Travel and Tourism Essay Example for Free

Travel and Tourism Essay Inbound What is inbound travel? This is when people from other countries come and visit the up and all around the UK for a holiday or the purpose of tourism. For instance a person from Spain coming to visit the UK on holiday Domestic What is domestic travel? This is when UK residents travel around the UK for the sole purpose of tourism. For instance a person from Halifax going on holiday to Blackpool or Whitby The difference within the both inbound and domestic is that people from out of the UK come in to travel and become tourists in the UK and with domestic is when people travel around the UK for a holiday like going to Blackpool etc. A couple from china that would want to visit all of the main capitals in the UK. As the couple from china may have never visited the uk they would not know what to do like getting information or the best places for accommodation therefore I will be explaining everything where to get information from and where to visit. The United Kingdom has four main capital cities: London Edinburgh Belfast Cardiff The Chinese couple would wish to visit all of these main capital cities. When going to another country getting information is key about the city but about everything in general like getting information or finding out where to go the best places to stay etc. and good and an effective website because it has everything that an tourist would need the website is easy to navigate there are maps and brochures that the couple could print of and there is also an 360 degrees virtual map that they could use to get familiar with  London. They also have a customer’s service desk so that if the couple ever needed an information then they would be able to ring them Where to stay within time London has become very successful within the tourist business. See more: The issues concerning identity theft essay What to do? whilst London is an very modern and well developed the city still has its world renown heritage sites that tourists can visit there are over 2123 attractions that they could visit whilst they were in London these consist of the major attractions like the big ben tower of London or even the London eye all of these activities can be booked online and may be cost less than what it would cost to buy the tickets on the day. On the visit London website they do an attraction planner that the couple could download and print so that they can plan there whole activities and that they can get enough activities and attractions that they6 would need to. They are attractions for the couple to see that they may not have to pay for and that they can enjoy for free. The London nightlife in best in the whole country they have the best night clubs in the uk there so if the couple want to go out or if they don’t want to go to the clubs they can go on romantic dinners and there’ s spas all around London 5* Transport getting around London is very easy due to the many different forms of transport there are taxis there are trains cable cars buses and the tube theses are accessible all around the uk and they are very reasonably priced and they are not very expensive at all. For the couple the cheapest thing for them to get would be the oyster card this is an smart card that can be bought on the website and it can be used all around the uk and how many times they would want to it can be used on any time of transport. The couple can buy these cards online and they can also pay for these and they would get theses in advance for when they plan to travel London On the website visit London they have an whole link that shows disabled people how to access London quicker there are special tours that disabled people can access then there are the transport services there is help for them there and the fares are an lot cheaper every  attraction in London has disables toilets and easy accessible stairs or lifts that they would be able to access. For the customer service there is an 24 hour customer help lines that tourist can ring if they are in any types of trouble the number can be found on the visit London website there is also an map so that people don’t get lost their however they are tourist centres all around London so people can go in If they have an questions. There are many places where the couple could go if they wanted to save some money there are the free attractions around London like the museums etc. or if he couple decide to visit the uk on the visit London site there is an navigation below I have an image of the website its shows any types of special offers like discounts on theatre clubs or there is also an list of cheap hotel offers. The cost to vist the uk can vary depending on wwhere abouts in they would want to vistype of holiday for intance an romantic holiday ect below I am going to show the cost pof visting london for 2 nights 3 days Flights- £470 per person - £940 Hotels  £29 per night - £58 Ativities they are many things to do free activies and then they are the heritage sites 18.80 per person etc Food-shops all around of the uk MAXIMUM  £100 1175.5 Edinburgh Edinburgh is the the main capital city of scotland and is known for its amayzing senory and wonderfull countrey side is an tourist attraction that is normall like by maybe mnature people due to it being quite etc. To accsess information about edinbourgh there are so many sites and the sites are all very easy to navigate and there all really easy to acsess there is inofromation about everything on there like accomadation travel things to do etc one of the websites that I found very usefull and very easy to accsess was the vist edinbourgh website.on this website there was an navigation for everything and it was so eay to navigate there was also lots of pictures so we could see what the senery looks like. Becausde edinbourgh is an capital city and is very well known around the world there acomadation range is endless there is somethin there for everybody is ther couple wanted an romantic hotel or if they wanted an cheap budet hotel the hotels arte really easy to accsess and easy to book. Edinbourgh is an city which is mostly known for its countrey side and there are amny different ways to get around there on the visit london website there are naviagtions of getting around edinbourgh and also navigations about how to get around within edinbourgh there are maps and phone numbers for the toursts so they can accsess the information easlya nd they can plan there jurneys.the most used transport that is sued around edinbouirgh is foot most people prefer walking around edinbourgh however there are other forms of transport like cycling,buses and car hires all these are at an cheap price not to expensive There are many activites that are value for money and attractiosn that the couple could go to and not pay for and all of this activities are again found on the website the activites that they could do would be to vist the beaches or walk thorugh the hils or visit the parks and gardens or maybve the meusems or there are also the churches and catedrals however they are other activeities that may be just as fun where the couple may have to pay for like the edinbourgh zoo or thwre are castles,monetery history or they could vist an amazyinbg attraction called the real king marys close.shopping with in edinbourgh is at an whole different range there are street markets or they are the shopping malls loctaed all around edinbourgh. Custemer service ceneters are located all around the city there are spread out all around the city there are some in the bus and train stationa dn in the shopping centers they are there to help people who may be struggleing or they are lost ther is also accsess to languge books so if the couple have any troubles then they can look through the books and they can also get help there. On all fo the activites there is easy accsaess like less stairs or there are ramps or even lifets there is also different types of accsess for intace if  there was an person who needed something like if they were on an wheel chair then tehyw ould be able to ask the hotel and they would get it there is an link for accses on the vist scotland website. Costs London to edinbourgh on train is  £18.50 per person with is  £37.00 Acomadation 2 nighst 3 days  £120 Activities- £150 Food and drink  £100 Overall cost  £407 Belfast Belfast is located in ireland and is an small but an capital city the city is known all around the world for its amayzing fesivals its picturess senery Because belfast is na capital city there are many diffret websites that the couple could use for information such as the visit belfast webite which was created ansd funded by the government the webite is accurate and everything on the site can be trused so if the couple would like to pay for they holiday before they went to belfast they could trust the website completeley also with the visit belfast website the couple would not ned to use any other website because there is an navigation for everything such as accomadation thing sto do and about belfast the wevbbsite I seasy to navigate and is very easy to understand. Accomadation because belfasrt is not an very big cit they will be an good range however the range wont be as big as it would be in london or edinbourgh and the range they have there is something there for everybody there is the bed and breakfirt there are the romantic hotels and there is something to match everybodys budget.all the couple would have to do would be tio visit the website â€Å"visit belfast† as they can find the range of accomdation. Getting around belfats most people would tend to use foot and if the couple would want to walk around belfast then they would be an seris of maps that they could download and print out or if they would not prfer to wlk then they could go around by taxi or bus or if they would prefer to hire out there own car all they would need to would bring there valid driving licince. Because belfast is an capital city there are custemer service  centers located all around th ecity so if people are lost or in trouble or even want vbasic information they can go in to the custermer service centers however there is an alternative ther can ring the custermer service phone line which is 0 118 500 it also shows number for the emargency services. Things to do in belfast belfast is full of fun educatiinal and amazying things to do there are shopping centers maybe the best in the uk there are asttractions such as the titanic in belfast they have got the titanic tourss,titanic pump and the titanic boat trips abnd the titanic resturants this is all bcuase that’s whtas blefast is known for and its eductaional and intresting if th ecouple would want something different they have alwatys got there famous fesitvals that they could watch freom the free side.if the coupel are luking for an budget holiday they can click on the butten that would say budet and they would find all sorts off amazying activites and attracttiobns that they could do like the botanic gardons or the belfast zoo.food within belfast is one of th bes in the countrey there are resurants alll over there are budget resturants but also very well preserver historic howver they would be an bit expensive so the couple do have na range according to there budget. Costs Edinbourgh-belfast onplane is  £20 per person with is  £40.00 Acomadation 2 nighst 3 days  £100 Activities- £100 Food and drink  £150 Overall cost  £380.00 Vsist cardiff Wales Capital city youll find unique attractions, top class entertainment and quality shopping with a difference all within walking distance. Innovative architecture sits alongside historic buildings and Cardiff Bay offers entertainment for everyone. Information on Cardiff is very easy to find because eat is an capital city however not every website can be trusted therefore I have chosen to use one website why I know this website can be trusted because it is an website that Is funded by the government therefore the information is correct if the couple would want to plan their whole trip  they could use this whole website except for the travel which they would have to use an website such as easy jet or Thomas cook etc. The website is called visit Cardiff it is very easy to understand and easy to navigate Accommodation the accommodation range within Cardiff is very varied there are 5* or bed and breakfast there is again everything according to the couples budget the hotels can be found according to their star and the hotels are very easy to use and to book and again the website is very secure, however there is an smoking law where none of the couple if they do smoke cannot smoke within the hotel they will be an smoking shelter for them to smoke in. Travel-there is many ways to travel around Belfast there are coach’s buses. Trains walking and they can hire cars the travel system are all very easy and very easy to get hold of if the couple would choose to walk there are maps that they could download and use. There are tourist information centres all around the city so that if the couple so need anything they can drop in to the centres of course free of charge and ask the information about everything and anything there I also an number that the couple could save and whenever they need anything they can ring the number the customer service helpline is an 24 hour website and can be used by anybody .Another way they could get information is if they email the centre regarding any quires and the centre will get to back to the couple as soon as possible. Things to do in Cardiff there are many different places that they could visit in Cardiff and they would never be bored there are attractions for everybody and anybody. They could visit the Cardiff Bay is home to the new BBC Wales studios and is the filming location for Doctor Who, Casualty, Wizards vs Aliens Pobol y Cwm.or if they wanted to do some shopping they could visit the queens arcade this is an shopping centre famous all around the uk. Food places around the city are many there are expensive and cheap hotels they even hold the foodie events so people can try different foods from all around the world. Special offers or budget activities they can visit casinos or there are the sporting activities or even the wonderful castles that Cardiff has to offers so in the city there