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The Power of Sex: English Plays by Women, 1958–1988

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Sue-Ellen Case
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Abstract

Reading backwards, through the feminist critique, Sue-Ellen Case explores the role of sexuality in women's lives as portrayed in the work of British women playwrights during the past three decades. She illustrates the way in which the oppressive uses of sexuality in the patriarchy, identified by the social movement as rape and pornography, have been dramatized through dramatic narrative and character construction. In contrast to this representation of oppression, she discusses how the liberating role of pleasure and of women reclaiming their own desires provide a revolutionary feminist stage practice, in both heterosexual and lesbian social contexts. Sue-Ellen Case is Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, and her works include Feminism and Theatre and Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 27 , August 1991 , pp. 238 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

Notes and References

1. Delaney, Shelagh, A Taste of Honey (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 87Google Scholar.

2. For a thorough discussion of homosocial competition see Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

3. For a discussion of women as exchange in the patriarchal economy, see Rubin, Gayle, ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex’, in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Reiter, Rayna R. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), p. 191–2Google Scholar.

4. There are numerous books, articles, and pamphlets on this subject, both critical and practical. One of the best-read critical analyses in the United States is Griffin, Susan, Rape: the Politics of Consciousness (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986)Google Scholar.

5. Wertenbaker, Timberlake, The Love of the Nightingale and The Grace of Mary Traverse (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), p. 15Google Scholar.

6. Wertenbaker, p. 27.

7. For a discussion of the feminist subject as ‘inside and outside of ideology’ see de Lauretis, Teresa, ‘The Technology of Gender’, in Technologies of Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), especially p. 10Google Scholar.

8. See Kaplan, E. Ann, ‘Is the Gaze Male?’, in Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983), p. 23–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. For a discussion of this point, see Dolan, Jill, ‘The Dynamics of Desire: Sexuality and Gender in Pornography and Performance’, in The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1988), p. 59–81Google Scholar; Dworkin, Andrea, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Perigree Books, 1981)Google Scholar; and Kappeler, Susanne, The Pornography of Representation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

10. Daniels, Sarah, Masterpieces (London: Methuen, 1984)Google Scholar, opening acknowledgement.

11. Gems, Pam, Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi, in Plays by Women, Vol. I, ed. Michelene, Wandor (London: Methuen, 1982), p. 70Google Scholar.

12. The notion of compulsory heterosexuality was developed by Rich, Adrienne in ‘Compulsory Hetero-sexuality and Lesbian Existence’, in Powers of Desire: the Politics of Sexuality, ed. Snitow, Ann, Stansell, Christine, and Thompson, Sharon (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), p. 177–205Google Scholar.

13. Case, Sue-Ellen, ‘Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic’, in Making a Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women's Theatre, ed. Hart, Lynda (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), p. 282–99Google Scholar.

14. Another famous theatrical send-up of this search for identity was written by a gay man: Oscar's Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest – and one might also consider Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw. I would contend that it is not accidental that these plays were written by practising homosexuals, but reflect that society.

15. Wittig, Monique, ‘One is Not Born a Woman’, Feminist Issues, I, No. 2 (1981), p. 47–54Google Scholar.

16. Kay, Jackie, Chiaroscuro, in Lesbian Plays, ed. Davis, Jill (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 79Google Scholar.

17. Diamond, Elin, ‘(In) Visible Bodies in Churchill's Theatre’, Theatre journal, XL, No. 2 (1988), p. 203Google Scholar.