),the mestiza and the Skrikerare stuck in the spaces betweenthe borders,

spaces that Anzaldua calls the borderlands. The mestiza's "role is to link people with each

other—the Blacks with Jews with Indians with Asians with whites with extraterrestrials. It is

to transfer ideas and information from one culture to another" (Anzaldua, 184). Like the

mestiza the Skriker attempts to forge a link between worlds; the natural and supernatural

worlds—a link that would bring a feminine ethos back into a world ruled by the masculine

logos, and recotmect the cyclical qualities ofnature to the linear scientific character of

modem life.

As we see at the end ofthe play, the world above ground has continued to deteriorate

during the time that Lily and the Skriker are underground. The attachment that would have

been beneficial to both worlds has failed. The Skriker is too weak and damaged to

effectively heal a world so far entrenched in patriarchal policies. Her failure seems obvious

from the beginning of the play. "A shapeshifler and death portent, ancient and damaged" (1),

speaking in twisted speech that does not follow the logical flow of normal narrative, is not a

figure to give the audience much hope for a glorious finale.

 61

The logical scientific progress ofthe modem world has created dangers and has
removed the old consolations that once were provided for the misfortunes of life. In a more

benign past with an ^rarian culture

it was always possible to think whatever your personal problem, there's always
nature. Spring will retum even if it's without me. Nobody loves mebutat least it's a

sunny day. This had been a comfort to people as long as they've existed. But it's not
available any more. Sorry. Nobody loves meand the sun's going to kill me. Spring
will retum and nothing will grow. (43-44)

The mpture between thenatural and supernatural worlds, between men and women, between
oldand young, all binary oppositions enforced in patriarchal society, have destroyed hope.
Hope was God's gift to mankind; crawling out ofPandora's Box after all theevils that plague
the world were set loose. Withouthope you can still have an ethical basis rooted injustice.

Rules can be made and laws established and enforced. Behavior can be judged and the

appropriate punishments and awards meted out. Butonce hope enters the equation, behavior

can alter based on the 'hope' ofa future benefit. Hope brings in the abilityto justify

behavior that flouts rules in the interest of achieving a better outcome. The kinder, gentler

nation is a fiction exposed by the warrior response, which requires revenge and retaliation.

The lack of hope expressedby Churchill's Skrikercan be interpreted using the texts

of a several feminist writers and theorists. Churchill has created in her Skriker a creature that

is a reflection of the absolute Other, disenfranchised and cut off from power and influence

along with the other inhabitants of her realm as wellas anyone above groimd who is not part

of the white-male-economic-socio-political power base. Skulking in the shadows and

comers of the modem world, the Skriker is a supematural seamstress trying to stitch together
 62

the growing rift between the two realms. Her stitching isdamaged and inefficient. The
seams imravel and the gap widens faster than she can mend them. Thebest she cando is
provide a temporary infusion ofenergy to her realm: ''Now I've some blood inmy all in
veins, nowI've some light in mylifeline, nightline, nightlight a candle to light youto

bedlam" (51). But it isonly a candle, a small and temporary aid inthe darkness, a mild
palliative rather than a substantial healing. The ethic ofcaring fails, even though it is as
strong morally as the justice ethic, because our language does not support it. As the Skriker
tries to navigate through theplay using a matriarchal disregard of narrative progression and
the logic ofjustice, she is confronted by language that demands the expression of binary
oppositions. She is good or bad, right orwrong, justorunjust. She cannot understand the
language used to explain the everyday elements ofthe technology ofthe natural world, like
television;

SKRIKER. So how does it work?

LILY. How?

SKRIKER. How does it—

LILY. You want to turn it off?

SKIKER. No, how does that picture get here, From wherever.

LILY. How does it work?

SKRIKER. Yes.

LILY. Oh you know, I don't know, you know, it's—isn't it the same in America?

SKRIKER, Take your time. In your own words.

 63

But there are no words that work. Her expressions are embedded in a language that wants to

limittiie acceptance of numerous realities andfunnel meaning into a narrow channel

mandated by patriarchal power.

