SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ
İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEBİYATI ANABİLİM DALI İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEBİYATI BİLİM DALI
THE BRAVE WOMEN CHARACTERS IN OPPOSITION TO THATCHERISM IN CARYL CHURCHILL’S PLAYS
Pınar AKSU ADANAŞ
YÜKSEK LİSANS TEZİ
Danışman
Dr. Öğr. Üyesi SEMA ZAFER SÜMER
T. C.
SELÇUK ÜNİVERSİTESİ Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Müdürlüğü
Bilimsel Etik Sayfası
Öğre
n
cin
in
Adı Soyadı Pınar AKSU ADANAŞ
Numarası 104208001006
Ana Bilim / Bilim
Dalı İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı
Programı Tezli Yüksek Lisans Doktora
Tezin Adı THE BRAVE WOMEN CHARACTERS IN OPPOSITION
TO THATCHERISM IN CARYL CHURCHILL’S PLAYS
Bu tezin proje safhasından sonuçlanmasına kadar ki bütün süreçlerde bilimsel etiğe ve akademik kurallara özenle riayet edildiğini, tez içindeki bütün bilgilerin etik davranış ve akademik kurallar çerçevesinde elde edilerek sunulduğunu, ayrıca tez yazım kurallarına uygun olarak hazırlanan bu çalışmada başkalarının eserlerinden yararlanılması durumunda bilimsel kurallara uygun olarak atıf yapıldığını bildiririm.
SELÇUK ÜNİVERSİTESİ Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Müdürlüğü
Yüksek Lisans Tezi Kabul Formu
Öğre
n
cin
in
Adı Soyadı Pınar AKSU ADANAŞ
Numarası 104208001006
Ana Bilim / Bilim
Dalı İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı
Programı Tezli Yüksek Lisans Doktora Tez Danışmanı Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Sema ZAFER SÜMER
Tezin Adı THE BRAVE WOMEN CHARACTERS IN OPPOSITION TO THATCHERISM IN CARYL CHURCHILL’S PLAYS
Yukarıda adı geçen öğrenci tarafından hazırlanan THE BRAVE WOMEN
CHARACTERS IN OPPOSITION TO THATCHERISM IN CARYL
CHURCHILL’S PLAYS başlıklı bu çalışma 20/06/2019 tarihinde yapılan savunma sınavı sonucunda oybirliği/oyçokluğu ile başarılı bulunarak, jürimiz tarafından yüksek lisans tezi olarak kabul edilmiştir.
Preface
Women characters struggle to have their own identities instead of accepting ‘the stereotypical roles’ burdened on women and established by patriarchal society and as Sema Zafer Sümer has asserted, choosing women’s own identities starts with telling the stories of women who realize the reality and challenge to the social patterns imposed by male-led society (2011: 324). When I came across with the name of Caryl Churchill, a feminist-socialist playwright, who cries for women rights, I have wanted to examine her plays as a theme of my thesis owing to her brave characters that challenge to heterosexuality to write themselves into being.
Firstly, I submit my sincere thanks to my precious supervisor, Sema Zafer Sümer. During the writing process, she has always been near me and gave support to me in my trouble times. I would like to stress that I coud complete my thesis thanks to her understanding and patience.
Also I owe to my personal thanks to Aydın Görmez for his brillliant suggestions. He has enlightened me with his profound knowlege and experience and his book called Caryl Churchill and Feminizm has become a guide for me.
Final but foremost I offer my sincerest gratitude to my husband and my mother. They have always trusted on me and helped me with their concrete deeds and spiritual supports.
I dedicate my work to my lovely daughter, Ebrar Sare and my cute son, Ahmed Bera. Through their love, I could manage it.
T. C.
SELÇUK ÜNİVERSİTESİ Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Müdürlüğü
Öğre
n
cin
in
Adı Soyadı Pınar AKSU ADANAŞ
Numarası 104108001006
Ana Bilim / Bilim
Dalı İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı
Programı Tezli Yüksek Lisans Doktora Tez Danışmanı Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Sema Zafer SÜMER
Tezin Adı CARYL CHURCHILL OYUNLARINDA THATCHERIZM KARŞITI
CESUR KADIN KARAKTERLER ÖZET
Bu tezde, Caryl Churchill’in Cloud Nine ve Top Girls oyunlarında yer alan ve Margaret Thatcher’ın ideolojilerinin karşısında duran cesur kadın karakterlerle, Thatcherizm eleştirisi yapılmıştır. Dünyaca tanınan sosyal ve feminist kimliğiyle öne çıkan yazar, yenilikçi tiyatro teknikleriyle kadınlara benimsetilen sosyal ve ekonomik normların eleştirisini yapmış ve tabu olarak görülen sosyal dayatmaları sorgulamıştır. Oyunlarında genellikle kadın sorunlarına yer veren Caryl Churchill, kapitalizm ve ataerkil düzenin yani Margaret Thatcher’in ideolojilerini yansıtan Thatcherizmin sebep olduğu cinsiyet rollerinin sonuçlarının kadınları son derece olumsuz bir şekilde etkilediğini vurgulamıştır. Bireyselliği savunan Thatcher ise kadınların durumlarını düzeltmek için hiçbir şey yapmamış ve kadınların meselelerine öncelik vermemiştir. Aksine kadın özgürlük hareketini acımasızca eleştirmiştir. Kadınlar yerine kabinede erkekler tarafında yer almayı tercih etmiştir. Bu yüzden Caryl Churchill onun bir kız kardeş olmadığını dile getirmiş ve Margaret Thatcher’ın kadınları tekrar eve göndermeyi hedefleyen politikalarını, Cloud Nine ve Top Girls oyunlarında yer verdiği kendine
güvenen, bilinçli kadın karakterleriyle eleştirmiştir. Kısacası, bu tez Caryl Churchill’in sosyalizminin Margaret Thatcher’ın bireyselliğine karşı verdiği savaşın bir yansımasıdır.