is something there for everyone and the couple would not get bored. Costs Belfast to cardiff onplane is  £30 per person with is  £60.00 Acomadation 2 nighst 3 days  £120 Activities- £80 Food and drink  £1400 Overall cost  £400 Overall cost for the couple to vsit the uk would be  £2362.50 this would inculde everything food activities travela nd accomadation. The couple from the use can come to UK to visit the main sporting even in the work the Olympics this is the ultimate sporting even that they would want to be a part of. There are man y different website about the Olympics that the group could use it’s an event for everybody and it is an event loved and visited by people from the whole world Information about London and the Olympics is very easy to find like anything that they would need the website that I have found and it is an very interesting website is the Olympics visitors guide on this website there is everything that the group could use to come to the uk and visit the uk however this is not only website there are much more website all they would need to type in would be London 2012 Olympics. Accommodation because this is an event from all around the world London tourist numbers will be at the highest there for accommodation may be difficult to find if it is left to last minute therefore booking in advance on websites wo uld be an good start the easiest and the most cheapest way that the group could accommodate would be if they rented out an house it would be an lot cheaper and it would be an lot closer to the Olympic park. Transport to get form the USA to the UK they would need to catch a plane witch would land in one of the airports. Getting around London is an little bot difficult because of all of the people it would be cheaper for the group to travel around London with either the tube or if they wanted to bus and to walk there is maps all around the city and also there is an virtual 3d map on the visit London website. Customer service there is customer service cabins all around the city and they will be more because of the Olympics it’s so easy to gather information and they could not have a problem with  the language anyways because they speak English Activates the main activity that they are going to do is visit the Olympics however in their spare time there is many different things within London so that they can do there are the nightclubs or there is historical attractions like the tower of London or they could go shopping to shops like Selfridges etc. there are food places spread all round the uk for the group to visit and they are some of the restaurants that are really cheap. Total cost per person 1 week flight from America to united kingdom  £1001 Group of 4 people would cost each person  £100 Olympic seats  £1500 Food- £150 Other activities  £100 Getting around  £150 Total cost  £3001 A family wanting to visit a theme park There are many different theme parks that the family could visit there is an whole verity like flamingo lad, Alton towers, pleasure land, Thorpe park and much much more. The theme park that I am going to chose is pleasure beach Blackpool. The reason why I have chosen pleasure beach Blackpool is because there is rides there for everybody there are rids for children and adult also there is a beach close by that they could visit Access to information is so easy the actual pleasure beach website is really good there is information about everything rides food places prices etc. Because the family are going for a day visit they would not need accommodation Transport there are many different ways of getting to Blackpool however because they live in the UK they are UK residents they may be a chance that they drive to Blackpool or if they want to they can get the train instead. Accessibly there is all of that around the park like push chairs so that parents could push their children around th ere are many different perks like being told in advance they can sort out extra attraction so there is something there for everybody. Customer service there is centres all around there is also some within the theme park and there is a big information centre at the entrance of the theme park where there is information about everything. Cost there are family tickets that would be available for the family to UK which would be a lot cheaper than the separate tickets  £64 There is many activates they can do with blackpoll as well as the rides there are activities that they can do like they can go to shows which are all so cheap and gift shops etc. or they can go out on to the beach which is free of cost and they would not be paying for anything at all. Total cost Travel  £50 Food  £50 Tickets  £64 Other costs  £100 Total Costs  £264 A couple who want a quite stay at a city Edinburgh Edinburgh is the the main capital city of scotland and is known for its amayzing senory and wonderfull countrey side is an tourist attraction that is normall like by maybe mnature people due to it being quite etc. To accsess information about edinbourgh there are so many sites and the sites are all very easy to navigate and there all really easy to acsess there is inofromation about everything on there like accomadation travel things to do etc one of the websites that I found very usefull and very easy to accsess was the vist edinbourgh website.on this website there was an navigation for everything and it was so eay to navigate there was also lots of pictures so we could see what the senery looks like. Becausde edinbourgh is an capital city and is very well known around the world there acomadation range is endless there is somethin there for everybody is ther couple wanted an romantic hotel or if they wanted an cheap budet hotel the hotels arte really easy to accsess and easy to book. Edinbourgh is an city which is mostly known for its countrey side and there  are amny different ways to get around there on the visit london website there are naviagtions of getting around edinbourgh and also navigations about how to get around within edinbourgh there are maps and phone numbers for the toursts so they can accsess the information easlya nd they can plan there jurneys.the most used transport that is sued around edinbouirgh is foot most people prefer walking around edinbourgh however there are other forms of transport like cycling,buses and car hires all these are at an cheap price not to expensive. There are many activites that are value for money and attractiosn that the couple could go to and not pay for and all of this activities are again found on the website the activites that they could do would be to vist the beaches or walk thorugh the hils or visit the parks and gardens or maybve the meusems or there are also the churches and catedrals however they are other activeities that may be just as fun where the couple may have to pay for like the edinbourgh zoo or thwre are castles,monetery history or they could vist an amazyinbg attraction called the real king marys close.shopping with in edinbourgh is at an whole different range there are street markets or they are the shopping malls loctaed all around edinbourgh. Custemer service ceneters are located all around the city there are spread out all around the city there are some in the bus and train stationa dn in the shopping centers they are there to help people who may be struggleing or they are lost ther is also accsess to languge books so if the couple have any troubles then they can look through the books and they can also get help there. On all fo the activites there is easy accsaess like less stairs or there are ramps or even lifets there is also different types of accsess for intace if there was an person who needed something like if they were on an wheel chair then tehyw ould be able to ask the hotel and they would get it there is an link for accses on the vist scotland website. Costs London to edinbourgh on train is  £18.50 per person with is  £37.00 Acomadation 1 week  £200 Activities- £150 Food and drink  £100 Overall cost  £487

Physical Observed Assessment Analysis

Physical Observed Assessment Analysis COMMUNICATION Any form of interaction is done through communication as a skill. To human interaction it is pivotal. Communication is a process which enables people to relate with those around them and to make concerns and needs know very well indeed. Communication can be verbal and non- verbal.Peate (2005) states that non- verbal communication reinforces a verbally communicated message. Building an important sustaining relationships with a patient, eye contact, smiling, touching, head nodding and leaning forward all these are recommended and have been seen as more helpful in communicating with patients on non-verbal communication. These are the signs and symbols we use, they have powerful impact in interpreting and sharing the meanings of messages. Non-judgemental interactions are focused on therapeutic communication, helps settle emotional conflicts and supports heart to heart talks allowing a patient to feel safe and free to share their true feelings, fears, values, hopes and ideas. This can result in healing benefits. According to Crawford et al (2006), communication is central and powerful, it helps not damage a patient’s life. Other important attributes of communication are listening and acknowledgeing.These are also essential because they raise the self –esteem of patients, thereby paving way for a therapeutic relationship. All details that could identify any person, clinical placement or trust have been changed to protect confidentiality, in line with The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Code of Professional Conduct, Performance and Ethics (2008) the name used will be Mr. Smith. This assignment is going to be discussed about a physical observed assessment which was observed during practice at placement. Mr. Smith came in with different medical history problems. The reason why he was admitted in hospital is because he had eye condition two months ago. On assessment, Mr. Smith was coughing, wheezy and dyspnoeic with shallow breathing accompanied by the use of accessory muscles. His hands were clammy. Mr. Smith said that he did not want to be in hospital, was tough and appeared very anxious during assessment. Touch was the Communication tools which was used to assess him during the period he was admitted in the ward. He could not see the nurse when she was talking to him because of his vision lost. Mr. Smith suffers with an eye condition. This is a condition somewhere the optic nerve is injured next to the idea of where it will opt out. With this kind of condition that Mr. Smith has, when trying to communicate with Mr. Smith you must attempt to be at the similar eye level as him, continually examine to find if he is able to comprehend you or not.so that you will be able to achieve Mr. Smith’s courtesy and to keep his attention during the discussion, the use of touch is vital. Establishing the health care needs, when a patient is admitted an assessment has to be done. Assessment is one of the greatest vital jobs any qualified workers can agree to. If it is done systematically by using the range of skills that is required, it can show to be most actual and authorising knowledge for everybody anxious. But it requires to be completed appropriately and to the best of your capability. Before arriving at any decision MDT has work and achieve their set of goals effectively, communication has to take place at all levels across the various discipline.NMC (2008) specifies that nurses should make patients their first concern and treat them with compassion maintaining the individual aspects, NMC (2011) sees communication as an important skill that complements the proficiencies that nurses are required to accomplish. Mr. Smith’s nurse has made a plan. A plan was a session which lasts 30minutes and allowed me to observe my mentor what she has been doing with Mr. Smith. When someone is sensitive to touch, they are many signs that will indicate. Facial expression, a bite reflex or grinding teeth are most visible when touching someone. The procedure which was used by the nurse reduced the relieves reaction. She started by touching Mr. Smith’s hands then slowly moving them up his arms final on his shoulders, she clarified this was beneficial to the patient, slowly developed the use of being touched. She then engaged both hands on the side of Mr. Smith’s face slightly and started with the movements. The reason she did this was because she wanted to warm up Mr. Smith’s face muscles. The nurse now provided Mr. Smith some facial languages to attempt and transport out such as sulking, pleasure, irritation, surprise and grief. Furthermore make sure they are agreed out correctly with sufficient of time, as if they are hurried they will not be achieved correctly. (Timby 2005) indicated that touch is the best potent non-verbal message techinique.It is a caring and calming hint shows the patients that the nurse helps. Remain confident to practice touch in this technique only if there is non –violent to patients. However( Holey and Matthews 2013) stated that touch is a cultural ,some patients prefer that you not touch them except for treatment purpose, Many feel that touch is a medical setting signals that something disagreeable is about to happen. If you feel the patient is friendly, offer a comforting touch when nothing offensive or painful is planned. ( Kowalski 2008) suggest that before touch as a means of giving concern and compassion, defined by seeing the client whether your touch is wanted without consent agreed touching implies a certain understanding and creates power to the one who is touching over the one who is touched. There are many plans needs to be considered when communicating with a lost vision clients (Mr. Smith). It is vital to make face to face with Mr. Smith when communicating with him, if required, bow or be seated down so you remain on level where he can see you eye to eye and he can also hear your voice. (Timby ,2005) stated that eye to eye communication means eyeing straight into the eye of the other person .Absence of eye interaction has a number of meanings among cultures. Do not speak to him when you are not standing in front of him where cannot see or hear you clearly or do not go missing while cooperating. With Mr. Smith’s condition you have