The playends on a bleak note. Lily returns from the Skriker's world to find that 100

years havepast, "it was another cemetery" (52). The world thatshehad "hoped to save ...

hoped I'd make thefury better" (52) had become even worse. "They were stupid stupefied
stewpotbellied not evilweevil devil takethe hindmost of them anyway" (52). Lilyis met by

"'an OLD WOMAN and a DEFORMED GIRL sitting together'^ (51); they are her

granddaughter and great-great-great granddaughter. "77*e GIRL bellows in wordless rage at

LILT' (52). Language, whichthroughoutthe play has been struggling to retain meaning,is

lost entirely. Patriarchal language with its narrative driven logic is broken by the vast

injustices in the world, but there is no matriarchal language to replace it. In the end,

Churchill holds out no hope for the future, but instead shows how the linear projection of a

patriarchal, justice-based societycan result in a world of deformed and silent and enraged

children. As the absolute Other, the Skriker and her followers are not strong enough to break

the hold of the patriarchy. Unlike Anzaldua's mestiza, she is not able to maintain her place

in the space between the matriarchy and patriarchy to establish a nurturing place. The

connections that the Skriker sou^t to forge, uniting the upper and lower worlds, have failed

to hold. The Skriker, a death portent, is foretelling the demise of our culture without offering

hope for a new beginnmg.

 64

Appendix A: Comparison ofPatriarchal and Matriarchal Systems

Takenfrom The Witches Well (http://witcheswelLcom/text/lessons/matri-patri.txt)

P= Patriarchy
M= Matriarchy

Philosophy n world view

P- Linear, hierarchal, atomistic, dissecting

M- Circular, cyclical, spiral, egalitarian, Holistic

P- Separation of God/man, body/spirit/mind

M- Integration of total self, andof self'community/nature

P- Polarizationn world vs. god, good vs. evil, heavenvs. hell, love vs. hate n extremes,
absolutes
M- All is seen in many harmonious forms, dualitites, triplicities, etc.

Community Interaction

P- Private ownersMp of property, inheritance: father to son

M- non-ownership of property, inheritance: mother to daughter

P- private ownership (by males) of: name, wife, children, land, slaves, accumulated wealth
M- private ownership (male & female) of special, "magickal" objects, household items, etc.
P- Nature and lesser beings are seen as objects to be exploited
M- Nature is seen as being in balance and needs to maintain that balance

P- Consumeroriented n things to be used up (destroyed) leaving waste products such as

trash, Sulphur dioxide, radiation
M- Human/Nature oriented, non-destructive energy sources (solar, wind, water, methane,
etc.)

P- Seemingly limitless food supply, energy, resources to be used up

M- Conservation, recycling

P- resistance to research and experimentation. Approach is by dissection. "Rational",

scientific
M- Encourage researchand experimentation by personal experience, observation, holistic
approach, "empirical"
 65

Religious Systems

P- SkynFatherfiGod (thunder-fire-sun)
M- Earth, Mother Goddess (Water, Earth, Moon)

P- Monotheistic or modified monotheistic (major god-lesser god, or nebulous ideas suchas

the trinity)
M- Pantheistic, polytheistic, emphasis on Goddess (mystery of child birth) and Herconsort.
(Gods as archetypes)

P- God in high or inaccessible places: clouds, heaven, moimtain tops, fire

M- Gods/Goddesses are in low and accessible places, erp, caves, springs, wells (womb of the
Goddess) and from within

P- An intermediary is needed
M- Approachable by all

P- Worship is extremely serious

M- Joyful: "All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals"

- Moral System

P- Regulated by law from God,prophets, priests, ministers, or othersin authority

M- "An ye harm none, do what thou wilt"

Sexuality

P- Sexually repressive, sin, guilt

M- Sexually open, sometimes religious expression

P- Sex is seen as either extremely sacred (for procreation only) or animal lust
M- Sex is seen as a joyful expression

P- Monogamy (except males)

M- Monogamy, polygamany, polyandry, open relationships

P- Heterosexual (homophobic)
M- Heterosexual, homosexual, bi-sexual, acceptance of others

P- Maximum difference in dress and appearance, especially hair

M- Much cross dressing, uni-sexual clothing, much ornamentation

P- The body is seen as ugly, to be covered, something of shame

M- Litde body covering, much nudity, coverings accents body
 66

P- Rape used for power and control

M- No rape

P- Possibility of illegitimate children, bastards

M- No illegitimacy, a mother always knows her child

P- Virginity (in females) considered to be a virtue

M- Self-determination is seen as a virtue
 67

Appendix B: Matriarchal Point of View

Taken from Matriarchy.info
(http://www.matriarchy.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2&Itemid=l)

Matriarchal Point of View Patriarchal Point of View

Life proceeds in cycles. Life proceeds linear.