T. C.
SELÇUK ÜNİVERSİTESİ Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Müdürlüğü
Öğre
n
cin
in
Adı Soyadı Pınar AKSU ADANAŞ
Numarası 104208001006
Ana Bilim / Bilim
Dalı İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı
Programı Tezli Yüksek Lisans Doktora Tez Danışmanı Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Sema Zafer SÜMER
Tezin İngilizce Adı THE BRAVE WOMEN CHARACTERS IN OPPOSITION TO THATCHERISM IN CARYL CHURCHILL’S PLAYS
SUMMARY
This thesis analyzes Caryl Churchill’s criticism of Thatcherism through her courageous female characters in opposition to the ideologies of Margaret Thatcher in her plays, Cloud Nine and Top Girls. As a well-known socialist-feminist playwright, Caryl Churchill challenges the established social and economic norms based on women via her unique theatrical techniques and she has questioned the social troubles that are believed to be taboos and hence fixed. Generally being concerned with female issues in her plays, Churchill does stress how women suffer from the results of the attempts to subvert their gender roles having been produced by capitalism and universally instructed by patriarchy, all of which is named Thatcherism, Margeret Thatcher’s ideologies. Thatcher who supported individualism did not do anything to improve women’s situation in contrast to the expectations and she did not advance or priorise women’s issues. On the contrary, she makes harsh criticism of Women Freedom Movement. Instead of women, she preferred to be surrounded by men in the party. So, Caryl Churchill has put into words
that she is not a sister and she has criticized her ideologies that aim to return the women into home by her self-confident and self-realized women characters in her particular plays, Cloud Nine and Top Girls. In a nutshell, the thesis is the reflection of the battle of Caryl Churchill’s socialism against Margeret Thatcher’s individualism.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Bilimsel Etik Sayfası ... ii
Tez Kabul Formu ... iii
Preface ... iv
Özet ... v
Summary ... vii
Table of Content………...………...….ix
Introduction ... 1
CHAPTER ONE – An Enthusiastic Supporter of Women Rights as a Socialist-Feminist Playwright: Caryl Churchill ... 5
CHAPTER TWO – Margaret Thatcher as a Powerful and Controversial Figure in Modern British History and Thatcherism ... 16
CHAPTER THREE – Women, Inequality and Changing Patterns in Thatcher’s England through the Women Characters of Caryl Churchill ... 29
3.1. Churchill’s Cloud Nine ... 30
3.1.1. The Women and Thatcherism in Cloud Nine: Restoring Victorian Values ... 35
3.1.2. Anti-Thatcherite Characters in Cloud Nine ... 46
3.2. Churchill’s Top Girls ... 58
3.2.1. Rebellious Women Characters in Top Girls ... 64
3.2.2. ‘Marlene’ as a Thatcherite Woman Character in Top Girls ... 75
Conclusion ... 85
Bibliography ... 88
Introduction
Women did not seem in the records of history until 1970s except some outstanding women that struggled against the patriarchal oppression and found the place in male-dominated world because of their individual achievements. In the periods before 1970s, the most important experiences belonged to the men and the experiences of women were neglected so feminist historians have hardly ever reached any expression about women in the pages of history.
The disappearance of women from the history was not different from the other marginal groups such as blacks, the colonised and sexual deviants. These marginal groups were critiqued owing to their classes, nations or sexes but women especially were seen inferior to men due to their gender that caused them to live many restrictions in political, social or cultural realms. They were exposed to such binary frames as irrational, fragile, flawed and obedient when they were compared to men and even these negative attitudes towards women were commented as the part of the natural order. Women who tried to overcome men or challenge to male-led society were considered unwomanly and perceived as a threat for the patriarchal system in which women were the second. Even if they did their best, they could not get rid of the traditional indoctrinations based on them.
Although some women playwrights like Sheilagh Delaney and Anne Jellicoe started to yell the voice of women, feminism attained its political stance both in America and England in 1970s through Kate Millet’s work, Sexual Politics including the idea that women’s suppression originates, not from biology but from social instruction of womanhood, which caused women to think men as a dominant power. Throughout the beginnings of 1970s, Women’s Liberation Movement had different reflections. England was under the influence of Marx’s criticism of capitalist system whereas America was shaken with the ideals of Friedan’s liberal feminism and Millet’s radical feminism. In spite of the differences, the common aims were the same: women and their rights. Before the 1970s, English theatre were under men’s economic and artistic decisions and women were the characters having performed the stereotypical woman roles having reponsibility in home like childrearing or acted
‘mad’ women. However, this case changed by the contributions of some women playwrights to Emancipation Movement. One of them is Caryl Churchill who is a repesentative figure for all of the world.
Caryl Churchill became more and more politicized in 1970s and what she felt quite strongly was a feminist position. She was so excited that she believed she could change the world. She put the women’s discontens into the words. Having challenged the conventional techniques, she developed new forms and styles to state women’s real problems on the stage as drama has a political and social duty according to her. She has not avoided from saying her feminist and socialist ideals and has confessed that she is both feminist and socialist. She makes the audience question the patriarchal and capitalist order with her feminst plays in which womens’s struggles against male-dominated culture take place and also the subjectivity of men and women’s positions as ‘the others’ are examined. Whereas Caryl Churchill has strived for the advancement of the women’s rights with Women’s Freedom Movement, the election of the Conservative Government presided by Margeret Thatcher stopped the developments. Margeret Thatcher’s anti-feminist explanations having aimed at the women’s return to home and economic forces especially in education and childcare provisions made Churchilly get annoyed and she said Thatcher was not a sister for her. Also she has echoed her reaction into her works such as Cloud Nine and Top Girls.The thesis is made up of three chapters. First and second chapters are significant to comprehend the deep meanings of the plays.
The first chapter gives information about the life of Caryl Churchill, a profilic and innovative playwright, and her socialist-feminist identity that mirrors into her plays. Her theatrical techniques are explained because through the new style, she challenges to traditional elements. Also, her feminist and socialist identity is examined deeply as she leads to other female playwrights with her socialist-feminist point of view through her plays especially focusing on women’s issues. It is underlined that she is very courageous like her characters in the plays to destroy the taboos and dogmas.
She has encouraged women to defy their social, economic and sexual positions through her feminist plays raising the awarenes of women over women’s issues and advocated the feminism with socialism offering women the opportunity of an equal future and making history for them.
The second chapter is about the first female prime minister of England, Margeret Thatcher and her policies called Thatcherism, which is important to display why the title is chosen in that way. Also, it is significant for us to interpret social and political backgrounds of the plays. In this part, Margeret Thatcher’s ideologies called Thatcherism, particularly her private enterprise to prevent state intervention is explained and her stance on women’s issues and her rejection of women’s emancipation movement that expanded the awareness of personal liberation beyond the limited gender roles is unclosed.So it is understood clearly why Caryl Churchill is in opposition to Margeret Thatcher. Having been known as one of the notable writers and regarded as a defiant writer, Caryl Churchill puts forward a different point of view via expostulating the social constraints seen as taboos by contrast with the ideals of Margeret Thatcher.
