Things Don't Always Turn Out as We Plan

Reflections upon Teaching Churchill’s Top Girls:

From the beginning, I hated the idea of teaching British literature to sophomores in high school. We had taught Brit Lit to seniors at my previous school. I had misgivings about the ability of 15-year-olds to deal with some of the works on the reading list both for their complexity and because of the sophistication of their content. My concerns, it turned out, were justified on both counts.
In the first semester, they dealt fairly well with The Canterbury Tales, Macbeth, and Emma. I was a bit bummed since I did have to tone down the sexual references that are appropriate for seniors, but would have just been titillating to younger students. My teaching of Chaucer seemed especially flat to me after decades of teaching CT to college students and seniors. After Santa left town, however, and we got into the 20th century works of Woolf, Gordimer, and Churchill, things began to break down. With Top Girls, they turned ugly.

The thing was just too hard for them to read, plain and simple. Realizing this, I rented a DVD of a 1991 production of the play—a good piece of work. They hated it and me. I soldiered on. Soon I realized that they weren’t just in over their literary heads; they had no idea “what was the big deal.”

I had to figure out an approach. I decided to confront these little post-feminists with Churchill’s own words. In class, I would pause the video and ask them such questions as these:
· How do women treat women of a class other than their own—in the play and in actual life?
· Which character do you most identify with? Why?
· What character would you add to the play and why?
· Is the play still relevant to women today or is this a period piece? (I had told them about the “in yer face” theatre and politics of the Thatcher years.)
· The DVD starts with the dinner party; Churchill has started it at different scenes. Where would you start a production of TG?
· What scene is absolutely essential to the play?
· Your “gut” reaction to one line from the play?

The discussion, perhaps because they didn’t like the play, was heated. It turns out that they thought that class didn’t matter in women’s dealings with other women; that the play is no longer relevant to women; and that Churchill isn’t a very good writer. But that was just their anger speaking and their frustration with the overlapping dialogue and multiple conversations. They did use evidence from the text better than they had done all year (it was April) in order to convince me that TG is a (pardon my French) POS. And I’m just English-teacher enough to be glad about that!

Yes, it was painful for me to hear them say that the play had nothing to do with the lives of 21st century women when I knew that their own doctor/lawyer/accountant mothers (and fathers) were struggling to balance work and family. But I had to let them have their opinions, and I respect them for expressing them so well. I was damned sure not going to deny them the freedom that the English department had denied me.

Here are the topics I devised for their writing assignment:
· Meaning of success for 2-3 of the characters and for women
· Use of language/silence in play and in women’s lives
· Role of humor in play and in women’s lives
· Function of alcohol and food in play and in our culture
· Operation of anger in play and in women’s lives
· Marriage in play and in our culture
· Motherhood in play and in our culture
· Feminism in play and in our culture
· Which characters were feminists?
· How does Churchill use history in the play? Connect to present.
Use 5-6 passages from the playas evidence to substantiate your thesis. Discuss each in your journal before you begin to write.