Through a constantly repeating rhythm—day In linear progression you'll miss

for day, year for year, life for life—you have opportunities, because the past doesnt come
the opportunity to do, what has to be done, back. Therefore you don't have a choice:
again and again. There are no missed chances. you have to do it now/today/this year/this
You are focused on the future with it's new life—otherwise it's over. You are focused
possibilities. on the past with its lost possibilities.

Optimistic Pessimistic

The individual is free to act, when 'the time is The individual is imder pressure to neglect
right.' something.

Result; New creative decisions arise from Result: Inner and/or external intimidation
inner freedom. upon failure makes blame possible and
therewith manipulation and control.
No hierarchy at all. Everything is hierarchical.

Every person takes responsibility—first for The responsibility is always on

her/himself, second for the others und third others: superiors. That is so m the family, in
for the whole 'living together.' your club, at school, in the community, in the
company, in your country...
The only rule is:
You can do everything but not harm anybody I leave responsibility to the "more powerful"
or anything. and let go self-government out of my sight.

With that every being is autonomously in The topmost is a god who at last is getting
charge for oneself. caught in everything. Consequently nobody
takes on responsibility.
The proverb "Do unto others as you would
have others do unto you" comes alive and is
not just told to little kids.
 68

There is no lawmaking. General laws for every matter.

Without hierarchy there are neither judges nor A handful of rulers define laws which are
other authorities who can establish or execute functional for themselves (all persons can
statutes. That means; nobody is this only have themselves as criterion).
presumptuous to define what is right or wrong
for others. At misbehavior the causer will experience
violence of some kind as is: required money,
At misbehavior all community members work humiliated, locked up, become killed.
together to figure out, what is the source S/he will be convicted in accordance with the
behind and how such trouble could be norms of others and then kicked out ofthe
avoided in the future. Everybody tries to community instead of being reintegrated.
integrate the causer and by doing this kids
learn the skills of integration. Nobody feels responsible for any
misbehavior, no parents for their kids, yes
They feel responsiblefor the malfimction all and even not the offender for himself!
together.
In patriarchywisdom is not a big value.
The power of wisdom is the basis for custom Wisdom is not taught to children, neither by
and habit. From there comes a enormous role models nor by explanation. Therefore
strength which establishes order and makes adults don't know what to do with this term,
social relationships possible. too.

No laws are necessary for acting wisely, but Or could you tell the last time when you got
rather experience. in touch with true wisdom?

The status ofwomen is equivalent. The status of women is of low rank.

Free and self-ruled. Restricted liberty.

Vaginal blood is seen as neutral or often as Vaginal blood taboo (blood fi-om defloration,
sacred. menstruation and birth)

Choice of partner, spouse or husband, besides No free choice of husband; lovers are not
the choice of lover(s). allowed.

Economical relationship with husbands. The mixture of economical and emotional

Emotional relationship with lovers. relationship in one makes every decision a
compromise.

Divorce at any time. No divorce of free will.

The clan takes care ofthe kids, whatever the Nobody cares about the kids, while or after
mother is doing. the fights of divorce.
 69

Women have control over reproductivity. Men have control over reproductivity.

No more kids than the clan can feed. Overpopulation, hungry and starvingpeople.

The physical condition of the mother is The female body is a bearing machine.
decisively.
"Religion" (cult) is in accordance with Religion is in accordance with the will of the
"Mother Nature" (earth and mother as a father, (obedience to "Godthe father" or the
symbol of caring for, avoiding unnatural "head" of the family, subduing nature).
manner).

Lust is wanted, welcomed and Avoidance of lust; asceticism.

institutionalized.