The third chapter examines Caryl Churchill’s plays, respectively Cloud Nine and Top Girls, paying attention to the theatrical elements, given political, feminist and social messages and feminist issues women have struggled for by firstly summarizing the main themes and then making close reading one by one. In first subtitle of Cloud Nine, the Women and Thatcherism in Cloud Nine: Restoring Victorian Values, it is indicated how Caryl Churchill mocks Thatcher’s imagination of storing of Victorian values with her Victorian characters including blacks, the colonised and subordinate women and the marginal groups such as lesbians and homosexuals. In the other subtitle of Cloud Nine, Anti-Thatcherite Characters in Cloud Nine, she gives a response to Margeret Thatcher through her self-confident and self-realized woman characters that feminist conscience could not attenuate. Through the first subtitle of Top Girls, Rebellious Women Characters in Top Girls, she indicates the vainless of the policies of Thatcher purposing to empower the patriarchal ideals with her female characters coming from the past who have
struggled against the difficulties in their eras and at the end attained achievement. In the second subtitle of Top Girls, ‘Marlene’ as a Thatcherite Woman Character in Top Girls, she directly criticizes Thatcher by the matriarch character, Marlene who has left her family behind in order to acquire individual success. Especially the speech between Marlene and Joyce reflects Churchill’s belief that feminism without socialism does not benefit to women. Indeed Joyce’s statement ‘Hitlerina’ to Marlene is a reference to Margeret Thatcher who has not unified the whole women but made contribution to only upper class women. Shortly, a battle of Churchill’s socialism against Margeret Thatcher’s individualism is demonstrated. The social and feminist messages given in the plays will be examined step by step.
CHAPTER ONE – An Enthusiastic Supporter of Women Rights as a Socialist-Feminist Playwright: Caryl Churchill
Caryl Churchill is widely described to be one of the most innovative playwrights of the postwar era and recognized as the leading dramatist of her generation. In the span of her prolific career, she wrote like an observer, a storyteller, a satirist, a poet and a politician and she has gathered both popular success and critical respect. Indeed, Churchill, a radical innovator, holds a lifelong admiration of both British and international audiences with her works challenging the mainstream cultural assumption about theatre. One of the unique British women playwrights to have her plays incorparated into the dramatic discipline, Churchill have often worked with feminist, socialist and experimental theatre groups. Churchill is the most original playwright and sophisticated craftwoman whose works challenge the traditional theater patterns. Her unique works were performed on the stage when very few women were having produced professionally (Tycer, 2008: 4-5). Whereas her theatre continuously receives popular critical attention and public acclaim, she prefers her reputation to rest on her work. In interviews ( she gives only limited interviews mainly to women) Churchill, the dramatist, clearly expresses: ‘‘It is through her work that she wishes to be known’’ (Aston, 2001: 1). She is notoriously unwilling to write or talk about her works.
Karakuzu and Ugurel have asserted that as a successful postwar playwright, Caryl Churchill is regarded as a dissenting writer due to the fact that she presents a different point of view via questioning the social troubles that are believed to be taboos and hence fixed. Generally dealing with the woman issues in her plays, Churchill does emphasize how women suffer the consequences of the attempts to subvert their gender roles which have been universally organized by patriarchy ( 2016: 111).
Born in London on the 3rd of September, 1938, Churchill was the only child of a middle-class family. Her father, Bob Churchill was a cartoonist by profession, which had an influence on Carly’s Churchill’s career because there was a link between cartoons and plays whereas her mother worked as a secretary. Then she
became a model who occasionally worked as a film extra (Dincel, 1995: 58). Although her mother was mostly at home, Churchill said that she ‘‘did talk to me about working, and the fact that she used not to wear her wedding ring to work. I had the feeling, rather early on, that having a career was in no way in compatible with staying married and being very happy’’ (qtd. in Luckhurst, 2014: 9).
When Churchill was nine, she moved with her family to Montreal, Canada, where she continued her schooling. She had an early creative life while she was a young girl and she produced mostly short stories and poems. When asked in an interview whether she started to write ‘because of love words’ Churchill noticed:
… That must be part of it. The fact that I was an only child may have helped. I had friends, but I did have quite a lot of time when I could be alone. Planning stories would be like solitary playing. I would invent a lot of characters, and descriptions of where they lived and maps, and it would be a whole game. So there was a game which, looking back, reached a point where it was more like improvising plays (Aston, 2001: 3).
After spending her adolescence in Canada, Churchill attended to Lady Margeret Hall, Oxford, from where she read for a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Language and Literature from 1957 to 1960 and won the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize. Her interest in writing was incorparated into her deal with theatre while she was at Oxford: her plays that were unpublished, You’ve have No Need to Be Frightened and Having a Wonderful Time were staged as student productions. Her play Downstairs, which she adapted one of her own short stories, won first prize at the National Student Drama Festival in 1958 as Tycer said ( 1995: 5).
In the mean time, two important changes took place in her private life. In 1960, she graduated from Oxford and got married David Harter, a progressive barrister a year later. Due to her husband job, she had to move to the suburbs of London and she gave birth to three sons. She also suffered a number of miscarriages during this time
she attributed to intense emotion and stress. However, Churchill did not give up writing. She began her professional writing career with short plays for the radio because of difficulty in finding time and energy to write. She said ‘the radio was an accessible way of having your plays done…’ in an interview with Judith Thuran (May 1982) quoted by Linda Fitzsimmons in File on Churchill (1989: 85).
Churchill turned into a housewife as a mother of three sons so she was socially restricted and physically and psychologically taxed. Thus Churchill’s early works were a need for emotional outlet:
I felt isolated. I had small children and was having miscarriages. It was an extremely solitary life. What politicised me was being discontented with my own way of life – of being a barrister’s wife and just being at home with small children (qtd. in Luckhurst, 2014: 15).
Aston explained that her early works reflected a number of the sytylistic and thematic concerns of her later stage plays. Experimenting with traditional approaches to dramatic writing, playing with the conventions of form, time, narrative, structure, language and diologue are stylistically evident in the early dramas (Aston, 2001: 5). In the radio plays, the power structure of marital and familial relations are thematized in The Ants (1962), Lovesick (1966), Abortive (1971), Henry’s Past (1972) and Perfect Happiness (1973); identity in crisis presented in Identical Twins (1968) and the schizophrenic world of Schreber’s Nervous Illness (1972), and ‘ madness… sweeping the county’ in a world starved of natural resources is depicted in Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen (1971). Churchill’s early play for television The Judge’s Wife (1972) questions reactionary politics with revolutionary action.
All of her early works were the products of painful experience and anger, not the product of any distinct ideology because her parental duties isolated her from the era’s events. Churchill reflected that her anger with domestic sphere served to interest her in politics: ‘‘ I didn’t feel a part of what was happening in the sixties. … It seemed claustrophobic. Having started off with undefined idealistic assumptions
about the kind of life we could lead, we had difting into something quite conventional and middle class and boring. By the mid-60s, I had this gloomy feeling that the Revolution came I would swept away’’ ( Tycer, 2008: 6).
