by Lead Author, Pam McElprang
In Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, two themes emerge as paramount in understanding what hides behind the chaos disguising the meaning of the play. Churchill’s choice of colonialism and sexual oppression become apparent in her purposefully unambiguous euphemisms and transcendent theme combination. In fact, colonialism and sexual oppression run parallel throughout the play, providing a reader with ample, and obviously explicit, examples of the purpose behind the gender-bent / racially twisted characters.
Churchill “is an important figure…many critics and theatre scholars would argue that she has played a leading role in shaping the contemporary theatrical landscape” (Aston). Moreover, with a conspicuously literal creative twist, Churchill employs the characters themselves in demonstrating the acute form of colonial oppression that she mocks so profoundly. However, for the purpose of this discussion, only Joshua, Victoria, Clive, Edward, and Betty will be discussed in regards to their emblematic transformations.
Act I of Cloud 9 begins with an open display on the oppressive politics of Africa in the 1880’s and “comically utilizes cross-dressing and role-doubling to explore the relationship between colonial and sexual oppression throughout history” (Imperial). In fact, Churchill’s cleverly used cliches serve well to highlight the duplicity of the era, with an extreme and adept finesse for the ironic. She is primarily “concerned with depicting how colonialism perpetuates itself; instilling fear into its subjects through vicious beatings, the castigation of women, and the repression of sexual freedom” (Imperial). Moreover, Churchill takes risks with the political matter of the era because the colonialist ideals were virtually taking over the ideals of the people, and the people accepted the oppression without question.
Joshua, the black servant, doesn’t think that he has any value as a black man and is played by a white man because he wants what white men want him to be. At the beginning of the play, Clive announces Joshua, “my boy’s a jewel. Really has the knack. / You’d hardly notice that the fellow’s black” (Churchill 4). Then Joshua comes out on the stage and says, “my skin is black but oh my soul is white. / I hate my tribe. My master is my light. / I only live for him. As you can see, / what white men want is what I want to be” (4).
Joshua’s transformation into a white man “symbolizes the way in which an imperial, racist heritage reduces African identity to the construction of white, Western assumptions, [marking Joshua as] the product of imperial advancement” (Imperial). At the end of Act I, Joshua’s transformation into the colonialist ideal is complete, and irreversible, when after his parents die, he refuses to go to the funeral, claiming that “my mother and father were bad people” (Churchill 54), and that Clive and Betty are his real “father and mother” (54).
Most striking though, is Clive’s reaction, first telling Joshua to go to the funeral, then immediately deciding to request, “bring us a drink will you Joshua?” (Churchill 55). Joshua, in a moment of mutiny, finally breaks free from his oppression by Clive and a reader is left with the fateful scene, as “Joshua raises his gun to shoot Clive. Only Edward sees. He does nothing to warn the others. He puts his hands over his ears” (60). Since neither Joshua nor Clive appear in Act II, a reader is only left with the implications of the narrative.
In fact, despite the violent rebellion, a reader never knows whether Joshua transformed back into a black man, and since he doesn’t appear in Act II, Churchill leaves a giant gap in this part of his story. However, perhaps that was her intention. Joshua, a black man who becomes white to please the whites, finally challenges his oppressor, and then vanishes.
Most curious of all, a reader never gets to know what happened after that fateful moment. How did the family react to the violent shooting? The end of Act I does trigger the character’s transformations back into the proper gender, so is Churchill suggesting that they all needed Clive to die to become who they were meant to be? Possibly, but talk about dramatic action to achieve a sense of self.
Also entirely subjugated is Clive’s daughter, Victoria, who is literally played by a dummy. In a scene where Edward is playing with Victoria’s doll (the dummy has a doll), Clive comes in and “tosses Victoria to Betty, who gives her to Ellen” (Churchill 13). Churchill’s obvious gimmick, here, is almost too contrived to land her point. Moreover, she is suggesting that Victoria’s oppression is so complete that she is literally a mute doll, and not even human. However, after Clive’s murder, during the beginning of Act II, Victoria (now a human woman) is seen reading a book, and she even manages to “read while she talks” (65). She has overcome her oppression and is finally thriving as a woman. She’s even married and has managed to avoid repression.
