Caryl Churchills famous play Cloud Nine explore a number of relationships that centre around sexuality, personality and society. The play also talks about the relationship of the individual to the society in colonial regimes. The relationship between Joshua and the other members of the society in the play provides information on the sexual and racial oppression of culture during colonial times. The play most importantly provides an understanding of gender dimensions by exploring concepts of masculinity and femininity, where identities are based on social constructions of gender are provided by the society at large. According to scholars, the play also provides an understanding of gender diversity through a comic affect and different aesthetic affects. Judith Butler writes that gender is more performative rather than natural, and this is what we find in the play (cited in Ravari, 2010). Act 1 of the play portrays a very patriarchal and rigid colonial society in British Africa. The rigid gender and class rules are portrayed by people who are playing a different colour/gender than what they are. The relationship between Clive and his wife Betty where he introduces his wife as “My wife is all I dreamt a wife would be. And everything she is she owes to me” (Churchill, 1985, p.12). The lines are the representation of the concept of a patriarchal relationship that exists in society and in the house. Clearly, the play provides a picture of the patriarchal society that exists and where Clive is the head of the family and plays the dominating role. The domination posited by Clive rests on the theory of the conquered and the one that is powerful in relation to the former. Another form of patriarchy is when Clive punishes his wife because she has an affair with Harry, and his wife says, "It’s my wickedness… there is something so wicket in me Clive” (Churchill, 1985, p.94). The woman blames herself for the failure of her marriage.
Similarly, in the poem by Sylvia Platt, Daddy, patriarchy is explored in a father-daughter relationship. The father is portrayed as a Nazi who is both hated and loved by his daughter. Scholars have pointed out that the poet has used the Electra complex (Glitz, 2018). The poem has focused on the problematic relationship between the father and the daughter. The lines "The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year" (Plath 1960) speaks about the relationship that she has with the men in her life. Scholars have pointed out that she is also referring to the relationship that she had with her husband where her husband had an affair, and that broke up their marriage. Apart from this, the poet also describes daddy as a brute who is the same as a Nazi soldier. The poem clearly shows how the woman had been dominated and felt suffocated due to the restrictions placed on women in society. She provides an example of the relationship she had with the men in her life, and they controlled each and every part of her life. She portrays herself to be a victim of the Nazi soldier, and hence she calls herself a Jew.
All three texts explored the identity crisis of the characters in relation to their surroundings and families. In the play Cloud Nine, the focus is on the relationship between gender and sexuality with power and authority (Harding, 1998). Adam Berry opined that Queer theory focuses on understanding the meanings behind binary’s like homosexuality and heterosexuality and male and female. The theory tries to deconstruct the limitations based on the explorations of sexualities and compartmentalise them into what is valued and what is devalued as different categories (cited in Albayrak, 2009, p. 2). This theory celebrates the deconstruction of sexuality is imposed by society and enjoys the proliferation of different sexual identities, and defends all the number of ways that an individual can express themselves sexually without being marginalised. In the same way, in the play Cloud nine, the character Edward explores the concept of sexuality, queerness and identity. In Act 1, Edward wants to play with the doll and his mother Betty tells him that men don't play with dolls and goes on further to say that “You must never let the boys at school know you like dolls… No one will talk to you, you won’t be on the cricket team, you won't grow up to be a man like your papa" (Churchill, 1985, p.87). Where the concept of masculinity and femininity are imposed on different genders, which are separated into male and female. Each conforms to certain rules and regulations that are seen as normal in society. The individual who appears to be dressed or born with certain kinds of physical attributes is considered to be of a specific gender in the
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