Different from 1960s, Churchill entered to the writing world with the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’ in 1970s. In the climate of feminism, Churchill worked with two theatre companies: Montrous Regiment and Joint Stock. As a woman writer, her ideas were affected from these companies:
(…) this was a new way of working, which was one of its attractions. Also a touring company, with a wider audience; also a feminist company – I felt briefly shy and daunted, wondering if I would be acceptable, then happy and stimulated by the discovery of shared ideas enourmous energy and feeling of possibilities in the still new company (Churchill, 1985: 129).
There was a huge wave movement for women called as the Second Women’s Liberation Movement and it caused a revolution of domestic sexual politics. It presented the possibility of a equal future and making history for women. It urged women to challenge their social, economic and sexual positions. If change was not immediate, then feminism at least enabled women to express their discontents, or, as Churchill argued in McFerran’s interview: ‘‘One of the things the Women’s Movement has done is to show the way the traps work’’ (Aston, 2001: 17).
Women faced difficulties in workplace such as the impossibilities of education rights, the unemployment, the difficulty in providing balance between motherhood and work life, equal pay for equal work. Being worked in trivial jobs, humiliation, suppression and verbal and physical harrasment are the other problems women had in that period. Churchill who questioned these problems in her writing observed:
For years and years I thought of myself as a writer before I thought of myself as a woman, but recently I’ ve found that I would say I was a feminist writer as opposed to
other people saying I was. I’ve found that as I go out more into the world and get into situations which involve women what I feel is quite strongly a feminist position and inevitably comes into what I write (Aston, 2001: 18).
Churchill wrote her early works by replicating the other male writers and told ‘some knotty problem male’ . Her aim is to show that she could do it but then she focuses on ‘the knotty women characters’ and develops a unique form that is different form traditional style of play. This is seen in her unpublished plays Perfect Happiness (1973) raising class and gender, and Turkish Delight (1974) exploring the objectification of women. She challenges maleness of writing and experimented emergent feminist aesthetic.
Owners, her first professional stage production, reflected her emotion and pain because she wrote it after she had miscarried. She explained it:
I wrote it three days. I’d just come out of hospital after a particularly gruesome late miscarriage. Still quite groggy and my arm ached because they’d given me an injection that didn’t work. Into it ( the play) went for the first time a lot of things that had been building up in me over a long time, political attitudes as well as personal ones (Tycer, 2008: 7).
Churchill wrote Objections to Sex and Violence (1974) that described two middle-class sisters, one of whom resists to become a political terrorist, is considered her first feminist work.
Second Wave Emancipation Movement emerged in lots of different areas, especially in history both in America and England. At Oxford University, a group of women came togetherto break male hegonomy in history. Oxford Ruskin College History Working Group supported the first British Women’s Conference in 1970. They demanded equal pay, equal opportunity and equal education, free contraception and abortion on demand and 24-hour nurseries. Also, their wishes were to have been included in the social-political fields. So they intended to take revolutionary goals by
breaking the traditional domestic roles of women. Feminist historists took an attention to the place of women in history and also focused on the topics such as women’s individual experiences, childbearing and the relationship between their family and relatives. Thus, women studies had an important place to work and they started to make contributions to these areas. Churchill has been interested in women issues and she acted as a feminist historist and and she reflected her view into her plays such as Vinegar Tom, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Cloud Nine, Top Girls and Fen.
The members of the feminist theatre group Monstrous Regiment provided an advantage for Churchill’s works. The year 1976 became a turning point for her because their feminist ideas strengthened Churchill’s feminist and political identity. Gillan Hanna, Chris Bowler and Mary McCusker, the founding company members of Monstrous Regiment, intented to put an end to male bias of the theatre and find a ‘space’ in which to express their socialist-feminist ideas and politics in theatrical practice. The most greatest goal is to create a business world unique to women. Vinegar Tom, on which Churchill collaborated with Monstrous Regiment, and Light Shining in Buckinghamshire were produced in 1976. The writer stated the struggles of women to find their identities in these plays and showed us how women were punished by church when they were rebellious against constructed roles. Also, we witnesses Churchill’s consciousness for the issues about sex and religion.
The evolving feminism of Churchill, her social and political views developed more and more with Joint Stock Theater Group. Biçer noted: ‘‘She has thought that
‘drama has asocial duty to depict the world as it is and tell the truth about it’’ ( 2012: 54). So, she has emphasized that women should be aware of her situation in
society as ‘other’ and become the subject of their lives by illustrating female characters’ struggle for existence with cultural and gender identity in her plays. As Sharma asserted, she criticizes the established social and economical norms (2016: 1).
Churchill, in her plays, deals with the issues of gender, subjectivity, power, cultural identity, the objectification of women, the male dominant culture, social and
political oppression, exploitation, the poor and powerless, and the displacement of social and political inequalities onto sexual morality. Also, she criticizes materialist society. As a socialist feminist writer, she reflected these issues into her works. Cloud Nine (1979) which asserted the parallelism between sexual and racial oppression caused by patriarchy and capitalism was the first play to receive widenotice. Top Girls (1982) was produced against Thatcher’s individualistic ideology and won the Obie Award. The other play in which Churchill criticizes capitalism and depicts immobilized women is Fen. It also won Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Softcops (1984) taking issue with the evolution of social systems of control and punishment, A Moutful of Birds (1986) looking at the issues of possession, violence and ecstasy, Serious Money (1987) criticizing selfish materialism of British society and Mad Forest (1990) describing the confusions that Romanians felt after Nicolea Ceausescu are among Churchill’s successful plays.
Caryl Churchill is a unique writer because she mentions about feminism from the perspective of socialism and so, she doesn’t prefer bourgeois feminism that focuses on the individual. She thinks that socialism and feminism reinforce each other: ‘‘Of course, socialism and feminism aren’t synonyms, but I feel strongly about both and wouldn’t be interested in a form of one that didn’t include the other (Betsko and Koening, 1987: 78). She is in opposition to Thatcherism, Thatcher’s ideology, I will explain it in chapter two, since it supports capitalism and individualism that rises class antagonism just as Churchill’s socialist feminism emphasizes on the group and class solidarity. Churchill states her valuable insights into this kind of socialist-feminist politics in the editorial colllective of a special issue of Feminist Review, 23 (1986):
By and large the reason why the term ‘socialist-feminist’ has political resonance is that it reflects a perception of the world as one which contains more than one system of domination. In contemporary Britain we can identify capitalism as an economic system based on the explotation of the labour of the working class. We can identify imperialism,
based on the exploitation and subordination of whole people, races, and ethnic groups. And we can identify the system, call it sexism, patriarchy or a sex-gender system, based on the power of men over women (qtd. in Morelli, 1998: 44).