Finally, Clive serves as the ultimate oppressor and innocently smothers his family with his African ideals. He introduces the play, saying, “this is my family. Though far from home / we serve the Queen wherever we may roam / …My wife is all I dreamt a wife should be, / and everything she is she owes to me” (Churchill 3-4). He believes, without knowledge that his actions and ideals are harmful towards his family, that their faultless idealistic life is a direct result of his faultless and idealistic actions. Clive is desperate to preserve the world that he wants to see and as “the superior white male, he determines the roles the women and natives must play” (Imperial). His aim then, for a perfect life, a masculine son, and a lovingly faithful wife was achieved through the direct and literal transformations of his family.
Perhaps most striking, is though the audience can see that clearly his family is oppressed to the point that they are played by members of the opposite sex, Clive literally cannot see their mutated forms because he wants so dearly to see only what he wants to see. In so doing, the characters are unable to transform back into their true beings until he dies. Thus the physical act of his death essentially takes his eyes and his ideals away, and the characters can break free from his oppression.
Churchill’s explicit and profoundly insightful manner also exhibits the subsistence and concerningly ubiquitous temperament of sexual oppression. Churchill overtly understood that the Victorian era was a “period of dramatic change the world over [and] there were advancements made in the promotion of women’s rights, especially in terms of…their rights in marriage” (Norton). Her writing “became closely associated with the Royal Court [during which she began] collaborations with Joint Stock…a feminist theatre union” (Lyric Stage). In fact, “for over twenty years, [her plays] have furthered feminist performance theory and broadened traditional views of gender roles” (Price). Sexual oppression is perhaps the most obvious theme running parallel to colonialism within the play, also emerging with the characterization itself.
In fact, Edward is one of the sexually oppressed by Clive and is thus played by a woman, and routinely likes to play with Victoria’s doll. Clive presents Edward, “my son is young. I’m doing all I can / to teach him to grow up to be a man” (Churchill 4). To which Edward replies, “what father wants I’d dearly like to be. / I find it rather hard as you can see” (4). In Act II, though Edward transforms back into a man, his sexual oppression was so great that he now believes that he is a lesbian, and approaching his sister Victoria, says, “I’d rather be a woman. I wish I / had breasts like that, I think they’re beautiful. Can I / touch them?” (92). Unfortunately, Edward continues to relish in his new transformation until the end of the play.
In Act I, Betty comes forward and announces, “I live for Clive. The whole aim of my life / is to be what he looks for in a wife. / I am a man’s creation as you see, / and what men want is what I want to be” (Churchill 4). Clive’s innocent oppression results in the ultimate devaluation of his wife, Betty, who no longer values herself as a woman, and is therefore played by a man due to her overwhelming need to be what men want her to be.
Moreover, Churchill uses Betty to “satirize the traditionally subordinate role of women in history, forcing us to recognize that female identity is a historical and cultural construction” (Imperial). Betty was traditionally subordinate until Clive dies, because starting in Act II, she gets a job and is actually proud of her work, saying, “I sit behind a desk of my own and I answer / the telephone and keep the doctor’s appointment book / and it really is great fun” (Churchill 102). Then near the very end of the play, Betty is reminiscing about masturbating as a child, commenting, “I thought if Clive wasn’t looking at me there wasn’t a person there…and my hand went down where I thought it shouldn’t…I felt angry with Clive and I went on defying [him]” (105). At the end of her dialogue, she says, “I felt triumphant because I was a separate person from [him]” (105). Betty, too, has finally mentally overcome her sexual oppressor.
Overall, to successfully read Churchill’s play, the audience must let go of all previous gender/racial assumptions and just watch as the action unfolds. Otherwise, it’s too easy to get lost in the gender machinations. Churchill chose to show the characters in this manner for a reason, though it’s almost too easy to create such literal character transformations. Now, what sets Churchill’s play apart from just cliche convention annoyance is that the real themes of colonialist ideals and sexual oppression run parallel throughout and do literally result in the re-transformations of the characters, when in Act II, they manage to become who they were meant to be.
References
Aston, Elaine. “Churchill, Caryl.” The Literary Encyclopedia. November 2005.
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=878
Imperial Archive. “Feminism and Post-Colonialism.”
http://www.qub.ac.uk/en/imperial/key-concepts/feminism-and-postcolonialism.htm
Lyric Stage. “A Profile of Caryl Churchill.”
http://www.lyricstage.com/A_Profile_of_Caryl_Churchill.htm
Norton Anthology of English Literature. “Victorian Age Review.” 2005.
http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/victorian/review/summary.htm
Price, John A. “The Language of Caryl Churchill: the Rhythms of Feminist Theory,
Acting Theory, and Gender Politics.” 1999.
http://www.womenwriters.net/editorials/PriceEd1.htm
In Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, two themes emerge as paramount in understanding what hides behind the chaos disguising the meaning of the play. Churchill’s choice of colonialism and sexual oppression become apparent in her purposefully unambiguous euphemisms and transcendent theme combination. In fact, colonialism and sexual oppression run parallel throughout the play, providing a reader with ample, and obviously explicit, examples of the purpose behind the gender-bent / racially twisted characters.