to speak with a tone voice since he has a vision condition. There signs that can encourage Mr. Smith toward communicate such as touching overall comments and using his title before introduction into general discussions can help Mr. Smith to feel more relaxed to be involved in a discussion. To keep a flowing discussion the healthcare professional are required to use inquiries, encouragements and investigations as required (Stretch, 2006). During clinical placement mentor investigated the patient, Mr. Smith assisting him by giving him a cup of tea, the nurse asked him if he would like a cup of tea.’Mr. Smith frustrated to say coffee, vocal, keeping a flowing discussion and prompts and inquiries. The point to which we trust on non- vocal signs for example; face appearance, body actions, or sign, to maintain our verbal production is not regularly fully familiar. The patient who is very unpleasant, or in discomfort might discover these nonverbal signs difficult to produce. The nurse’s duty is to attempt to talk this with Mr. Smith and his family to look at likely choices for avoiding this possible failure in communication. Where verbal communication is condensed through someone who cannot talk very well or intellectual changes, the non-verbal position can deliver a different and actual main approach of both meaning receiving and giving. There are changed channels in which personal communication can be conserved. Maintaining social communication, this benefits to maintain Mr. Smith’s self-esteem. Always try to save speaking, Mr. Smith might discover some of the non-verbal movements helpful and many are understood. Use touch carefully, it is clear that Mr. Smith relaxes at comfort as soon as touch is complex even if it a finger on his shoulders. Inspire efforts to communicate and deliver other types of encouragement with Mr. Smith, touch feeling, face to face languages, body posture, space and equal amongst vulnerable and nurse Barriers such as term practice, phrases, images and knowledge styles have an effect. Semantic obstacles perform a massive part in the program of message from the nurses to the clients or the added method round. Arguments may have a unlike significance even communicating in not in different languages. Therefore while trying to communicate with Mr. Smith these features must be extremely measured earlier, for example no judge mental. Thompson (2003) stated that a barrier gesture is any action, behavior or physical arrangement that discourages the other person from feeling comfortable, thereby reducing their ability to communicate positively and effectively. However Trevithick (2005) suggests that one of the skills which occasionally works to help unlock someone’s barrier gestures is called a mirroring.Mr.Smith use to sit up in bed with his arms locked, if his vision was good mirroring would have been an good idea to him. For example if they are sitting with arms firmly crossed, you do the same for a while that is if their vision is clear, but this would be a disadvantage to him because the vision condition he has. However, the vision is not clear enough you have to talk to them, slowly they begin to unfold your arms, and you may find that they copy your actions and begin visibly to relax especially to those who can see you. It is worth an occasional try, but it needs to be done marginally, and there is no promise that it works. However active listening can be used as well. Docherty and McCallum (2009) states that ‘Active listening’ ensures that everything that a person is trying to say is fully received and understood by the listeners. This will include trying to comprehend not just what the person is saying with their chosen words, but what some of their underlying thoughts and feelings are that may be taken as much by what they do not say and by their body language, as by the words they use. Trevithick (2005) suggest that ‘Active listening’ is often used by helping professionals to highlight the significance of the movement. Furthermore Crawford et al (2006) states that sometimes patients just need you to be there, quiet and listening and this can also be achieved using the acronym SOLER.Consequently, a good listener will always pay attention to non-verbal cues too and this encourages the patients to open up giving more information and expressing their concerns. From this it can be deducted that respect is given to a patient’s contribution best when they are listened too. Active listening has several layers to it, it is only hearing the words which are being spoken by people. It is easier than done, which is why such an importance is laid upon it as a core communication skill. The listening skills we need will vary according to the setting of the tasks. For an example, if you are a nurse you may need to produce vital information about a patient’s symptoms in order to reach a correct opinion. This example illustrate the complication of the listing task. The common subject, however, the type of question that can be used in active listening. There are grouped together into two categories which is Open questions and closed questions.Open questions are used when you want to help someone to ‘open up’ about themselves, or to give you some insights into how they feeling or to explore a situation in more depth. When Mr. Smith has been assessed by the nurse on the time he came in hospital. She asked him with her manner voice and she was speaking slowly in order for the patient to hear her well and clearly. Her tone voice overwhelmed Mr. Smith and he then explained his situation to the nurse more deeply, so this helped the nurse to get more information from her patient because he was talking about the topic to the nurse. Open questions do not allow a straightforward ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response, but it will invite the patients to talk about the topic like what Mr. Smith did to my mentor. Not everyone will feel able to open up’ easily and share their deep thoughts and feelings. Some people needs to go step by step and to be led by interviewer until they gain confidence to go deeper. This is why closed questions also have an important role to play. Closed questions invite a straightforward ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, they are necessary in gathering factual information in as straightforward a way as possible. This questions can give a message to the interviewee that you are in charge, know what you are doing and where you are going, and that they can put their confidence in you. In this case it is not that open questions are good and closed questions are bad, it is a gross magnification. Each of these two has it ‘s own part to play in a well-balanced effective interview, and it is up to you to judge which will be most suitable and real as the interview explains. Conclusion However, communication is certainly a principle commanding for the real caring. Performance and communication of caring and capability at this time have a main effect on the ability of patients and relations to adjust the update, reflect choices, and adjust to anything deceptions forward. If the update is depressed the right touch, appearance, and compassionate kind terms constantly displays a change. The main ideas that have been debated in this assignment are that of the significance of communicating in nursing and how nurses can progress their communication skills and keep their competence. We must deliver complete care for our patients and the objective is to listen to the person and offer them with concerned understanding. REFERENCES Lee Thayer, (2011). COMMUNICATION A Pocket Oracle for Leaders. 1st ed. Xlibris Corporation: e.g. Houghton Mifflin. Nursing and midwifery council.(2011).guidance on professional conduct for nursing and midwifery students. Retrieved from http://www.nmc-uk.org Timby, B. K. (2005). Fundamental nursing skills and concepts. (9th ed). London, United Kingdom: Williams Wilkins

Which Antacid Works the Best? Essay -- essays research papers fc

Which Antacid Works the Best?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Heartburn is a condition characterized by a burning feeling in the chest and a sour or bitter taste in the mouth. Heartburn usually develops when the acidic contents of the stomach flow back, or regurgitate, into the esophagus, the muscular tube that carries food from the throat to the stomach. Approximately one in ten adults experience heartburn once a week. Heartburn is more common in pregnant women because of the pressure the expanding uterus exerts on the stomach. When you swallow, the lower esophageal sphincter, a circular band of muscle around the bottom part of your esophagus, relaxes to allow food and liquid to flow down into your stomach. When it relaxes at the wrong time, stomach acid flows back up into your esophagus, even though you're in an upright position. The acid backup is worse when you're bent over or lying down.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Some factors that can cause the sphincter to relax abnormally include:  Fatty foods  Chocolate, caffeine, onions, spicy foods, mint and some medications  Alcohol  Large meals  Lying down soon after eating  Tranquilizers, such as benzodiazepines including diazepam (Valium) and alprazolam (Xanax)  Theophylline (Slo-Bid, Theo-Dur), an asthma medication  Being overweight  Hiatal hernias  Oral contraceptives  Heart medications The amount of gastric juice produced by the stomach varies from person to person. People that produce more gastric acid are referred to as ‘hyper secretors’. People that produce less gastric acid are known to be ‘hypo secretors’. Antacids can also be used to help heal duodenal ulcers. These ulcers occur in the upper part of the intestines. They can also be combined with other medications to help treat gastric ulcers and acid reflux. Heartburn is generally diagnosed with a complete description of the symptoms. In severe cases, a physician may order a barium X ray of the stomach and esophagus to rule out other problems. A physician may also examine the esophagus with an endoscope, an instrument that can view the interior of the digestive tract, and take tissue and fluid samples. There are several treatments for heartburn. In mild cases, over-the-counter medications such as antacids can ... ...mg of Simethicone. This helps prevent gas. The inactive ingredients are butylparaben, carboxymethylcellulose sodium, flavor, hydroxypropyl methycellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, propylparaben, purified water, saccharin sodium, and sorbitol.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Mylanta contains all of the same ingredients as Maalox in the same amounts except for that it does not contain saccharin sodium. In a day, no more than 24 teaspoonfuls can be taken.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  If you don’t want to take antacids for heartburn, there are lifestyle changes that you can make. Quitting smoking or losing weight can alleviate or prevent heartburn. Sleeping with the head of the bed elevated 6 in helps prevent the stomach's contents from flowing back into the esophagus. Going to bed on an empty stomach, and cutting back on consumption of alcohol, fat, chocolate, and peppermint also can prevent heartburn. Finally, eating smaller and more frequent meals is another way that you can prevent heartburn. Bibliography www.encarta.msn.com/find/concise.asp?ti=761575197&sid=3#s3 â€Å"Digestive System†. Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. 1999. â€Å"The Stomach†. Student Reference Library. 1997

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - The Battle Between Dr. Jekyll

The Battle Between Jekyll and Hyde      Ã‚  Ã‚   Throughout Western literature, writers have created characters who act as perfect foils to each other with dramatically observable differences. Each pairing has a stronger and weaker in the combination, and usually one outlives the other. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the pairing exists in one body, and yet the struggle is heightened because both aspects of the identity are equal in strength. Ultimately, Stevenson emphasizes it is Jekyll who holds the power of life or death over Hyde. Hyde's "love of life is wonderful," but Hyde is also aware of Jekyll's "power to cut him off by suicide (Stevenson 101)." It is the awareness of each for the other which confirms that neither can exist alone.    According to Albert Camus in his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus," "the sight of human pride is unequaled (Bowie 47)." It is Jekyll's pride in his secret existence of sensuality and "love of life" which postpones the self-destructive tendency. However, as soon as Hyde begins to appear without Jekyll's physical act of drinking the elixir, Jekyll can no longer allow the "brute that slept within" to emerge on his own (Stevenson 102." Both Jekyll and Hyde are ultimately aware of each other, and interact through necessity. To each, the other's freedom must be checked in order to stay "alive," and yet Jekyll finally spies freedom, but only through suicide. In the end, it is Hyde who triumphs, as it is in his guise that the body is discovered.    Hyde is Jekyll without restraint, and the man Jekyll wants to be in the light of day. Jekyll's close friend and attorney Utterson regards Hyde with "disgust, loathing and fear," and yet cannot put a name on the precise reason for the... ...tor (Mighall 190)."    Works Cited Camus, Albert. "The Myth of Sisyphus." Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy. Ed. G. Lee Bowie, Meredith W. Michaels and Robert C. Solomon. 4th ed. Harcourt College Publishers, 2000. 45-49. Charyn, Jerome. "Who Is Hyde?" Afterword: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Bantam Books. Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1981. 105-114. Hume, David. "Of Personal Identity." Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy. Ed. G. Lee Bowie, Meredith W. Michaels and Robert C. Solomon. 4th ed. Harcourt College Publishers, 2000. 348-352 Mighall, Dr. Robert. A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History's Nightmares. Oxford University Press, 1999. 166-209. Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Bantam Books. Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1981.   