Socialist Feminism known as materialist feminism underlines the construction of gender and the relationship between race, class and gender oppression. As a socialist feminist, Churchill, with her left-wing political ideas, adresses these issues and criticizes the inequalities and injustices produced by capitalism and patriarchy in her plays. She applies highly theatrial techniques to take audience’s attention to conventional gender roles. She uses Brechtian technique to break the boundaries and conventions of acceptable theatre form and to vindicate women’s issues. She accepts to be affected by Bertolt Brecht and his epic theatre:
I don’t know either the plays or the theoretical writings in great detail but I’ve soaked up a quite a lot about him over the years. I think for writers, directors and actors working in England in the seventies his ideas have been absorbed into the general pool of shared knowledge and attitudes, so that without constantly thinking of Brecht we neverthless imagine things in a way we might not have without him (Reinelt, 1996: 86).
Görmez states that Churchill who always underscores her socialist and feminist identity, focuses on an egalitarian and free world in theatre. Also, she is a political writer and theatre is a tool for her to give her ideological messages. She directly transfers what she wants to say and forces the audience question the established norms as well as pleasure. Her plays have an open-ending so, the audience can make comments on the play ( 2013: 8). New forms and words are necessary to reflect her feminist, socialist and political views:
Playwrights don’t give answers, they ask questions. We need to find new questions, which may help us answer the
old ones or make them unimportant, and this means new subjects and new forms (Aston, 2001: 80).
From this point of view, she changelled the dominant form of conventional theatre and implemented Brecht’s innovative techniques, the best one for Churchill’s new subjects and forms, into her plays so as to illustrate her socialist feminist discourse and display the changing nature of self, class, age, race and gender. In addition, she wants to break the domestic roles constructed by patriarchy and capitalist system by applying the devices of epic theatre. She rejects such traditional theatrical tehniques as emotional identification and the cathertic effect. So, she uses Brecht’s technique ‘Alineation Effect’ to prevent this identification and provides her audience to gain an intellectual and critical perspective. The role of the spectators changes from the passive observers to active participants in terms of questioning the social practises, institutions and ideologies and judging the events depicted in the plays. She utilised such epic theatre devices as multiple role, gender and cross-race casting, historicization, episodic structure, doublings and overlapping diologues, the use of dance, music, lightining and scenery to alienate the spectators.
Churchill has demanded the concept of ‘historicization’ to remind her audience that society is able to change but the continuity of oppression is inevitable because of the same hegemonic ideologies. Her plays such as Cloud Nine and Top Girls have episodic structure that encourages audience into critical observation and reflect the element of ‘historicization’. Aston explains that cross-gender and cross-racial casting, and the doubling of roles are theatrical elements that show Churchill’s subverting of fixed sexual identities established by dominant heterosexual ideology (Aston, 2001: 32). While Churchill questions fixed roles for women with the cross-gender casting which is clearly observed in Cloud Nine, Fen, Vinegar Tom, she criticises the classification of people through the cross- race casting that is seen in Cloud Nine, Mad Forest and Fen. Yılmaz expresses that the emotional identification of the actors with the characters and the identification of the audience with the actors are prevented through the multiple role casting. Just as overlapping dialogues used in Top Girls, suggests fragmentation and the possibility of ‘unfixing’ , the song and
dance generally given at the end and beginning, bring a new perspective by pointing out the events depicted on the stage (Yılmaz, 2012: 123-124). The main aim of Churchill is to convey the criticism of the limitations and oppression with political difference and provide defamiliarization of the ordinary for the spectators in the process of re-forming society.
Kritzer asserts that Churchill, a metarialist playwright, presents the material conditons revealing the power relations within society at a given time in history and strikes attention to the connections beetween actual social conditions and its governing ideologies through analyzing capitalist patriarchal society. She shows us that social and personal change are vey difficult in the current environment of reaction, disillusionment and despair but she uses her highly theatrical elements to challenge the inevitability of oppression in the possibility of change. Her plays empower the spectators to analyze historical conditions with a dual sense of social reality and imaginative possibility. She tells power relations that constitute oppression and makes audience realize patterns of perception accepted during history and enhances the capacity of audience to make choices (1989: 125-126).
Churchill’s recent works, such as Icecream (1989) including the themes of the lack of communication, meaningless, individualism and violence with its political messages, Lives of Great Poiseners (1991) underlying an insecure world, The Striker (1994) depicting a terrifying and meaningless world where aimless people and their acts are exhibited, This Is a Chair (1997) portraying the negative results of the filthy politics, Hotel (1997) focusing on the concept of ‘disappearing’, Far Away (2000) displaying monstrous people and their terrifying acts because of the war, Blue Heart (2002) challenging the fixity of identity, A Number (2002) questioning capitalism, sexism and violence under male hegenomy, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You (2006) that reflects foreign policies of America and England and Seven Jewish Children (2009) in which Churchill criticises Palestine persecution by Israel, continue to test the boundaries of theatre. In her recent works, she presents a dark world, alienated families, cultures, urban life, selfish and indifferent people and greedy politicians. As
she heavily concentrates on social issues, she does not avoid satirizing the holders of money, authority and power and politicians.
Shortly, the general thematic agendas of Churchill’s all the plays repeatedly adress war, genocide, imperialism, capitalism and the global economy, environmental atrocity, sexuality, scientific knowledge, patriarchy, motherhood and the politics of reproduction, cruelty and violence, parenting and child abuse. Kuchurst stated that her dramas mirror contemporary international preoccupations and offer an embedded scrutiny of the individual’s relationship to the ideologies inherent within specific social and institutional structures (Kuckhurst, 2014: 5). Her aim is to create a world where all the people are equal.
CHAPTER TWO– Margaret Thatcher as a Powerful and Controversial Figure in Modern British History and Thatcherism
Margeret Thatcher is known as both the most remarkable and debated stateswoman in modern British history. She is the most powerful woman politician whose personality provokes such reactions of love and hatred. In this regard, she acquires a highly important position for feminist ideology. Thatcher, a giant political leader, has a wonderful impact on her period as Kalpaklı says: ‘‘She gives her name to a decade in Britain known as Thatcherite Britain’’ ( 2012: 153). Thatcher who has a strong and determined personality, is Britain’s first and only female prime minister and she led her political party through three general elections. In her terms, this period includes eleven years, six months and twenty-four days.
We should examine her personal history and public life to understand the roots of Thatcherism. Thatcher was born into a traditional middle-class family in October 1925. As a dutiful daughter, she had to work hard to become successful. Having a happy childhood and youth, Thatcher was so influenced by her father, Alfred Roberts and his Methodist doctrine that her sister said: ‘‘To know Margeret, you have to know him’’ (Nunn, 2002: 76). Her father’s severe and ambitious temperament affected Thatcher’s character and also her interest in politics was acquired from her father: ‘‘The main interest which my father and I shared while I was thirst for knowledge about politics and public affairs’’ (Thatcher, 1995: 22). Alfred Roberts’ positions such as Council committee member, school governer, lay preacher, local JP, Mayor of Grantham, and his such values as self-control, self-efficient, hard work, frugality, temperance, self-education etc. had a profound influence on Thatcher’s policies. Politics was the part of his father who instilled in Thatcher’s heart the motto ‘Service Above Self’. His liberal views became the basis of her electoral campaign as she noted: ‘‘She was so much his daughter’’ (Thatcher, 1995: 163). Her mother whose life was sacrified to other ‘s lives, was a shadowy figure for Thatcher and indeed she was a symbol for self- effacement and self-abnegation.
