| Caryl Churchill,(1938-)is one of the most outstanding and popular British contemporary female dramatists in the theatrical industry as well as the one with a worldwide reputation.Based on the "Second wave of Feminist Movement",the greatest changes in British society,politics,economy and culture during this period had an indelible influence on Churchill’s ideology and artistic creation.From Owner in 1972 to Vinegar Tom in 1976,to Cloud Nine,Top Girls and Fen in the late 1970s and early 1980s,all of these plays contain writer’s thoughts,which is about female’s rights and gender issues.The outstanding political concern and the unique dramatic art technique in the works have been widely concerned by the British and even the international literary and art circles,and have been appraised four times in the "Obie Prize" of the Broadway Drama Awards outside the United States,also successively won a number of European and American Drama Awards,including the "Richard Hillary Memorial Prize","Susan Smith Blackburn Award","Evening Standard Award","The Society of West End Theatre Awards",etc.However,compared with the "Churchill enthusiasm" that is rapidly rising in the foreign literature and art research,due to the lack of Chinese translation,Churchill’s drama research has been in a cold situation in China for a long time.There are less than 100 domestic academic research documents,and there is no master degree’s thesis written in Chinese temporarily.Therefore,on the basis of extensive collection and reading of domestic and foreign literature,the author intends to select three representative plays Owners(1912),Cloud Nine(1979)and Fen(1983),which reflect Caryl Churchill’s feminist ideas,as the research object,focusing on the theme of ethical crisis in different levels caused by gender identity,unequal gender relations or dislocation and reversal of gender order in these plays,from the perspective of literary ethics and feminist criticism,this paper interprets the text from three levels:ethical dilemma,ethical disorder and ethical reconstruction according to the trend of the development and change of gender relations.Through the comprehensive study of the content and form of drama,aimming to reflect the author’s feminist thought comprehensively,and also to explore the author’s gender ethics view.This thesis is divided into five parts:introduction,text(four chapters),conclusion,references and appendixes.In the introduction,we first introduce Caryl Churchill and her creative achievements,then explain the reasons of this thesis and the current research situation of Churchill drama at home and abroad,and finally discuss the significance,research methods and innovations of this thesis.The first chapter mainly studies the work Fen,which reflects the double oppression of class and patriarchy in capitalist society,and analyzes the transformation of traditional gender relations and the emergence of women’s ethical dilemma in the early stage of the female consciousness development.Although the creation time of Fen is later,due to its relatively conservative story situation and character relationship setting,the plot content shows some features of the early development of the relationship between the two sexes.While women in this period have begun to realize their marginalization situation,they are still stay at the stage of seeking male’s recognition and respect,striving for the most basic living space,and always have a strong dependence on men’s strength and authority.The heroine of the work,Val,as a lower-class working woman in bourgeois society,has suffered from double imprisonment of capitalism and patriarchal thought for a long period,An extramarital affair with Frank,the dual ethical identity of mother and lover,all these things push her fall into a dilemma.At this time,Val’s female consciousness has been awakened,but when she tries to break through the economic oppression from the capitalist labor system,She’s still pinning her hopes on men,and expects that her lover Frank can take her to escape the fen full of female blood and tears,she has not realized that the patriarchal ideology hidden behind the capitalist system is the key to achieving self-liberation.The second chapter focuses on Churchill’s criticism of capital expansion and the same-sex oppression of the works Owners,analysis of the female power desire expansion caused by the traditional inversion of gender relations,and the resulting ethical disorder phenomenon.The second section,"Ethical Tragedy Caused by Dislocation of Identity",is actually to be interpreted from two directions.First,as for the heroine Marion,due to the career expansion and emotional control desire so that she abandoned the status of"angel of family" and turned into a strong woman in career,the traditional family male and female division of labor model was broken,and the the dislocation of gender identity made the traditional relationship between the two sexes was impacted.Secondly,it refers to the chaos in the ethical relationship that occurs between two families.The interweaving of material desire and sexual desire breaks the established family ethical order and makes two families fall into ethical chaos at the same time.Owners reflects the second stage of the development of women’s consciousness,from the desire to identify themselves to compete with men in various fields,and try to achieve free liberation in a way that transcends and controls men.The gender ethical relationship of strong women and weak men became the main feature of this stage.The third chapter focuses on the study of Churchill’s feminist dramatic masterpiece,Cloud Nine,and considers the possibility of realizing gender harmony through ethical reconstruction.Through the analysis of the two previous works,what can be realized is that with the awakening of women’s consciousness and the expansion of women’s power,the traditional gender relationship has been subverted,but women still have not been liberated,nor have they achieved the true sense of gender harmony,which raises a series of family ethics issues instead.If feminism continues to be expanded,no one can guarantee that women will not go to extremes,replace men and become the constructors of another central discourse.Therefore,based on the reflection of the development process of feminism,Churchill intends to explore the "third way" to realize the emancipation of women between absolute male power or feminist center,which is mainly manifested in the new attempt to desalinate the gender boundary and rebuild the open ethical order of pluralism,freedom and tolerance in the Cloud Nine.The fourth chapter focuses on the characteristics of drama in role setting,structure and situation,and explores the ethical expression effect and specific direction of its innovative art practice.Cross-casting is a special and common artistic technique in Churchill’s drama,which aims to make the role players have a greater sense of difference and distance from the role itself by coordinating and transforming multiple performance methods.On the one hand,it allows the audience to drift away from the drama situation and turns to think about reality.On the other hand,the cross-casting strategy itself contains profound Gender Ethics implications.The second section mainly starts from the drama structure,and analyzes the ethical direction of Churchill’s dramas with nonlinear narrative strategies,opening ending and so on,which is different from the common head-to-tail structure of "beginning-development-climax-end",fragmented drama plots and open endings urge audiences to break away from the drama situation and actively participate in the process of seeking reform.The last section,exploring the author’s thinking about gender issues from the perspective of the reproduced drama situation,aiming at some scenes that appear repeatedly in the three plays.The concluding part sort out the full text,summarizes the three dramas involved in the study and the gender relations and ethical issues reflected,showing the development and change of Churchill’s feminist thought proposition.In fact,all the three plays selected in the this paper respectively show the problems that women may encounter in the pursuit of liberation and self-realization from different perspectives.Through the review and reflection on these issues,readers can deepen their understanding of feminism,and it is more conducive to the exploration of harmonious and equal gender relations. |
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