Work and Revolution in France Essay -- History, French Labor Movement

William H. Sewell, Jr.’s Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (1980) is a qualitative analysis of the French labor movement, sweeping three radical revolutionary eras: 1790’s, 1830’s, and 1850’s. Sewell’s strategy encompasses â€Å"aggregating and analyzing† (1980: 5) events that would generally be considered the banal factional struggles and encounters of individual French workers. He amasses these facts into a macro-history of the workers’ plight to class-consciousness from the ancien regime to the repressive post-revolutionary era of 1850’s. Sewell frames his historical analysis within the context of the way the workers’ movement utilized the evolving rhetoric to advocate their pro-rights agenda. He performs a stringent investigation on the progression and determination of the use of specific terminology, focusing his lens on how concepts of culture (i.e., ideas, beliefs, and behaviors) aid in shifts of existing structures. Sewell’s theoretical perspective is admittedly self-constructed. He â€Å"borrowed shamelessly from such sources as ‘the new history,’ intellectual history, cultural anthropology, and certain new strains of Marxism† (1980: 5). I find borrowing from cultural anthropology to be the most influential of these theoretical viewpoints, and Sewell highlights the importance of ethnographic field methods in his work. However, he is quick to acknowledge that, from a historical perspective, conventional ethnography, as we understand it, is not suffice in this context. While traditional ethnography tends to focus on non-Western, â€Å"relatively small-scale and homogeneous societies† (Sewell 1980: 12), Sewell’s initiative is to â€Å"analyze the complex society that was rent by all sorts of co... ...mes widening his scope could strengthen his argument further. He does this in the conclusion of chapter 11 to display how and why the movement was at times, and ultimately, unsuccessful. Additionally, as he suggests the reasons why the bourgeois never really accepted and the peasantry never felt validated by the movement, he could strengthen his argument by further displaying other elements of cultural value outside of language, i.e. symbolic gestures used by the movement. In addition to symbols, I also feel that Sewell could have provided more definition surrounding the artisan â€Å"culture† (Hanagan 1981). Given the magnitude of the numerous trades, and the variety of societies, clubs, associations within each: where and what are the cultural margins between the different trade corporations? Is there one united culture, or a multitude within the varying factions?

Notes for Top Girls

Top Girls by Caryl Churchill Copyright Notice  ©1998-2002;  ©2002 by Gale Cengage. Gale is a division of Cengage Learning. Gale and Gale Cengage are trademarks used herein under license. For complete copyright information on these eNotes please visit: http://www. enotes. com/top-girls/copyright eNotes: Table of Contents 1. Top Girls: Introduction 2. Summary  ¦ Act 1 Summary  ¦ Act 2 Summary 3. Caryl Churchill Biography 4. Characters 5. Themes 6. Style 7. Historical Context 8. Critical Overview 9.Essays and Criticism  ¦ The Importance of Angie in Top Girls  ¦ Feminist Drama: The Politics of the Self: Churchill and Keatley  ¦ De-realised Women: Performance and Identity in Top Girls 10. Compare and Contrast 11. Topics for Further Study 12. What Do I Read Next? 13. Bibliography and Further Reading Introduction Since its earliest productions, Caryl Churchill's Top Girls was regarded as a unique, if difficult, play about the challenges working women face in the contemporary b usiness world and society at large.Premiering on August 28, 1982, in the Royal Court Theatre in London before making its New York debut on December 28, 1982, in the Public Theatre, Top Girls won an Obie Award in 1983 and was the runner-up for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. The play is regularly performed around the world and has quickly become part of the canon of women's theater. Top Girls helped solidify Churchill's reputation as an important playwright. Critics praise Top Girls for a number of reasons.Churchill explores the price of success paid for by the central character, Marlene, while using unusual techniques including a nonlinear construction, an overlapping dialogue, and a mix of fantasy and reality. The last occurs at a dinner party celebrating Marlene's promotion, which is attended by five women from different times in history, literature, and art. The dinner party is the Top Girls 1 first scene of the play and, to many critics, the highlight of Top Girls. Churchill br ings up many tough questions over the course of the play, including what success is and if women's progress in the workplace has been a good or bad thing.While many critics compliment the play on its handling of such big ideas in such a singular fashion, some thought Top Girls was disjointed and its message muddled. As John Russell Taylor of Plays & Players wrote, â€Å"Like most of Churchill's work, it is about nothing simple and easily capsulated. † Summary Act 1 Summary Act 1, Scene 1 Top Girls opens in a restaurant where Marlene is hosting a dinner party for five friends. She has recently been promoted at work. The five guests are all women that are either long-dead or are fictional characters from literature or paintings.The first to come are Isabella Bird and Lady Nijo. Nijo and Isabella discuss their lives, including their families. Dull Gret and Pope Joan, who was elected to the papacy in the ninth century, appear. The conversation wanders between subjects, including religion and the love lives of Nijo and Isabella. Isabella goes on about her travel experiences. Joan talks about dressing and living as a male from the age of twelve so that she could further her education. Marlene proposes a toast to her guests. They, in turn, insist on toasting Marlene and her success. Joan relates her disturbing story.While she enjoyed being the pope, she also had a discreet affair with a chamberlain and became pregnant. In denial about her state, she gave birth to her child during a papal procession. Joan was stoned to death, and her child, she believes, was also killed. While Joan relates her story, Nijo talks about her four children being born, and only being able to see one of them after having given birth. Isabella talks about how she never had children. Marlene wonders why they are all so miserable. The final guest arrives. She is Patient Griselda, a character in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.Griselda tells her story. Though she was a peasant gir l, she was asked to be the wife of a local prince, but only if she obeyed him without question. Griselda agreed, though it later meant losing the two children she bore him—they were taken from her as infants. Then Griselda was sent back to her father with nothing but a slip to wear. Her husband called her back to help him prepare for his next wedding to a girl from France. The girl was her daughter—all this was a test of her loyalty. He took Griselda back, and the family was reunited. Marlene is upset by Griselda's tale.Nijo is also perturbed because her children were never returned to her. Gret finally speaks up about her journey through hell, and how she beat the devils. The scene ends with Isabella talking about the last trip she took. Act 1, Scene 2 The scene opens in the Top Girls employment agency in London. Marlene is interviewing Jeanine for possible placement. Marlene tells Jeanine that if she is to be sent on a job with prospects, she must not tell them that she is getting married or might have children. Marlene evaluates Jeanine and suggests jobs based on her perception of Jeanine's future.Act 1, Scene 3 This scene takes place at night in Joyce's backyard in Suffolk. Joyce is Marlene's elder sister. Joyce's sixteen-year-old daughter Angie and her twelve-year-old friend Kit are playing in a shelter they built in the backyard. Joyce calls for Angie, but Angie and Kit ignore her until she goes back into the house. Angie says she wants to kill her mother. Introduction 2 Angie and Kit discuss going to the movies. Kit gets mad at Angie when she talks about dumb stuff. Angie desperately wants to leave home. Kit believes they should move to New Zealand in case of a war.Angie is indifferent because she has a big secret. She tells Kit she is going to London to see her aunt. Angie believes that Marlene is really her mother. Joyce sneaks up on them. Joyce will not let them go to the movies until Angie cleans her room. Angie leaves, and Kit informs Joyce that she wants to be a nuclear physicist. When Angie returns, she is wearing a nice dress that is a little too small for her. Joyce becomes angry because Angie has not cleaned her room. It starts to rain. Joyce and Kit go inside. Angie stays outside. When Kit returns to get her, Angie threatens to kill her mother again. Act 2 SummaryAct 2, Scene 1 It is Monday morning at Top Girls. Win and Nell, who work at the agency, are talking. Win tells Nell about her weekend that she spent at her married boyfriend's house while his wife was out of town. The conversation turns to office gossip. They consider changing jobs as Marlene has been promoted over them, limiting their prospects. Still, Nell and Win are glad Marlene got the job over another coworker, Howard. Marlene enters late. Win and Nell tell her that they are glad she got the promotion rather than Howard. Win interviews Louise, a forty-six-year-old woman who has been in the same job for twenty-one years.Louise has done everyt hing for her company, but has spent twenty years in middle management with no opportunities to go higher. Win believes there will be only limited openings for her. In the main office, Angie walks up to Marlene. Marlene does not recognize her at first. Angie has come to London on her own to see her aunt, and she intends to stay for a while. It is not clear if Joyce knows where Angie is. Angie becomes upset when Marlene does not seem like she wants her to stay. Their conversation is interrupted by the appearance of Mrs. Kidd, Howard's wife. Mrs.Kidd is upset because Howard cannot accept that Marlene got the promotion to managing director over him. In part, he is disturbed because she is a woman. Mrs. Kidd wants Marlene to turn down the promotion so that he can have it. Mrs. Kidd leaves in a huff when Marlene is rude to her. Angie is proud of her aunt's saucy attitude. In another interview, Nell talks to Shona, who claims to be twenty-nine and to have worked in sales on the road. As th e interview progresses, it becomes clear that Shona has been lying. She is only twenty-one and has no real work experience.In the main office, Win sits down and talks to Angie, who was left there by Marlene while she is working. Angie tells Win that she wants to work at Top Girls. Win begins to tell Angie her life story, but Angie falls asleep. Nell comes in and informs her that Howard has had a heart attack. When Marlene returns, Win tells her about Angie wanting to work at Top Girls. Marlene does not think Angie has much of a future there. Act 2, Scene 2 This scene takes place a year earlier in Joyce's kitchen. Marlene is passing out presents for Joyce and Angie. One of the gifts is the nice dress that Angie wore in act 1, scene 2.While Angie goes to her room to try it on, Joyce and Marlene are talking. Joyce had no idea that Marlene was coming. Marlene believed Joyce had invited her there. Angie made the arrangements, lying to both of them. Angie returns to show off the dress. Th ey chide her for her deception. Angie reminds her that the last time she visited was for her ninth birthday. Marlene learns that Joyce's husband left her three years ago. It is getting Act 1 Summary 3 late, and Angie is sent to bed. Marlene will sleep on the couch. After Angie leaves to get ready for bed, Joyce and Marlene continue their discussion about their lives.The sisters' conversation turns into an argument. Marlene believes that Joyce is jealous of her success. Joyce criticizes the decisions Marlene has made, including leaving her home and giving up her child, Angie. Marlene offers to send her money, but Joyce refuses. Marlene is excited about a future under the new prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, while Joyce cannot stand the prime minister. They talk about the horrid life their mother led with their alcoholic father. It becomes clear the sisters have very different views of the world. As Marlene nears sleep on the