The family was neither poor nor particularly prosperous but rich in right values. However Margaret was a studious pupil and successful at school and thus she had a right for Somerville College at Oxford University to study chemistry, but then
turned to law. She executed her political ambitions through her marriage to Denis Thatcher, a wealth factory owner: ‘‘Escorting an old school friend around the House of Commons Thatcher acknowledged that her ability to be a politician rested upon Denis’ money’’ (qtd in Nunn, 2002: 28). Thanks to his support her all the way in the background, she obtained financial freedom and devoted herself to politics, her great passion. He did not only support her financially but also he consoled her when she was hopeless. Besides this, he did not intervene in political affairs but he always backed up her emotionally. Because of having lower middle-class origins and being a ‘woman’ in masculine world, she prefered to exist through ‘perfect political image’and so Denis’ money, which financed Thatcher’s studies for the Bar and her couples’ private education, as well as domestic ‘help’, nanny for her children, eased a path to her political candidacy and made this process ‘more suitable and admirable’. Furthermore, his money was the accoutrements of ‘the secretary and home in London’. Thatcher continued her struggle for politics thanks to her marriage with her chief supporter, Denis Thatcher as Prestidge asserts: ‘‘Marriage, which in the 1950s would have in most instances dramatically reduced a woman’s career prospects, significantly enhanced Thatcher’s’’ (2017: 25).
In 1953, she gave birth to twins, Mark and Carol. When she still was in the maternity hospital, she signed her bar finals and the first working place for pupillage as a sole women lawyer in a tax chamber was the bar at Lincoln’ s Inn, in 1954. The victim of the prejudices, she was fired fom this place because tax was a male domain. In October 1959 general election, she took place in Parliament by the means of a safe seat for the constituency of Finchley, North London. This enabled her to combine her parliametary work with family life.
In October 1960, after a year on the backbenches, Thatcher’s position was Parliament Secretaryship for the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. In 1965, when the Conservatives were in opposition, she moved to the Shadow post and to Transport in 1968 by the new party leader, Edward Heath. When Heath defeated the Labour Party in the general election of 1970, her first cabinet post came as Secretary of State for Education and Science, the only woman in the cabinet. She holded a variety of positions in spite of a fairly young female politician. After Heath’s defeat in the 1975 the general election because of the crises such as a
miner’s overtime ban, power cuts and a three-day working week, Margaret Thatcher became the first woman leader of the Conservatives. It was very shocking as Purvis said: ‘‘Her position caused many members in her party to be offended’’ (Purvis, 2013: 1015). After Labour government fell in the 1978 so-called ‘winter of discontent’ , Margaret Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister of Britain and only woman to head a major Western power in 1979.
Margaret Thatcher faced lots of new events in her first year as a Prime Minister. The year 1975, Thatcher became the leader of Conservatives, was very important due to the UN’s Women’s Year. Also there were various chages in that year. The women’s liberation movement uniting women as ‘sisters’ altered radically women’s lives through the changes in law, media, art and the attitude of society. Sex discrimination was outlawed by the Sex Discrimination Act and it enabled the possibilities of equality in education, employment and advertising. Additionally, the Employment Protection Act ensured pregnant women’s positions in the workplace after maternity leave. Furthermore, Feminism raisened the women’s awareness of ‘self-determination’ and women’s consciousness of themselves as a group by creating new political scenes and expression. Also, Unstable Labour Government sustained the struggle for the expansion of worker’s rights and social wage with the Social Contract. The globalization of capitalism was a new stage as the result of global turmoil whereas popular cultures across the world were being shifted and unsettled by liberal movements. Thatcher put an end to these alterations as Campbell noted: ‘‘To this Margeret Thatcher brought rebuke and resistance’’ (2015: 42). Thatcher’s violent revolution and radical disengagement form past practise shook the country up and changed the everything.
Thatcher struggled to prevent the crisis in her time and she put the strict rules to save the country in the 1980s. Thatcherism’s emergence was based on the failures of Callagham government, Labour Party. His conflicts with trade unionists and the industrial unrest caused the deterioration of Britain’s economic position. To oppose the new Industrial Relations Act, a series of major strikes were acted. One-day strike action destabilized the economy and their demand for inflationary wage demands took the country into a chaos and the resolution. The governmet was not able to find despite the reconciliatory attitude. This long period was called ‘Winter of
Discontent’. The strike action taken by coal miners, nurses, car manufactures, lorry, train and ambulance drivers, waste collectors etc. came the country to a halt in development. In wild disorder, Margeret Thatcher became the Prime Minister and her intention was to turn the nation from ‘‘the sickman of Europe’’ (‘‘Evaluating Thatcher’s Legacy, 2004’’) to the country ‘Great Britain’. However, whether she did it successfully, as she herself claims, is certainly debatable.
Margaret Thatcher began a radical change against the Conservatives’ gradually carious change. So, we can say that Thatcherism is the ‘‘development and revolution of Conservative Party’’ ( Hadley and Ho, 2010: 6) but now seen as an ‘irregularity’. She altered the nature and formulation of the party by leaving a profound effect on it. It is more than a comprehensive body of thought or ideology: ‘‘It combined in a new synthesis two British political traditions: neo-liberalism in economic matters and authoritarian conservatism in social policy and the other description especially according to Marxists, Thatcherism is a malign campaign to further the interests of the capitalist rich and powerful, consolidating and then extending forms of political and cultural domination over the underprivileged’’ (Evans,1997: 2-3). Shortly, it is a powerful collection of values and policies including her beliefs in individualism, notably in economy, free enterprise, privatization, monetarism, tough and strong leadership, nationalism favouring Britain’s post imperial image, ‘Victorian Values’ calling back ‘subordination of women’.
