A Postfeminist Criticism of Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom and Fen
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26750/paperKeywords:
postfeminism, feminism, gender relations, female identity, individuality.Abstract
Abstract
This study is chiefly a postfeminist criticism of two of Caryl Churchill’s plays, Vinegar Tom (1976) and Fen (1982). In its introduction part, the topic, playwright and background information of the era are identified, and postfeminism as the theory of the paper is introduced in order to discover and analyze postfeminist issues in the texts of the plays and respond to the basic research questions as follows: what are the postfeminist elements that can be found in both texts? How do women represent the postfeminist new possibilities of individuality and sexuality? What are the implications of femininity and its perception in postfeminism? Do women celebrate the opportunity of career and financial independence or they retreat to domesticity? How do women embody postfeminist issues of marriage, family and children, and what is the position of men in that embodiment? Then, both plays are analyzed respectively in their chronological order through the use of postfeminist theory. The study is significant as it assists the readers to gain a better understanding of postfeminism, identify its elements in both texts, and analyze gender relations in the texts and in the contemporary life which helps both genders, specifically women, to comprehend equality, gender roles, domestic life, individual independence, comparison between women’s circumstances in the past and in the contemporary life, their various voices, the nature of new life, their relationship and cooperation with men, and the choice between their individual promotion and their familial duties or their coexistence.
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