39 Intersectionality in Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls: Class and Gender Identity Flo Gunstone The following extracts are taken from my longer essay on intersectionality in Caryl Churchill’s acclaimed play Top Girls as seen through the lens of class and gender identity. Few plays of the 1980s have made an impact on the political theatre genre as much as Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls. First performed in 1982 at the Royal Court Theatre, the play revolves around the life of businesswoman Marlene and her interactions with other women, set against the political backdrop of a neoliberalist 1980s England. Churchill states that, “socialism and feminism aren’t synonymous, but I do feel strongly about both and wouldn’t be interested in a form of one that didn’t include the other” (Churchill 1987: 3). It would be impossible to discuss the theme of gender identity without referencing class, as the themes are so closely interwoven into the narrative. Churchill achieves this intersectionality through the all-female cast and strong female protagonist whilst exploring class differences, allowing audiences to form deep emotional attachments to the play. When evaluating Churchill’s success in presenting the themes of gender identity and class in Top Girls, it is important to consider her background. The playwright was privately educated from the age of ten, where she studied at the Trafalgar School for Girls before moving to Oxford University to study English Literature. Many critics have argued that the fact Churchill did not grow up surrounded by poverty limits her ability to write fairly about working-class stories and experiences. This has been a decades-old debate in theatre, with Liz Tomlin stating that, “the cultural and political mainstream narratives of stigmatisation are most often authored by those who are not of the communities they misrepresent” (Tomin 2025: 35). She also discusses critic Katie Beswick’s views, stating that she “likewise cautions against the commodification of working-class voices which can be marketed as authentic accounts of an exoticized ‘reality’ which is far from the middle-class audience’s own” (Tomlin 2025: 38). Whilst these viewpoints are logical, their usefulness is limited when considering Churchill’s portrayal of the theme of class. Churchill’s intention was not to create a collection of historically accurate biographies of working-class women. Instead, she extracted the issues she witnessed in society during the early 1980s, such as the effects of Margaret Thatcher’s government, and used them to create a fictional narrative that explores the theme of class, focusing on creating female identities that she could resonate with. Whilst Churchill’s connection to the struggles of working-class people can be
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