Under Thatcherism’s all-pervasive policies, Thatcher started to instill her ideal of ‘individualism’ and ‘free market economy’ by the defeat of coal miners after a long and extremely difficult struggle resulting in weakening union power. Sheila Rowbotham underscores the strike as a landmark in labour relations: ‘‘No mere strike, this became a contest with a government that wanted to break a key section of the labour movement’’ (1997: 484). Her main goal was to reduce the power of trade unions, bargainin away women’s right, because she thought that the source of these strikes were them that were the enemy of enterprise culture and an obstacle for liberty. Thus, she reprimanded the trade union for their old fashioned opinions and outmoded rights. The abolition of the legislation controlling the minumum pay and employments’s conditions and the restriction of the right against the principle of
‘closed-shop’ and the removal of the obligation to join a trade union exterminated the power of the unions. The dissolution of the unions enabled Thatcher to enact her policy powerfully and boosted her government popularity. However, the closure of pits and the disappearance of old industries, such as the textiles sector, made an enormous number of workers unemployment and had a devastating effect on employee, fighting for their lives, and their families as a result of the rigid policies employed during Thatcher’s first cabinet term (1979: 83). Indifferent to the personal hardships of many ordinary people, Thatcher helped little to them to find jobs, which made her a hate figure for in many-working class communities, because the state couldn’t garanteee jobs according to her neoliberalism. Ribberink noted: ‘‘This led to high unemployment-in the mid-1980s there were 3.5 million unemployed in Britain and a widening of the gulf between rich and poor’’(Ribberink, 2005: 173) whereas Britain’s industrial production fell by 10 percent and manufacturing by 17 percent (Procter, 2004: 97). It reveals increased poverty and Britain a devoloping rather than developed nation in the early 1980s.
Thatcher consolidated ‘privitization’ so as to pop up individual initiative and save the economy from the state intervention. So she sold off the publicly owned companies including airlines, water, electricity, oil, steel and telephone businesses. It was the style of a determined shift toward free market economy. Also, it paved the way for the control of trade unions easily. Thatcher’s aspire was to establish a society in which people had their responsibility and independence as individuals rather than ‘nanny state’ ( socialist welfare state) supporting social services. Her government aimed men and women that governed themselves through showing efforts and her goal was to weaken the state control over private and public life through the capacities of human beings in political society. Margeret Thatcher advocates the society based on individual choice rather than public responsibility and she said that individuals firstly should think themselves. Her interview she gave to Woman’s Own magazine explicitly asserted the collapse of collectivitism:
I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘‘I have a problem, it is the government’s job to cope with!’’ or ‘‘I have
a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’’ ‘‘I am homeless, the government must house me!’’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! (Thatcher, 1987).
Her policy of selling off the government monopolies through privatization and purchase of the council houses to apply her economic strategy had negative results for the lower class, women, immigrant, gay and the unemployment being in poverty. It increased the distiction between the wealthy and the poor through providing opportunity for upper middle classes and rich individuals and as a result, her ideal of robust economy and ‘‘her decision to divorce the state from a socialist network’’ (Duff, 2010: 183) heightened the class gap. We may say without doubt that her intention to restore Britain’s power through monaterism left a profound wound on ordinary people and also showed us that her commitment to the individuals was an utopia: ‘‘We want people in all walks of life to set their hopes high and to carry them through into reality’’ (Rose, 1988: 16). Furthermore it indicated that her humiliating approach to social state demanding ‘equality for community’ was a disappoinment: ‘‘There is no such thing a society. There are only individuals, women, and families’’ (Holland and Eglezou, 2010: 29). Thatcher’s firm and swift policies to push the economic crisis did leave a lasting imprint in the socio- economic scope.
The other point Thatcherism emphasized was the significance of national unity that made Margaret Thatcher ‘a divisive and polarising figure’. As a result of private enterprise, marginalized groups such as gays, immigrants, and the people from lower class were excluded from publicly funded programs. We can conclude that Thatcher’s ‘Englishness’ was not only based on racial identity but also on ethnic, sexual and economic identitites.
As the offical seat of Conservative Party, Number 10 reflected the ideal of national unity. No. 10 Downing Street was the home of British History and the symbol of Britishness as Thatcher declared (qtd. in Jones, 1985: 184). She disclosed national identity with the conception of Britishness by striking attention to immigration to England especially from Pakistan and New Commonwealth. She
states her anxiety that the significant number of immigrants might cause violence in the streets: ‘‘This country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture’’ (qtd. in Krieger, 1986: 76). Through showing ensurance of the country for law, order and democracy, she consoled the people who were disturbed by the altering ethnic makeup of Britain. In her campaign for the 1978 general election, she implied four milllion immigrants as a threat and called people to ‘‘make this country safe to walk in . . .’’ (qtd. in Butler & Kavanagh, 1980: 195). Her preference to white immigrants over Vietnamese known as ‘boat people’ showed her racist attitude. Her aim was to assimiliate the immigrants and so she firstly legalized the right of abode to the British, not others. The second goal of her was to propagate assimilationist discourses. In the 1983 election campaign, she displayed a poster of a black man and said: ‘‘Labour says he’s black, Tories say he’s British’’ (Swell, 1988: 99).
Also, Morrison (2002) asserted that under the inclusive term of Birtishness, the symbol of national unity, Thatcher made an effort to save the nation’s cultural inheritance. Thus she renovated the physical edificies of England as well as those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in order to contribute the continuity of British history. She extoled Victorian’s racist and colonialist structure in that way.
Another area we need to examine is the contribution of Thatcherism to the cause of women. In contrast to the expectations to improve the situation of ordinary women, unfortunately, she did not advance or priorise women’s issues. Brunt noted that Thatcher’s policies did nothing for women, women’s liberation movement that raisened the awareness of personal feedom beyond the restricted gender roles and women’s politics but that they pulled the ladder up for Thatcher being a woman in politics (Brunt, 1987: 22). Her motto ‘Yes, I can’ explicitly expressed Thatcher’s success was a step forward for her own, not for other women as she did not encourage any women to politics and only one woman was promoted to her cabinet during her era. Whereas she mentioned the lowest number of women candidates, she rejected the positive discrimination against women. They did not benefit from her administrations. Instead of women, she preferred to be surrounded by men in the party. She said that women don’t elevate to a position in politics because of just being a woman and she highlighted that they have to be talented like men and even better (Nunn, 2002: 38). It suited her ideology of individualism supporting the
capacities of the individuals. Ribberink pointed out that she didn’t show any solidarity or sorority whatever with other women sharing political aspirations. (Ribberink, 2005: 174).
Thatcher can’t be seen as an feminist pioneer because she didn’t like feminism and feminists. She revealed the disassociation with feminism through her expression that ‘‘she owed nothing to women’s lib’’(qtd. in Hadley and Ho, 2010: 4). She saw the liberation movement as an obstacle for individualism and declared in an interview for Hornsey Journal (1978) that ‘‘she is not a feminist.’’ Also, she gave struggle for being seen as Prime Minister, not a female Prime Minister. So, both her failure to apply her policies to make the world a better place for women and her lack of support in women’s right led to feminists vilifiying her.
