Top Girls

“I knew coming to dinner with a pope we should keep off religion.”

Isabella’s statement, in response to Pope Joan’s angry declaration that the Church of England is “heresy,” reads as an ironic understatement. Isabella is enforcing the rules of dinner party etiquette, trying to maintain a pleasant atmosphere, while Pope Joan is speaking as a former head of the Catholic Church, making a claim that—centuries after Joan’s death—led to actual wars and executions. The triviality of etiquette—often associated with women as keepers of domestic tranquility—is ironically juxtaposed with the world-historic dimensions of these women’s lives.

ISABELLA: Well I always travelled as a lady and I repudiated strongly any suggestion in the press that I was other than feminine.

MARLENE: I don’t wear trousers in the office. I could but I don’t.

Isabella makes this statement in response to Pope Joan talking about dressing like a man. Because she was travelling and exploring alone, she had to repeatedly defend her claim to her gender. Dressing as a lady means travelling in clothing that isn’t always comfortable or practical. Marlene’s response demonstrates that she also feels as if she must demonstrate her gender. She is working within a patriarchal world, and the competence, leadership, and confidence that have enabled her success are considered masculine qualities.

“I had thought the Pope would know everything. I thought God would speak to me directly. But of course he knew I was a woman. […] And I realized I did know the truth. Because whatever the Pope says, that’s true.”

When living as a man, Pope Joan realized that men in power are shaping the world, not the other way around. She was terrified when she became a cardinal, but as pope, she discovered that the pope shapes the church and determines what is right and wrong. Throughout history, especially in Pope Joan’s lifetime, women haven’t been allowed into the spaces where truth and knowledge were being created.

“Oh God, why are we all so miserable?”

Marlene’s question betrays a dissatisfaction that she will do her best to hide for the rest of the play. She doesn’t open up to the women about the reasons for her misery, undoubtedly for the sake of dramatic structure, but she demonstrates that capitalism is not designed to make people happy. Valuing oneself through work is denying significant parts of the human experience. Marlene gave up her child for a career, and she’s ostensibly alone celebrating her promotion with her imaginary friends, suggesting that she has no one at all who wants to toast her in real life.

“The Marquis said it wasn’t an order, I could say no, but if I said yes I must always obey him in everything.”

Griselda tells the women about the Marquis’s proposal. She’s allowed to turn it down, but if she marries him, she is signing away her right to consent or have any autonomy at all without her husband’s approval. Marlene is disturbed by this, but Griselda is unbothered, noting that she would have to obey any husband, so it might as well be a Marquis.

“I didn’t live a woman’s life. I don’t understand it.”

Pope Joan makes a significant point that because she was living as a man, particularly a man in the exact position where she would be most likely to even encounter a woman, she only knew a life of male privilege past the age of 12. But this isn’t entirely true, because for the last hours of her life, she had been discovered. She learned the pain of childbirth, and she was met with violence for her gender and stoned to death, as if she was receiving a life’s worth of oppression at once.

“I beat him till he cried out and promised he would never order anyone to hit us again. Afterwards there was a terrible fuss. The nobles were horrified. ‘We wouldn’t even dream of stepping on your Majesty’s shadow.’ And I had hit him with a stick.”

In a subtle echo of Dull Gret’s assembling an army to fight the demons in Hell, Lady Nijo had gathered all the women to attack the emperor in retaliation for allowing all the men to beat the women for fun. Nijo is articulating what Pope Joan also discovered, which is that these so-called great men from history, even those who were considered divinely powerful, are just men. Nijo and the rest of his concubines knew this better than anyone, as they saw the emperor at his most private and vulnerable.

“I’d had enough, I was mad, I hate the bastards. I come out my front door that morning and shout till my neighbors come out and I said, ‘Come on, we’re going where the evil come from and pay the bastards out.’ And they all come out just as they was from baking or washing in their […] aprons, and we push down the street and the ground opens up and we go through a big mouth into a street just like ours but in hell. […] You just keep running on and fighting you didn’t stop for nothing. Oh we give them devils such a beating.”

Dull Gret barely speaks throughout the dinner party, but near the end of the act, she launches into a long tale about leading the women on her street into battle in hell. Her story echoes Nijo’s beating of the emperor, suggesting that women in any time and any place might reach their wits end, join together, and fight back. 

MARLENE: So you won’t tell them you’re getting married?

JEANINE: Had I better not?

MARLENE: It would probably help.

Marlene is sending Jeanine off to interview for jobs with companies that will find her engagement to be a liability, even though most of the men likely have wives at home. Marlene writes her off and doesn’t give her the chance to interview for a job that would allow her to travel, which is what she wants. Marlene has had to minimize her personal life to make it in the world, so she expects that other women should have to do that too. She punishes Jeanine for wanting to have both a personal life and a fulfilling career.

“I don’t care if you are sick on me, I don’t mind sick. I don’t mind blood. If I don’t get away from here I’m going to die.”

Angie does some things that others find strange and off-putting, and she rarely articulates why she does things like lick blood from Kit’s finger or threaten to murder Joyce. But this outburst suggests that underneath her behavior is the same intense restlessness the other women in the play experience. At 16, she is starting to be treated like an adult, and more specifically like an adult who isn’t doing anything right. She doesn’t know how to get out, but she’s agitated and knows that she needs to do it.

“If your face fits at school it’s going to fit other places too. It wouldn’t make no difference to Angie. She’s not going to get a job when jobs are hard to get. I’d be sorry for anyone in charge of her. She’d better get married. I don’t know who’d have her, mind. She’s one of those girls might never leave home.”