Churchill “is an important figure…many critics and theatre scholars would argue that she has played a leading role in shaping the contemporary theatrical landscape” (Aston). Moreover, with a conspicuously literal creative twist, Churchill employs the characters themselves in demonstrating the acute form of colonial oppression that she mocks so profoundly. However, for the purpose of this discussion, only Joshua, Victoria, Clive, Edward, and Betty will be discussed in regards to their emblematic transformations.
Act I of Cloud 9 begins with an open display on the oppressive politics of Africa in the 1880’s and “comically utilizes cross-dressing and role-doubling to explore the relationship between colonial and sexual oppression throughout history” (Imperial). In fact, Churchill’s cleverly used cliches serve well to highlight the duplicity of the era, with an extreme and adept finesse for the ironic. She is primarily “concerned with depicting how colonialism perpetuates itself; instilling fear into its subjects through vicious beatings, the castigation of women, and the repression of sexual freedom” (Imperial). Moreover, Churchill takes risks with the political matter of the era because the colonialist ideals were virtually taking over the ideals of the people, and the people accepted the oppression without question.
Joshua, the black servant, doesn’t think that he has any value as a black man and is played by a white man because he wants what white men want him to be. At the beginning of the play, Clive announces Joshua, “my boy’s a jewel. Really has the knack. / You’d hardly notice that the fellow’s black” (Churchill 4). Then Joshua comes out on the stage and says, “my skin is black but oh my soul is white. / I hate my tribe. My master is my light. / I only live for him. As you can see, / what white men want is what I want to be” (4).
Joshua’s transformation into a white man “symbolizes the way in which an imperial, racist heritage reduces African identity to the construction of white, Western assumptions, [marking Joshua as] the product of imperial advancement” (Imperial). At the end of Act I, Joshua’s transformation into the colonialist ideal is complete, and irreversible, when after his parents die, he refuses to go to the funeral, claiming that “my mother and father were bad people” (Churchill 54), and that Clive and Betty are his real “father and mother” (54).
Most striking though, is Clive’s reaction, first telling Joshua to go to the funeral, then immediately deciding to request, “bring us a drink will you Joshua?” (Churchill 55). Joshua, in a moment of mutiny, finally breaks free from his oppression by Clive and a reader is left with the fateful scene, as “Joshua raises his gun to shoot Clive. Only Edward sees. He does nothing to warn the others. He puts his hands over his ears” (60). Since neither Joshua nor Clive appear in Act II, a reader is only left with the implications of the narrative.
In fact, despite the violent rebellion, a reader never knows whether Joshua transformed back into a black man, and since he doesn’t appear in Act II, Churchill leaves a giant gap in this part of his story. However, perhaps that was her intention. Joshua, a black man who becomes white to please the whites, finally challenges his oppressor, and then vanishes.
Most curious of all, a reader never gets to know what happened after that fateful moment. How did the family react to the violent shooting? The end of Act I does trigger the character’s transformations back into the proper gender, so is Churchill suggesting that they all needed Clive to die to become who they were meant to be? Possibly, but talk about dramatic action to achieve a sense of self.
Also entirely subjugated is Clive’s daughter, Victoria, who is literally played by a dummy. In a scene where Edward is playing with Victoria’s doll (the dummy has a doll), Clive comes in and “tosses Victoria to Betty, who gives her to Ellen” (Churchill 13). Churchill’s obvious gimmick, here, is almost too contrived to land her point. Moreover, she is suggesting that Victoria’s oppression is so complete that she is literally a mute doll, and not even human. However, after Clive’s murder, during the beginning of Act II, Victoria (now a human woman) is seen reading a book, and she even manages to “read while she talks” (65). She has overcome her oppression and is finally thriving as a woman. She’s even married and has managed to avoid repression.