couch, Angie walks in, having had a bad dream. Frightenin g,† is all she says. Biography Churchill was born on September 3, 1938, in London, England, the daughter and only child of Robert Churchill and his wife. Churchill's father was a political cartoonist; her mother worked as a model, secretary, and actress. Churchill began writing stories and doing shows for her parents as a child. After spending her early childhood in London, the family moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in about 1949, where Churchill spent most of her formative years. Caryl Churchill In 1956, Churchill returned to England to enter Oxford University.While studying literature at Lady Margaret Hall, she began writing plays for student productions. Her first play was written as a favor for a friend. One of Churchill's student plays, Downstairs, won first prize at the National Student Drama Festival. Churchill graduated with her B. A. in 1960, intending to become a serious writer. Act 2 Summary 4 Family matters stymied her plans. In 1961, Churchill married David Har ter, a lawyer, and had three sons over the next decade. Still, she managed to write about thirty radio dramas, usually one act, throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as some television plays in the early 1970s.Many of these early plays were related to her life experiences and were somewhat depressing, but they did garner Churchill some notice for her writing abilities. In the early 1970s, Churchill turned to theater, initially writing for fringe theater groups. Owners, a tragic farce, was her first major play, produced by a fringe group in London in 1972. This production led to her position as a resident playwright at the Royal Court Theatre from 1974 to 1975. Churchill began exploring feminist ideas with her first play for the Royal Court, Objections to Sex and Violence (1974).Churchill continued to explore feminism with Vinegar Tom (1976). She wrote the play both with the help of and for Monstrous Regiment, a feminist touring-theater company. Vinegar Tom and Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976) use historical settings to discuss repression. These plays garnered Churchill more attention and critical praise. In 1979, Churchill's Cloud Nine had its first production. This was her first big hit, and had a long run on both sides of the Atlantic. The Obie Award-winning play was set in the Victorian era, with the roles played by their physical opposites. For example, a man played an unhappy and unfulfilled wife.Critics enthusiastically praised Churchill's originality. Churchill followed this success with Top Girls (1982), a play about feminism and the price of success for women. Though some did not regard it as highly as Cloud Nine, the play cemented her reputation and won her another Obie. Churchill wrote plays on a variety of topics throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Fen (1983), which focused on female tenant farmers, won her the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. In 1986, she wrote Serious Money about the London stock exchange. Churchill used music and dialogue that rhymed in the play, which also won the Blackburn Prize and many other awards.She continued to experiment with technique in Mad Forest (1990) and The Skriker (1994), which incorporated music and dance. Though Churchill's output decreased in the late 1990s, she continues to push the limits of traditional dramatic forms using dance and music, and other unexpected constructions. Characters Angie Angie is the sixteen-year-old adopted daughter of Joyce. Angie is the biological daughter of Marlene, but was given up by her birth mother, who was only seventeen at the time and had career ambitions. In act 1 of Top Girls, Angie realizes that Marlene is her mother, though she has not been told directly.Both Marlene and Joyce do not think highly of Angie and believe her future is limited. She has already left high school with no qualifications. She was in remedial classes, and her best friend is Kit, who is four years younger. Angie is frustrated and wants to murder her mother. Instead, sh e runs away to visit her aunt in London and hopes to live with her. Previously, Angie tricked Marlene into visiting her and Joyce. Angie is Marlene's embarrassment, but she is also one of the things that links her to the women at the dinner party. Isabella Bird Isabella is one of Marlene's dinner party guests in act 1, scene 1.She is a Scottish woman who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and who traveled extensively later in life. In Top Girls, Isabella is the first to arrive at the party and dominates the conversation in a self-absorbed manner. She talks on and on about her travels; her complex relationship with her sister, Hennie; her clergyman father, and husband; her illnesses; religion; and her lack of children. While Isabella does listen and respond to the others, she mostly tries to figure out her own life and what it meant. She could never be as good as her sister, but her adventures made Biography 5 er happy. Isabella is one of the characters who he lps Marlene define herself. Dull Gret Dull Gret is one of Marlene' s dinner guests in act 1, scene 1, and the third to arrive. Gret is the subject of a painting by Brueghel entitled â€Å"Dulle Griet. † In the painting, she wears an apron and armor and leads a group of women into hell to fight with devils. Gret is generally quiet through most of the dinner, answering questions only when directly asked and making a few comments on the side. Near the end of the scene, Gret makes a speech about her trip to hell and the fight with the devils.Like all the dinner guests, Gret's story reflects something about Marlene's life. Jeanine Marlene interviews Jeanine for placement by Top Girls in act 1. She is engaged and is saving money to get married. Marlene is not supportive of Jeanine's ambitions to work in advertising or in a job that might have some travel, but she categorizes her according to what Marlene believes she will be able to accomplish. Pope Joan Pope Joan is one of Marlene 's dinner party guests in act 1, scene 1, and the fourth to arrive. She is a woman from the ninth century who allegedly served as the pope from 854 to 856.Pope Joan is somewhat aloof, making relevant, intelligent declarations throughout the conversation. When the topic turns to religion, she cannot help but point out heresies—herself included—though she does not attempt to convert the others to her religion. Joan reveals some of her life. She began dressing as a boy at age twelve so she could continue to study; she lived the rest of her life as a man, though she had male lovers. Joan was eventually elected pope. She became pregnant by her chamberlain lover and delivered her baby during a papal procession. For this, Joan was stoned to death.At the end of the scene, Joan recites a passage in Latin. Like all the dinner guests, Joan's life and attitude reflects something about Marlene. Joyce Joyce is Marlene's elder sister and mother to Angie. Unlike her younger sister, Jo yce stayed in the same area and social class she grew up in. Joyce is unambitious and unhappy. She was married to Frank, but she told him to leave three years previously because he was having affairs with other women. She supports herself and Angie by cleaning houses. Because Joyce seemed to be unable to have children, she adopted Angie as an infant when Marlene decided to give her up.But Joyce soon got pregnant and miscarried the child because of the demands of raising Angie. Joyce resents both Angie and Marlene, in part because of her miscarriage. She calls Angie a lump and useless. Marlene is too ambitious and clever for Joyce. Yet Joyce has pride. She will not take Marlene's money, and she does not cater to her crying. Joyce maintains her working class loyalty and stands her ground when Marlene starts to sing the praises of Margaret Thatcher. Despite such differences, Marlene and Joyce are very much alike.They both believe they are right and do what they must to survive in their different worlds. Mrs. Kidd Mrs. Kidd is the wife of Howard, the man who got passed over in favor of Marlene for the managing director position at Top Girls. In act 2, Mrs. Kidd comes to the office and tries to get Marlene to turn down the position. Mrs. Kidd hopes Marlene will understand how much it would hurt Howard's pride and livelihood. Marlene is not impressed by her pleas, and Mrs. Kidd leaves after insulting Marlene for being a hard, working woman. Kit Kit is the twelve-year-old best friend of Angie.Unlike Angie, Kit is clever and plans on being a nuclear Characters 6 physicist. The girls have been friends for years, though Kit gets annoyed by Angie's limitations. In some ways, Kit is a younger version of Marlene. Louise Louise is interviewed by Win for placement by Top Girls in act 2. Louise is a forty-six-year-old woman stuck in middle management who believes she has been overlooked for promotion and underappreciated by her present firm. Win is not particularly supportive of Louise's desires to use her experience elsewhere and does not offer much hope for a better position.Like Marlene, Win categorizes Louise according to what she believes Louise will be able to accomplish. Marlene Marlene is the central character in Top Girls. She is a successful businesswoman who has recently been promoted to managing director of Top Girls, an employment agency. To celebrate, she has a dinner party at a restaurant with five guests, all of whom are women who are either dead or fictional characters from literature and paintings. Marlene's own life shares some parallels with these women. Marlene's adult life has been focused on her career, to the exclusion of nearly everything else.She previously worked in the United States and has done well for herself. Marlene has little to no contact with her family. Her alcoholic father is dead, and her long-suffering mother is in some sort of home. Marlene does not get along with her sister Joyce, who has remained part of the wo rking class and lives in the same neighborhood where they grew up. Marlene let Joyce raise her daughter, Angie. Marlene became pregnant at age seventeen, and because the then-married Joyce did not have a child, she allowed her to adopt the baby. Marlene has as little respect and interest in Angie as Joyce does.Like the women she interviews at Top Girls, Marlene believes Angie's future is limited. Yet Marlene's own life is just as circumscribed, but in different ways. Her success has come at a high price, costing her both her empathy and her relationships. Nell Nell is one of the employees at the Top Girls employment agency. She is happy that Marlene got the promotion over Howard, but she has her own career ambitions and might want to find a job with better prospects. In the meantime, her boyfriend, Derek, has asked her to marry him, but she does not know if she will accept.Her career seems more important to her than the marriage. During the play, Nell conducts an interview with Shon a, whom Nell believes might be good for Top Girls. Nell is disappointed to learn that Shona has lied about everything on her application. Lady Nijo Lady Nijo is one of Marlene's dinner party guests in act 1, scene 1, and the second to arrive. She is a thirteenth-century Japanese courtesan to the Emperor of Japan. She later became a Buddhist monk. Like Isabella, Nijo is somewhat self-absorbed, though not to the same degree.Nijo tells the others about her life, including information about her father, her lovers, her four children (only one of whom she ever saw), symbolic clothing, and her time as a traveling monk. But she also listens respectfully to the stories of others and acknowledges her limitations. Nijo liked her silk clothing and easy life with the Emperor. By the end of the scene, Nijo is in tears. Like all the dinner guests, Nijo's life reflects something about Marlene's. Patient Griselda Patient Griselda is one of Marlene's dinner guests in act 1, scene 1, and the last to a rrive.She is a fictional character, appearing in ‘‘The Clerk's Tale’’ in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, among other stories. As soon as she arrives, Marlene has Griselda tell her story. Griselda was a peasant girl who was asked to marry a local prince, but only if she would obey him without question. She agreed and bore him two children who were taken away from her while they were still infants. She did not question the decision. Her Characters 7 husband sent Griselda back home with nothing more than a slip to wear. She went without