Failed Motherhood in "Top Girls" Anonymous College

Top Girls, an all-female play written by Caryl Churchill in the early 1980s, focuses almost exclusively on the new struggles women faced in trying to become integrated into and obtain success in the workplace. This struggle is emphasized most obviously through comparisons to the ways women throughout history have obtained power and success, and conversations between women who are forced to cut each other down in order to excel, but more subtly this struggle is examined through the idea of losing children. The emphasis on losing, giving up, and abandoning children in Top Girls serves as the ever-present and very painful representation of the mutual exclusivity of family and career pursuits, particularly for women, which makes it seemingly impossible to succeed as a women in the corporate world.

Lady Nijo gives up her children to preserve a life of luxury, “Patient” Griselda allows her husband to take her children – presumably to be killed – to assure him of her obedience and love, Pope Joan feels no sorrow for the baby that was killed with her when she was revealed to be a woman in the papacy, and Marlene allows her daughter Angie to be raised by Marlene’s sister so that she can maintain her career. Marlene, as well as most of...