Joyce is talking about Angie, who dropped out of high school. Joyce dropped out too, and now she’s poor. She’s encouraging Kit to stay in school and live the life of someone who fits in, something Angie will never have. Even if she had stayed in school, she isn’t suited for a job or marriage. Later, Angie will come up as someone who is failed by capitalism.

“Howard thinks because he’s a fella the job was his as of right. Our Marlene’s got far more balls than Howard and that’s that.”

Nell is trying to compliment Marlene, but she is reinforcing the idea that leaders must be men. The only way she could beat Howard is if she had testicles. This is one example of how the women who work at Top Girls are reinforcing the patriarchy.

WIN: You could marry him and go on working.

NELL: I could go on working and not marry him.

Win and Nell are discussing an issue at the crux of the conversation on women in the workplace. Win believes it’s possible to have a job and a marriage at the same time. But Nell expects that marriage will require her to “play house” (48), and in the current climate, she will likely never go as far as she wants to go in her career if she is also caring for a family.

WIN: And you are what age now?

LOUISE: I’m in my early forties.

WIN: Exactly?

LOUIS: Forty-six.

WIN: It’s not necessarily a handicap, well it is of course we have to face that, but it’s not necessarily a disabling handicap, experience does count for something.

Louise is an experienced and highly competent candidate, and 46 is certainly not close to retirement age. Companies want younger women whom they deem attractive. Her age is only a handicap to them if they’re hiring her for her appearance. This is an instance in which the agency is just feeding into the patriarchy.

“They will notice me when I go, they will be sorry I think to lose me, they will offer me more money of course, I will refuse. They will see when I’ve gone what I was doing for them.”

Louise is making a good wage at a job she has worked for 21 years, and she asks Win to help her find a job because she needs a change. But her main motivation for leaving is because she has become invisible, and so has her labor. She won’t even take a raise, because if she stays, they still won’t see her. She won’t be able to see the results of her actions, but she knows that they’ll fall apart without her, and she just wants to be seen for the excellent employee she has been.

“I don’t care greatly for working with women, I think I pass for a man at work.”

Louise echoes Pope Joan, which is, of course, who she played in the first act. But in Pope Joan’s case, she was fooling them into believing that she was a man. Louise, at 46, feels un-sexed. In an office environment where she is the only woman, and she is unmarried with no children, she feels masculine and doesn’t try to prove her femininity like Isabella. She doesn’t like working with women, because, as she explains, younger women are coming up with a new confidence that goes along with their femininity.

“You shouldn’t talk too much at an interview.”

Although Win’s advice to Louise is completely sincere, it’s certainly ironic to audiences. The purpose of an interview is to give an impression as a potential employee. Win is suggesting that the way to be a good potential employee is to show them that she can be quiet. Louise reassures her that she usually doesn’t talk very much at all about herself.

“I never consider people’s feelings.”

Shona is trying to convince Nell that she is older than she is and has experience. She is the opposite of Louise, who also has an issue for being older (and tries to pretend she’s a bit younger) despite decades of experience. The juxtaposition of the two shows that women can’t win, and it’s almost impossible to make a living outside of specific parameters. Shona is responding to Nell’s warning that employers don’t like to hire women because they’re too worried about feelings, but in the process she accidentally insults herself. This comic moment highlights the absurdity of a capitalist economy in which empathy is a handicap.

WIN: She’s a nice kid. Isn’t she?

MARLENE: She’s a bit thick. She’s a bit funny.

WIN: She thinks you’re wonderful.

MARLENE: She’s not going to make it.

Marlene’s assessment of Angie is very harsh and bleak. Angie idolizes Marlene, and she has shown up in her office because she believes that she is her biological daughter, which, as Marlene knows, she in fact is. Win only spends a few minutes with Angie before she falls asleep, but she is generous. Win believes that she is helping people by working at the agency, and she is a bit more optimistic. Marlene sees Angie’s employment potential as non-existent, so she writes her daughter off.

JOYCE: She’s a little girl Angie sometimes plays with because she’s the only child lives really close. She’s like a little sister to her really. Angie’s good with little children.

MARLENE: Do you want to work with children, Angie? Be a teacher or a nursery nurse?

JOYCE: I don’t think she’s ever thought of it.

Joyce tries to reframe Angie and Kit’s friendship in a way that makes Angie look magnanimous and talented. Marlene immediately fits that talent within capitalism, which Joyce dismisses. She already knows that Angie will have a hard time in the world.

“You was the most stupid, for someone so clever you was the most stupid, get yourself pregnant, not go to the doctor, not tell.”

Joyce’s accusation toward Marlene echoes the story of Pope Joan. But it wasn’t stupidity in either case. Both were terrified—Joan of being found out and having her entire life crash down, and Marlene of essentially the same thing, but being forced to spend her life taking care of the baby instead of being killed. Marlene was fortunate that Joyce was willing to take Angie, although in this scene, Marlene seems to almost (but not quite) regret not raising her daughter.

MARLENE: I think the eighties are going to be stupendous.

JOYCE: For who?

MARLENE: For me. I think I’m going up up up.

Marlene feels the new decade is full of opportunities. She can tell that she’s going to advance in her career, and she’s excited about it. But Joyce is looking ahead with fear for how the country is going under Thatcher. She sees how hard she works just to make a bare minimum living, and she knows that the world that Marlene wants is one that won’t be good for Angie.

“I hate the working class. […] It doesn’t exist any more, it means lazy and stupid.”

Marlene has convinced herself that there is no longer a class divide because she doesn’t experience the problems of the lower class. Her individualism has given her blinders. She wants to believe that her success is her own, and that she is achieving because she is special. She doesn’t want to admit that the only reason she has any of it was because she was lucky that Joyce took in Angie.