question.He sent for her to help him plan his second marriage to a young French girl. Griselda came back. At a pre-wedding feast, he revealed that the girl and her page/brother were their children and all these incidents were tests of her loyalty. Like all the dinner guests, Griselda's story reflects an aspect of Marlene's life. Shona Shona is interviewed by Nell for placement by the Top Girls agency in the second act. Shona tries to pass herself off as a twenty-nine-year-old woman with sales experience, which Nell believes at first.As the interview progresses, it becomes clear that Shona has been making up a story. She is really twenty-one and has no job experience. Shona is certain that she could handle high-profile jobs, but Nell does not believe her. Win Win is one of the employees at the Top Girls employment agency. Like Nell, she is glad that Marlene got the promotion over Howard, but she has her own career ambitions and might move on. She is relatively well educated and has previously lived in several different countries. Win spent the previous weekend with her married boyfriend at his house, while his wife was out of town.During the course of the play, Win interviews Louise for a job; she shares Marlene's callous attitude toward Louise. Themes Choices and Consequences Nearly every character in Top Girls has made or is in the process of making life-changing decisions with important consequ ences. The dinner party in act 1, scene 1 exemplifies this. Each of the historical figures has made a hard choice. For example, Pope Joan chose to live like a boy, and then a man, in public. When she became pregnant by her secret lover, the stoning death of her and her baby were consequences of her chosen life.Joyce chose to adopt Angie, which led to a certain life path. Joyce believes that she miscarried her own child because of the demands of raising Angie. Marlene also made several hard choices. She became a career woman who spent some time working in the States. Marlene is estranged from her family, including her biological daughter, Angie, and does not seem to have many close friends, female or male. Her dinner party in celebration of her promotion consists of women who are dead or do not really exist, not with friends or family. She has no love relationship.Marlene is very much alone because of her life choices. While her daughter Angie has already made two life choices dropping out of school at the age of sixteen with no qualifications, and running away to London to live with her aunt/mother—the consequences of these actions in her life are unclear. Success and Failure Success is an important part of Marlene's life in Top Girls, defining who she is and whose company she enjoys. The dinner party is meant to celebrate her promotion to managing director as well as the successes of her guests. Joan became the pope. Isabella traveled the world.Gret fought the devils in hell. Griselda survived her husband's extraordinary tests of loyalty. Marlene sees these women as successful, though they are not in her real, everyday life. Marlene's personal life is a failure because of her success in business. She has no real friends in the play, and she has not seen her sister or biological daughter in seven years. At the dinner party, she moans at one point, ‘‘Oh God, why are we all so miserable? † Yet, Marlene believes that Joyce is mostl y a failure because she did not grow beyond her neighborhood; instead, she got married and raised a child.Joyce cleans houses for a living, and she is not impressed by Marlene's life. Joyce does not really see her world in the same terms of success or failure. She does what is necessary to survive and to rear Angie. However, both sisters agree that Angie has no chance of being a success in life. Angie has no education, no ambition, and is regarded as dumb. The best she might do is Themes 8 menial work and marry. While this describes Joyce's life, both Joyce and Marlene perceive that Angie might not be able to take care of herself. This would be the ultimate failure in their eyes. They agree that one should support oneself.Class Conflict Marlene and Joyce's differing definitions of success stem in part from a class conflict. Marlene has moved beyond her working-class roots to a middle-class life by education and persistence. She holds a management position in a demanding field, an em ployment agency. She even lived and worked in the United States for several years. Marlene supports the political agenda of Great Britain's female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, even though she is perceived as anti-working class. Joyce remains firmly working class, leading a life only slightly better than her parents.She works as a cleaning lady to support Angie. Unlike Joyce and Marlene's mother, who stayed with her alcoholic husband and had nothing, Joyce told her husband to leave when she could no longer take his controlling nature and numerous affairs. Joyce regards Thatcher as evil, comparing her to Adolf Hitler for her attitudes towards working-class people. Joyce believes that Marlene thinks she is too good for her. Marlene says she does not like working-class people, but she does not really include her sister as one of them. The pair never come to an understanding on class.Sex Roles and Sexism Throughout the text of Top Girls is an implicit discussion of what society exp ects women to be. Each of the guests at the dinner party defines womanhood in a particular era, either by what they are or by what they are not. Isabella, for example, could not live up to the standards of femininity defined by her sister, Hennie. Yet Isabella was a traveler who saw more of the world than most men. Marlene also breaks out of the traditional roles for women, by virtue of her career. While Marlene has benefited economically from her career, her disregard for sex roles has its problems.She is not married, and it does not seem like she is in a long-term relationship. Joyce does not really like her. Mrs. Kidd, the wife of the man who was passed over for the promotion that Marlene got, begs her to not take it. Mrs. Kidd believes that the upset Howard should not have to work for a woman. Further, Mrs. Kidd hopes that Marlene will give up the promotion because Howard has to support his family. Mrs. Kidd calls Marlene â€Å"unnatural† for her uncompromising stand on t he promotion and her attachment to her job. Marlene does not give in, but such sexism does not make her life and choices any easier.Style Setting Top Girls is a feminist drama/fantasy set in contemporary times. The action is confined to two places in England, London and Suffolk. The realistic action takes place in two settings. One is the Top Girls employment agency, where Marlene works. There, potential clients are interviewed, and Angie shows up, hoping to stay with Marlene. The other is Joyce's home and backyard, where Marlene visits and Angie and Kit scheme. The fantasy dinner party that opens Top Girls also takes place in London. (In many productions, the restaurant is called La Prima Donna. Though the dinner is clearly a fantasy because all the guests are dead or fictional, the setting is very real. Fantasy versus Reality In act 1, scene 1, Marlene hosts a dinner party with guests both long dead (Pope Joan, Lady Nijo, and Isabella Bird) and fictional (Dull Gret and Patient Gri selda). While Marlene listens to and guides the conversation—injecting only bits about herself—these five women share their stories. The party is ostensibly to celebrate Marlene's promotion at work, but she intends it to be a celebration of all their successes. Though Style 9 hese women have each achieved something they are proud of, success has come at a large price in their lives. The dinner party itself shows the tensions between fantasy and reality because the guests are not â€Å"real† to the rest of the characters in Top Girls, only to Marlene. Yet the ideas and problems brought up by the fantasy women are very real. These issues echo in the plot and dialogue of the rest of the text, adding another dimension to the tension between fantasy and reality. Time Top Girls is not a linear play, but one in which time is used in an unusual fashion. The last scene of the lay, act 2, scene 2, is the only part that takes place at a specific time in the story, about a year earlier than the other events. This flashback ties up some of the loose ends created by the story. The rest of the scenes, even the action within act 2, scene 1, do not have to take place in the order presented, though all are set in the present. The events are linked thematically, but not by a specific sequence of time. In addition, the idea of time is toyed with at the dinner party in act 1, scene 1. None of the guests can really exist at the same time, yet they share many of the same concerns.Multiple Casting Often when Top Girls is performed—including its premieres in England and the United States— several parts are played by the same actresses. Only the actress who plays Marlene, the central character in the play, has only one role. Thus guests at the dinner party are played by actresses who also play contemporary characters. Such casting decisions create visual links between seemingly disparate women. In the original production, for example, the same actress played Dull Gret and Angie, implying that these characters might have something in common.Similarly, another actress took on the roles of Pope Joan and Louise, drawing another parallel. This casting technique further emphasizes how alike the concerns of the historical characters and contemporary characters really are. Historical Context In the early 1980s, Great Britain was ruled by women. Though Queen Elizabeth II was only a royal figurehead, real political power was held by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A member of the Conservative Party, Thatcher had been elected on May 3, 1979, and proceeded to put her own stamp on British life over the next decade or so.She was reelected in 1983 and 1987, and held office until late 1990, when she received a vote of no confidence and was replaced by fellow Conservative John Major. Thatcher had been the longest-serving prime minister in Great Britain since the nineteenth century. To improve the British economy, Thatcher dismantled the social ist practices that were put in place in the post-World War II era. She privatized major industries, like coal mining and telecommunications, which had been run by the British government, and she cut down on the power of trade unions.Because Thatcher's revolution benefited the middle- and upper-classes and seemed to hurt the working- and lower-classes, she was very unpopular among the latter groups. Unemployment continued to rise, and by 1982, over three and a quarter million people were unemployed. With cuts in both welfare and other social programs, such people's lives were becoming much harder. Though the economy was strong and interest rates and inflation were down, real living standards had been falling slightly for several years; international trade was also down. In 1982, Thatcher and the Conservative party had some popularity problems among the general population.National morale was not particularly high until the Falklands War broke out. The Falkland Islands were a British p ossession in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Argentina. The group of islands are small and only about 1,800 people were living there. The territory was at the center of a dispute between Argentina and Great Britain for a number of years, and the two countries were in negotiations over them. In the spring of 1982, Argentina became impatient and invaded the Falklands. Great Britain responded and reclaimed the islands before Argentina quickly surrendered.Though there were approximately 243 British casualties, the victory Historical Context 10 improved national morale and the repute of Thatcher and the Conservatives. The popularity of the Labour party went down. Thatcher was but one symbol in the 1980s of powerful women. There was a concrete change in the position of working women. In Great Britain in the early 1980s, women made up forty percent of the labor force, and over sixty percent of women aged twenty to sixty-four were working. Marriage rates fell in the 1980s, after having remained stable for many years.Before that decade nearly every adult woman was married at some point. Those that did marry gave up working after having a child, although sometimes they went back to work after their children went to school or reached adulthood. Most women who worked were