Thatcher’s lack of family-friendly policies adversely impacted on women. Heavy cuts on government spending in the arts that caused some theatre groups as Montrous Regiment to be dispanded, education, healthcare, housing and childcare particularly subjugated women. Free dental and health checks were abandoned by National Health Service (NHS) and the cuts of the student loans and university funding broke women’s spirit for higher education and education became more consumer-focused by the Education Reform Act. After she abolished free school milk, which gained her a name as ‘Thatcher the Milk-Snatcher’, the reaction against her increased. She was accused of her careless attitude for the poor and underpriviledged children. So she was criticised by media with these words: ‘‘Is Mrs Thatcher Human?’’ or such nicknames as ‘‘Open Refrigerator, Cave Woman, Ice Maiden, Salome, a cold wind passing over a Norfolk beach’’etc. were given to her (Nunn, 2002: 97). Also, the ending of free school milk for children over age of seven and free school meals and the cuts in the maternity provision had a profound effect on low-income mothers and opened a gate of her patriarchal politics called as ‘Family Policy’ including ‘back to home’ for women.
Thatcherism based upon the ideology directed notably at women. Thatcher supported the dependence of women on men by the welfare cuts and prevented them from working outside the home under the eloquence of responsibility, choice and family unit. Because of the policy of the free market economy, manufacturing sector declined and it became a mandate for women to work in part-time jobs as wage
workers. It especially affected working class women, ethnic minority women and black women. As a result of the child care and maternity cuts and the falling incomes because of part-time works, working women were isolated as housewives. In Thatcher’s Era, upper-class women improved more and more but lower-middle class women’s work life came to an end as she argued: ‘‘Employment was no longer for all mothers; only those able to employ the celebrated ‘English nanny’ (Prestidge, 2017: 27).Threatening item for feminists was the redomestication of women and explotation of them by doing work in the home without unpaid. Also, the policy of the sale of council houses had a negative impact on women because of their insufficient incomes and so they could only have the worst houses. In addition to this, her policy of Family Credit, independent taxation, reinforced traditional gender roles. Although it seemed as a right for married women, it was benefit to men, as Bryson ansd Heppell stated: ‘‘it automatically went to the husband, reaffirmed the ‘normality’ of traditional gender roles as well as the value of marriage’’ (Bryson and Heppell, 2010: 34). The other indirect result of the social and economic policies was the increase of violence and prostution on account of the lack of income sources and high unemployment. Unfortunately, Thatcher’s welfarism made women’s lives more difficult and exhausting. The only wish of the women was their right – not a right– wing woman. Unfortunately, Thatcher would be ‘‘a figurehead…thrown in our faces’’ as argued in Spare Rib (1979).
Her family policy reinforced women’s traditional role and placed them in the home. Thatcher’s government undermined the significance of family values and restored the traditional nuclear family unit. At 1988 national conference, she emphasized the importance of family life and the duty of woman in the family:
The family is the building block of society. It is a nursery, a school, a hospital, a leisure centre, a place of refuge and a place of rest. It encompasses the whole of society. It fashions our beliefs. It is the preparation for the rest of our life. And women run it (Nunn, 2002: 126).
Thatcher criticized ‘permissive society’ since it was the reason of the decay of morality. Wilson asserted that the emancipation of women and their participation in public life were menacing and also the freeing of the youth and divorce and excessive sexual desire were a danger for social order (1987: 224). She thought that traditional family life, based on parental control of children and return to patriarchal values, strenghtened the steadiness of society and prevented the dissolution. As Wilson stated, she scorned women by calling them as homemakers (1987: 205).
There was a link between Thatcher’s religious home life and her policies. Thatcher’s Methodist upbringing, based upon a moral world understanding, caused her to be in opposition to permissive society that was the symbol of moral decay. She blamed mothers for the loose morals and attacked them not to guide their children and condemned women as parents to establish a creche generation. The irresponsible family, the social state caused and the single mother, permissive society gave rise to, brought about the social decay. The patriarchal family life conveying the conventional moral values was the remedy. Thus she saw women as guardians of future generations as she told Living magazine in 1984: ‘‘Mothers want to give their children more than they had… We are always thinking of the future for our children and grandchildren, and that affects the decisions we make.’’ In this family, father worked in public area and mother was the homemaker and the child was the symbol of ‘hope, investment and desire for a comfortable life’. To pursue money was a necessity in the name of the child’s future. Consumerism, Thatcher aimed, was the main way for happiness of the mother and the child. Thus, the family that was conscious of responsibility did not rely on the state.
Thatcher’s low-middle class background and her conventional family upbringing reflected the origin of conventional family policy that gave the roles to women primarily as a mother and wife. Her mother, Beatrice Roberts, adopted traditional woman roles. She carried out the domestic chores such as cleaning, ironing, cooking etc. and as a shadowy figure, she sacrificed herself to others, especially for her authoritarian husband. Whereas Beatrice was among domestic borders, she, a typical woman, always backed up her husband in public life. Growing up in a serious, strict and systematic home life, Thatcher supported her mother’s position in the family and demanded that all women, like her traditional mother,
should be passive, supportive, silent, diligent, steadfast, clean etc. and they should maintain her father’s principles such as self-control, self-sufficiency, hard work, frugality etc. Frugality, especially, was her mother’s life style as her mother expressed to her daughter: ‘‘ You never buy anything you can’t afford to buy, never, but you live according to your means’’ ( Nunn, 2002: 84). Through the means of her family’s thrift policy, she tried to veil provision cuts as she asserting: ‘‘the Government (to) do what any good housewife would do if money was short’’ (Thatcher, 1995: 65) and showed the women to manage their home’s budget, indirectly the nation’s budget by saying: ‘‘Any woman who understands the problem of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country’’ ( qtd. in Morison, 2010: 127). She easied the massive cuts in that way.
Also, her grandmother was representative of Victorian strict values. To sum up, they were the symbols of domestic life. Her mother inherited to her the ways of becoming ‘a good housewife’ and so she idealised the concept of ‘housewife’ and wanted women to place housewifery and motherhood uppermost on the contrary of women liberation movement which meant ‘emancipating women from conventional identities as housewives and mothers and presenting possibilities for women’s personal development beyond family unit’ (Sisterhood and After Research Team, 2013).
In addition, she displayed her hostility towards to this movement during the election by presenting herself a great housewife fulfilling households and her appreciative attitude to women’s domestical roles restored the Victorian values: children, kitchen, church.
We can say that the image ‘ housewife’ used by Thatcher was a strategy to win the votes of working class women at the same time because she claimed that domestic life heightened working class women’s position and increased their control on their lives when we thought women’s badly paid part-time jobs. In an interview for Women’s Own, 1987), she used the statement ‘most of us’ to indicate the link between herself and housewives and her photographes taken in front of the kitchen showed that as a prime minister, her primary role was a housewive so she consolidated the ordinary women’s support.