Spontaneousness, adoration of nature. Hindrance to and fear of nature.

No professionals. Religious professionals, "Priests".

Sacral and profane is identical. Separation of the sacral and profane.

Female or male shamans. Male shamans.

Easy-going guidance. Severe code of conduct.

Accepting and encouraging sexuality. Limiting and devaluating sexuality.

No traumatizing of any kind. Genital mutilation (circumcision,

infibulation).

Female initiation with first menstruation Female virgin taboo; a penis penetrating the
(menarche): "Becoming a woman". hymen: "Becoming a woman". (Rape counts,
too!)

Masturbation, love between girls and boys Love between kids and masturbation is
and then teenagers is not limited and rigidly suppressed.
accepted.
Love between teenagers is strongly
controlled or forbidden.

No homosexuality. Homosexual tendencies: either open and

ambitious or rigorously taboo.

No incest. hicest tendencies with rigid taboo.

 70

Absence of concubinage, prostitution or Concubinage, prostitution and pornography

pornography. belong to everyday life.

Supported unboundedly and accepted sex life Prudish, suppressive, limiting sexuality,
from childhood to youth to adulthood to age. appearance of sick behaviors, trimming the
Freely flowing lustful energies lead to a genitals (circumcision and infibulation), lead
healthy body and spirit. to traumas and their aftereffects: suffering
people, who need to compensate.

Absence of enforced monogamy. Lifelong enforced monogamy.

Polygamy is unusual. Polygamy is common.

Social structure: nonviolent. Social structure: violent/ sadistic.

The difference will be appreciated. The difference will be turned down.

Individuals, who differ from others in their Individuals, who differ from "the norm" are
personal attributes or characteristics are treated poorly as "unsuitably", they are
comprehended as inspiring and impulse humiliated, insulted, ridiculed, tortured,
giving, or attract at least interest. outcast, discriminated, excluded: Redheads,
homosexuals, such of different faith or race,
Their company is welcomed. dissidents, disabled, foreigners, "lunatics" of
every kind.
Diversity is regarded as enrichment.
They are treated badly.
Newboms are expected to bring "gifts" to the
society. Children—siblings or students—are not
supported according to their personality and
The personality of babies and children will be individual needs, but treated primarily
studied, in order that the community is able to identically.
help them develop their special abilities and
talents for the advantage of everybody. Egalitarian adjustment is called "fair".

From the first moment on each person gets Parents don't know their children. They only
what s/he needs to succeed her/his personal know facts about them.
tasks in this life.

Science tries to understand nature to get Science tries to understand nature to get
adjusted to. control over.

Women have control over fertility. Men have control over fertility.
 71

Nature/the universe is viewed as a gift. Nature/the imiverse is viewed as consumer

good.
That is worshipped in every days cultural
life—^in spiritual spheres as in artistic. Those who have money grab.

All creatures are included and getting benefit The life itself and the natural circulations are
of it. disregarded.

All creatures are included and getting deficit

of it

People are committed to life. People are committed to death.

The symbol they pray to is a vivid pregnant The symbol they pray to is a tortured dead
woman. body on a cross.

New life is blessed. Swords and soldiers are blessed.

The principle element is sharing. The principle element is fighting for power,
against the evil, for money, against cancer,
Distribute, spread out, draw in, take part, for acknowledgement, to survive, against the
involve, partition, give and take. enemy, for a husband, for a divorce and
getting the kids, for an intact facade...
 72

Works Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria. "La ConcienciaDe La Mestiza: Towardsa New Conscioxmess." Feminist

TheoryReader. Ed. Carole R. McCannand Seimg-Kyung Kim. New York:
Routledge, 2003, 179-187.

Aston, Elaine. Caryl Churchill Plymouth, Northcote House, 1997.

—, Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights, 1900-2000. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Barger, Robert N. "A Summary of Lawrence Kohlberg's Stagesof Moral Development."

Kohlberg's Theory ofMoral Development. 2000. University ofNotre Dame. 17 Oct.
2005 <http://www.nd.edu/~rbarger/kohlberg.html>.

Bamett, Claudia. '"Reveangance is gold mine, sweet': Alchemy and Archetypes in Caryl
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