employed in poorly paid white-collar, service, and industrial occupations. Approximately seventy-five percent of women did personal services work, clerical work, retail work, or health, education, or welfare work. The number of professional women was still small, but more women were becoming lawyers than ever before.These professional women often had equal pay for equal work, but working-class women did not. Despite the success of Thatcher, many British women were anti-Conservative, though they did not necessarily support Labour either. To these women, Thatcher may have shared their gender, but her political prominence did not necessarily make her their heroine. Critical Overview Most critics agree t hat Top Girls is an intricate play; generally, they find much to praise in its themes, attitudes, and text. The play's depiction of women and feminism is particularly interesting to critics.Writing about the original London production, Bryan Robertson of The Spectator argued, â€Å"her play is brilliantly conceived with considerable wit to illuminate the underlying deep human seriousness of her theme. The play is feminist, all right, but it is an entertaining, sometimes painful and often funny play and not a mere tract. † Expanding on this idea, Benedict Nightingale of the New Statesman wrote, â€Å"What use is female emancipation, Churchill asks, if it transforms the clever women into predators and does nothing for the stupid, weak and helpless?Does freedom, and feminism, consist of aggressively adopting the very values that have for centuries oppressed your sex? † A scene from the 1991 production of Top Girls at London's Royal Court Theatre Writing about the same pro duction, John Russell Taylor of Plays & Players is one of several critics over the years who believed that the rest of Top Girls did not live up to the promise of the dinner party scene. He found the play disjointed, arguing that â€Å"the pieces in the puzzle remain determinedly separate, never quite adding up to more than, well, so many fascinating pieces in a fascinating puzzle. Critical Overview 11 When Top Girls opened in the United States a short time later, a few critics were dismissive of the play and Churchill's potential appeal to American audiences. Calling the play â€Å"confused,† Douglas Watt of the Daily News proclaimed, â€Å"Churchill can write touchingly and with a good ear for everyday speech about middle-class Londoners today. But while concern for ugly ducklings may be universal †¦ Top Girls is a genre piece likely to arouse even less interest here than Alan Ayckbourn's equally tricky, but infinitely more amusing, works about the English middle cla ss. Edith Oliver of the New Yorker was perplexed by certain aspects of the play. She wrote â€Å"Top Girls †¦ is witty and original, with considerable dramatized feeling, yet somehow never got to me, and I was never certain whether she was making one point with the whole play or a lot of points in its separate segments. † Later in her review, Oliver emphasized that â€Å"[d]espite my admiration of Miss Churchill's ingenuity, I was disappointed and at times puzzled—never quite certain, for example, whether the historical characters of the first scene were meant to be the prototypes of modern characters. † A majority of American critics commented on the uniqueness of certain aspects of Top Girls, but they were most concerned with its feminist theme and social meanings. For example, John Beaufort of the Christian Science Monitor called Top Girls â€Å"a theatrical oddity in which the long view of what has been happening to womankind's ‘top girls' combin es with a sharp look at contemporary women achievers and a compassionate glance at the plight of an underclass underachiever who will never know the meaning of room at the top. Apart from one cheap shock effect, Miss Churchill has written a thoughtful and imaginative theater piece. Along similar lines, T. E. Kalem of Time asks in his review, â€Å"Is the future to be divided between a smart, scrambling upper class of no-holds-barred individualists and a permanent underclass of poor souls who are unfit for the survival of the fittest? † An unnamed reviewer in Variety added, â€Å"If it's about male manipulation, Top Girls also pointedly involves the conditioned mentality of the sisterhood itself, with its inherited sense of role in a masculine or at least male-dominated world. The play seems to be saying that women historically have had themselves as well as sexist pigs for enemies. John Simon of New York believes the ideas in Top Girls have universal applicability. â€Å"Th is is not easy theater, but funny, fiercely serious, and greatly worth thinking about. Its aporias [insoluble contradictions] are not only pertinent to women, they also concern the entire, always incomplete, human condition. † Top Girls has continued to be performed regularly over the years. Most critics believe the play has withstood the test of time, despite specific references to British prime minster Margaret Thatcher and attitudes specific to the early 1980s.Of a 1991 revival in London, Paul Taylor in The Independent argued, â€Å"What continues to distinguish Top Girls is its cool, objective manner. The scenes in the job agency are almost too cleverly efficient in the way they expose the heartlessness the women have had to assume along with their crisp power-outfits. Churchill permits you to identify with the tricky plight of these characters but she does not ask you to like them. † Similarly, Alastair Macaulay of the Financial Times believes, â€Å"Both as theat re and as politics, Top Girls is exciting and irritating.The dialectic of its final scene, between the Thatcherite Marlene and her socialist sister Joyce rings true as you listen. The terms in which the sisters argue about Thatcherite politics have not dated. † Essays and Criticism The Importance of Angie in Top Girls Many critics who have commented on Caryl Churchill's Top Girls have focused their praise on the interesting characters and complexities of the scene that opens the play, act 1, scene 1's dinner party. The party is hosted by Top Girls' central character, Marlene, and is attended by five guests, all obscure figures from history, literature, and art.Ostensibly, the party is to celebrate the success of Marlene, who has recently been Essays and Criticism 12 promoted to managing director of Top Girls employment agency. The scene also defines many of the play's themes and dramatic tensions. There are a number of critics who share the opinion of Lianne Stevens of the Los Angeles Times. Reviewing a 1986 production of Top Girls in San Diego, California, Stevens writes, ‘‘outstanding performances †¦ cannot rectify the main defect in Churchill's play: Nothing that comes after is as interesting as having dinner with Pope Joan, Dull Gret, Lady Nijo, Patient Griselda and Isabella Bird. ’ There are, in fact, several aspects of the rest of Top Girls that are as interesting, mostly because of what has been laid out in the dinner party scene. One is the character of Angie, Marlene's sixteen-year-old daughter, whom she allowed her sister Joyce to adopt at birth. Angie plays as pivotal a role in the play as any of the dinner party guests. While there is no doubt that Marlene is at the center of Top Girls, and that her character presents hard and conflicted ideas about women, success, power, and employment in the early 1980s, Angie and the dinner guests help to define Marlene as much as Marlene's own actions and comments do.However, the d inner guests were chosen by Marlene, while Angie was an accident Marlene has chosen to have very little contact with and is dismissive of. Each of the dinner guests is an adult woman, though they are fantastic characters who do not really exist in the modern world inhabited by Marlene and the rest of the characters in the play. Marlene turns to them, not to any of the ‘‘real† people depicted in the play, when she wants to celebrate her promotion. While the guests are successful in their own, though not always obvious, ways, their success has come at a price.Lady Nijo suffered many degradations including not being allowed to raise her own children. Marlene is deeply troubled by the story of Patient Griselda, who was humiliated by her husband as a test of her loyalty to him, mostly because she was of a lower class. To get an education, Pope Joan led a life of deception as a male. Though she later became pope, it was her womanhood—her ability to get pregnant an d give birth to a child at an inopportune moment—that led to the murder which ended her life. Marlene's choice of guests reveals much about her.First, she does not have anyone in her real life to share her promotion with, suggesting an alienation from real women. Second, the loss of her child still weighs on her, either in her conscious, subconscious, or both. Lady Nijo, Pope Joan, and Patient Griselda all suffer the loss of children. Only Joan is rather indifferent to the death of her infant. Marlene inquires about Dull Gret' s children, clearly expressing her interest in the subject. Marlene's question after the one to Gret is rhetorical: â€Å"Oh God, why are we all so miserable? ’ There is a link between unhappiness and the idea of children and loss. Third, Marlene has no real interest in her own daughter, Angie, though they have more in common than Marlene does with her chosen guests. To understand the importance of Angie, Marlene's character must be better under stood. Marlene grew up in an unstable home. Her father worked in the fields, and had a problem with alcohol. Her mother suffered at the hands of her husband, often going hungry and being beaten. Her sister Joyce was older, and did not share either Marlene's need to escape or her intelligence.Despite her background, Marlene managed to create a good life for herself by working hard and apparently acquiring a decent education. She even lived in the United States for several years. The only flaw, the only thing that could have held her back, was when Marlene got pregnant at the age of seventeen. The situation was stressful, and Marlene was in denial for part of the pregnancy. Rather than allow Marlene to give the baby up to strangers, Joyce insisted on adopting Angie, in part because she had no children of her own.This is a long-standing point of contention between the sisters, though Joyce makes it clear that she would not have approved of any choice Marlene made in the situation excep t to have had an abortion early on or raise the child herself and not have tried to have a better life. Angie and related petty jealousies are at the heart of their conflict and thus at the center of Top Girls. Yet, Angie is a reviled character. Everyone around Angie dismisses her and believes she has no future. Joyce, her adopted mother, calls her ‘‘a big lump. ’ She believes Angie will have a hard time getting a job and her best bet in life is to get married, though she cannot imagine who would marry her. Joyce does admit at one point, ‘‘She's clever in her own way. ’’ Labeling her ‘‘thick,’’ Marlene, Angie's birth mother, tells one of The Importance of Angie in Top Girls 13 her coworkers, ‘‘She's not going to make it. ’’ She believes Angie's future career will be as a ‘‘Packer in Tesco,’’ nothing as accomplished as working at the employment agency run by Marl ene. Kit, her only friend and a twelve-year-old, says to Angie at one point, â€Å"Stupid f—ing cow, I hate you. She later tells Angie that she is not sure she even likes her. Kit amends that attitude by telling Joyce â€Å"I love Angie. † The way those around Angie talk about her, it seems like she is useless and incompetent. Joyce especially seems to hammer this idea home directly to Angie. Angie is definitely immature. She talks about being able to move objects with her thoughts, hearing a long-dead kitten in the backyard, and has only one friend, Kit, who is four years younger than her. She has ended her education in remedial classes at the age of sixteen.Yet Angie accomplishes much over the course of Top Girls, more than expected considering how she is talked about. Angie has her own equivalent of the dinner party in act 1, scene 3. She and Kit hide in a shelter that they probably made in Joyce's backyard. Kit, however, is a real person, unlike the unreal guests at Marlene's. Angie and Kit have a real, if tense, friendship. They make tentative plans to go to the movies. Angie expresses her frustrations to Kit, saying she wants to kill her mother. She tells Kit about her secret, that she believes Marlene is her mother.Angie also says that she will go to