Finally, Clive serves as the ultimate oppressor and innocently smothers his family with his African ideals. He introduces the play, saying, “this is my family. Though far from home / we serve the Queen wherever we may roam / …My wife is all I dreamt a wife should be, / and everything she is she owes to me” (Churchill 3-4). He believes, without knowledge that his actions and ideals are harmful towards his family, that their faultless idealistic life is a direct result of his faultless and idealistic actions. Clive is desperate to preserve the world that he wants to see and as “the superior white male, he determines the roles the women and natives must play” (Imperial). His aim then, for a perfect life, a masculine son, and a lovingly faithful wife was achieved through the direct and literal transformations of his family.
Perhaps most striking, is though the audience can see that clearly his family is oppressed to the point that they are played by members of the opposite sex, Clive literally cannot see their mutated forms because he wants so dearly to see only what he wants to see. In so doing, the characters are unable to transform back into their true beings until he dies. Thus the physical act of his death essentially takes his eyes and his ideals away, and the characters can break free from his oppression.
Churchill’s explicit and profoundly insightful manner also exhibits the subsistence and concerningly ubiquitous temperament of sexual oppression. Churchill overtly understood that the Victorian era was a “period of dramatic change the world over [and] there were advancements made in the promotion of women’s rights, especially in terms of…their rights in marriage” (Norton). Her writing “became closely associated with the Royal Court [during which she began] collaborations with Joint Stock…a feminist theatre union” (Lyric Stage). In fact, “for over twenty years, [her plays] have furthered feminist performance theory and broadened traditional views of gender roles” (Price). Sexual oppression is perhaps the most obvious theme running parallel to colonialism within the play, also emerging with the characterization itself.
In fact, Edward is one of the sexually oppressed by Clive and is thus played by a woman, and routinely likes to play with Victoria’s doll. Clive presents Edward, “my son is young. I’m doing all I can / to teach him to grow up to be a man” (Churchill 4). To which Edward replies, “what father wants I’d dearly like to be. / I find it rather hard as you can see” (4). In Act II, though Edward transforms back into a man, his sexual oppression was so great that he now believes that he is a lesbian, and approaching his sister Victoria, says, “I’d rather be a woman. I wish I / had breasts like that, I think they’re beautiful. Can I / touch them?” (92). Unfortunately, Edward continues to relish in his new transformation until the end of the play.
In Act I, Betty comes forward and announces, “I live for Clive. The whole aim of my life / is to be what he looks for in a wife. / I am a man’s creation as you see, / and what men want is what I want to be” (Churchill 4). Clive’s innocent oppression results in the ultimate devaluation of his wife, Betty, who no longer values herself as a woman, and is therefore played by a man due to her overwhelming need to be what men want her to be.
Moreover, Churchill uses Betty to “satirize the traditionally subordinate role of women in history, forcing us to recognize that female identity is a historical and cultural construction” (Imperial). Betty was traditionally subordinate until Clive dies, because starting in Act II, she gets a job and is actually proud of her work, saying, “I sit behind a desk of my own and I answer / the telephone and keep the doctor’s appointment book / and it really is great fun” (Churchill 102). Then near the very end of the play, Betty is reminiscing about masturbating as a child, commenting, “I thought if Clive wasn’t looking at me there wasn’t a person there…and my hand went down where I thought it shouldn’t…I felt angry with Clive and I went on defying [him]” (105). At the end of her dialogue, she says, “I felt triumphant because I was a separate person from [him]” (105). Betty, too, has finally mentally overcome her sexual oppressor.
Overall, to successfully read Churchill’s play, the audience must let go of all previous gender/racial assumptions and just watch as the action unfolds. Otherwise, it’s too easy to get lost in the gender machinations. Churchill chose to show the characters in this manner for a reason, though it’s almost too easy to create such literal character transformations. Now, what sets Churchill’s play apart from just cliche convention annoyance is that the real themes of colonialist ideals and sexual oppression run parallel throughout and do literally result in the re-transformations of the characters, when in Act II, they manage to become who they were meant to be.
References
Aston, Elaine. “Churchill, Caryl.” The Literary Encyclopedia. November 2005.
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=878
Imperial Archive. “Feminism and Post-Colonialism.”
http://www.qub.ac.uk/en/imperial/key-concepts/feminism-and-postcolonialism.htm
Lyric Stage. “A Profile of Caryl Churchill.”
http://www.lyricstage.com/A_Profile_of_Caryl_Churchill.htm
Norton Anthology of English Literature. “Victorian Age Review.” 2005.
http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/victorian/review/summary.htm
Price, John A. “The Language of Caryl Churchill: the Rhythms of Feminist Theory,
Acting Theory, and Gender Politics.” 1999.
http://www.womenwriters.net/editorials/PriceEd1.htm