London to see her aunt. Kit does not really believe her, though, underscoring that Angie is constantly underestimated by those around her. Another success of Angie’s is going to London from Suffolk on the bus, and finding her way to Marlene’s work place in act 2, scene 1. Joyce and Kit do not think Angie could do such a thing on her own. But Angie wants to escape her life with Joyce and become a success. To that end, she goes to her aunt/mother and hopes to stay with her. Angie has the gumption to ask her aunt for help.She will even sleep on the floor of Marlene’s home to have this different, better life, like her aunt/mother. It also creates a situation where Marlene get s her child back, a key point brought up in the dinner party. Angie wants to be with Marlene, to be Marlene, and does what she can to make that happen. Angie wants to be a top girl. Angie’s first success, though the last in the play since it takes place in act 2, scene 2, is getting Marlene to visit her in the first place. The last scene takes place a year before the rest of the Top Girls.Angie lied to Marlene to get her to visit her and Joyce in Suffolk. She has not seen her aunt/mother since her ninth birthday party. Angie knows that Marlene has had good jobs and has lived in America, and she admires her tremendously. Angie appreciates that Marlene has escaped their neighborhood and become successful, just as Marlene admired that about her fantasy dinner guests. Angie may not have the education or the intelligence that Marlene has, but she wants to do something like what Marlene has done. In this scene, Marlene reveals the key to her success. She proclaims, ‘‘Ià ¢â‚¬â„¢m not clever, just pushy. ’ Angie has shown that she can be pushy as well over the course of the play, implying that she might have a better future than anyone imagined. In writing about a 1998 production of Top Girls in Los Angeles, California, Don Shirley of the Los Angeles Times argues, ‘‘Churchill painted a stark picture of Margaret Thatcher's Britain as a place where women could end up in either a cushy but heartless career or a dreary life in domestic servitude. This may sound broadly feminist, but the play finally emerges as a more specific attack on Thatcherite insensitivities towards the girls who ren't on ‘top. ’† Shirley includes Angie as one who is not on top, but does not see that she could be. Angie is a younger—perhaps dumber but no less ambitious—Marlene. Source: Annette Petrusso, in an essay for Drama for Students, Gale Group, 2001. Feminist Drama: The Politics of the Self: Churchill and Keatley Caryl Church ill's Top Girls (1983) and Charlotte Keatley's My Mother Said I Never Should (1987) are plays with an all women cast. Men, though present in the stories, are absent from the stage. They occupy emotional space but not physical space.At the very outset there is a defining of space, a creation of a feminist world. Feminist Drama: The Politics of the Self: Churchill and Keatley 14 Keatley deliberately kept the men offstage to provide a space for the women to interact among themselves, ‘‘to show the way women use language, silence and subtext when alone together’’; Churchill apparently does it for the purposes of sharing, for as Adrienne Rich has pointed out that unless women are prepared to share their ‘‘private and sometimes painful personal experience’’ it may not be possible to create a ‘‘collective description’’ of what is truly a woman's world.In both plays women from different generations and backgrounds meet together to share and to interact but with two major differences. Keatley's characters in the child-scenes are child characters and represent the same lineage whereas Churchill's characters represent several centuries, from the ninth to the present and have altogether different backgrounds.The moment women are placed centre-stage they begin to interact and introspect, to analyze and to criticize; they cease to look at themselves through the male gaze, instead they begin to problematize their conflicts and the involuntary processes of their bodies. By defining space in female terms, women are transformed from objects into subjects and their passive acceptance of gendered roles is turned into an analysis of socially imposed codes of behaviour. Plays by women need not be feminist, just as plays about women are not always so.But plays which concern themselves with women as subjects and explore their emotional realities acquire a feminist perspective. The sixties and the seventies witnessed the rise of women's theatre groups and collectives and a consciousness about women's roles. This was the beginning of a feminist theatre with, as already stated, overtly political aims. Women through exploring and talking about their experiences opened out their role confines, created female traditions and entered areas hitherto forbidden to them.Several all-women plays were also written. Megan Terry's Calm Down, Mother (1965) was a transformation exercise for women and hailed by Helene Keyssar as the first real feminist play, while her later Babes in the Bighouse (1974) was about women prisoners and closed spaces where violence became a natural inhabitant. Eve Merriam' s Out of Our Fathers' House (1975) was a projection of the struggles of exceptional women, while Wendy Wasserstein's Uncommon Women and Others (1977) examined the role conflicts in a lighter vein.Maria Irene Fornes's Fefu and Her Friends (1977) is located in the thirties and is a powerful statement about th e violence implicit in heterosexual relationships; it is as Schuler has pointed out ‘‘impossible to ignore that explicit critique of patriarchy’’ (226) present in the play. Marsha Norman's ‘night, Mother, coming out the same year as Top Girls (1983), is a tense kitchen drama about a mother and a daughter with the daughter at the end committing suicide behind a locked door. Plays with an all-women cast make a specific statement even before they put this female space to different and individual use.They discard supportive roles for women and provide them with the freedom to relate directly to each other rather than through sons and husbands, ‘‘Language, space and the body are loci for the woman playwright to dramatically challenge the images of women determined in dominant discourse’’ (Hart), Memory, history, the past are evoked for different reasons. Time too becomes an important factor, often being projected non-chronological ly. Both Top Girls and My Mother create hypothetical situations which are historically not possible but are rendered so spatially and proceed to become emotional questionings.Both are 3-act plays but while Churchill after an initial juxtaposition of the past and the present moves on, Keatley keeps on coming back to the childhood scene which is a conjunction of 1905, 1941, 1961 and 1979. Top Girls in the first act evokes the past, somewhat like Eve Merriam's Out of Our Fathers' House where six women are presented together in a ‘‘hypothetical conversation. † They act out both for themselves and each other the stories of their lives. It is a journey into selfhood, and at each step they need reassurance from their own elves. They belong to the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, Caryl Churchill, however, builds on a wider canvas and the dramatic purpose of the bringing together of six women from different backgrounds and periods is very different. The first act of Top Girls is in the nature of a prologue where Marlene, a top executive in an employment agency is hosting a dinner for five other women, three of whom are from the Feminist Drama: The Politics of the Self: Churchill and Keatley 15 pages of history, and two from the world of male imagination.Pope Joan, a ninth century Pope who achieved this through cross-gendering, Lady Nijo an emperor's concubine and later a Buddhist nun, and Isabella Bird, a nineteenth century explorer are the three â€Å"real† women. Dull Gret, a woman from Breughel's 16th century painting and Patient Griselda from the pages of Petrarch, Boccaccio and Chaucer are the two others (Note the words ‘‘dull† and ‘‘patient’’). Each one of them—except Griselda—has in some way violated the social code as imposed upon them. Joan learnt Latin, ran away from home disguised as a boy and later became a pope.But yielding to passion, she conceives and is detected during chil dbirth. Male priests have fathered children, but she has never learnt to understand or live with her body, thus alienated from this most fundamental space she might own, she pays for it with death. Lady Nijo on the other hand accepts the code but renders it hollow by creating space for herself. Handed over to the Emperor as his concubine, she takes lovers to fulfill her emotional needs. Out of favour with the Emperor she takes holy orders as directed by her father, but instead of being confined in a convent, she walks the breadth and length of Japan.But she does this at the price of motherhood. Isabella Bird also has to sacrifice marriage and family life in search of adventure. Because she is a woman, she finds it difficult to accept the idea of living for herself alone and therefore occupies herself with good causes. As contrasted with these women from real life, who have individually made space for themselves, questioned patriarchal structures like religion, ownership, love and mo therhood, the two women from the world of imagination are limited in their projections.Griselda's life reads like a fairytale—a peasant woman married into the aristocracy, and children whom she had given up for dead restored to her later. The price of her marriage is unquestioning obedience to her husband's command which is first the taking away of her son and her daughter and later being turned out of her house. Griselda does not question her husband's right over her, nor does she resist his orders. Her case, like Nijo's, is one where motherhood has been reduced to an â€Å"institution’’ under male control (Rich). Dull Gret is also single minded like Griselda. If for Griselda it is surrender, for Gret it is anger.These five women have got together to celebrate Marlene's success and as they share experiences they question patriarchal structures either directly like Joan and Isabelle, or obliquely like Nijo, or silently through victimization like Griselda. Trave l is a major theme for Joan, Nijo and Isabella. They travel in their different dresses, Joan in her papal robes, Nijo in her silkgowns and later her nun's habit, and Isabella in her full blue trousers and great brass spurs. (Dress also specifies space. Masculine dress does not constrain the women's private space, though, in the long run, there is no social recognition of that space. Travel opens out new worlds and spaces. Their coming together in the first act provides â€Å"a dramatic genealogy of Marlene's historical community’’ (Keyssar). The second act is the in-between act with 3 scenes. The first and the third are located in Marlene's office, the second in Joyce, her sister's, backyard. The office scenes have two interviews inbuilt into them, one with Jeanine and the other with Louise, Marlene's two clients; a competitive scene between Nell and Win and Marlene's interactions with Angie and with Mrs. Kidd.The themes of these two scenes are a replay of the themes introduced in Act One—Jeanine who is torn between marriage and a career, Louise who at the end of twenty years finds herself sidetracked by younger men, Nell and Win who wish to go places both literally and figuratively but Marlene has occupied the place at the top and Mrs. Kidd who has come to plead for her husband who has been superseded by Marlene. Mrs. Kidd tells Marlene: â€Å"What's it going to do to him working for a woman? I think if it was a man he'd get over it as something normal. It's me that bears the brunt. †¦ I put him first every inch of the way. †¦ It had crossed my mind if you were unavailable after all for some reason, he would be the natural second choice I think, don't you? ’’ (58-59) In her view Marlene is abnormal in her determination to be at the top and she'll end up lonely and miserable. Feminist Drama: The Politics of the Self: Churchill and Keatley 16 The backdrop of the office room is confined and provides limited space wh ere competition and aggression and violation of territorial rights go hand in hand.The middle scene sandwiched between these two office scenes is in a backyard in a â€Å"shelter made of junk’’ by children. It is a hiding place, away from the taboos and restrictions of the adult world. Kit and Angie talk about running away from home, they talk about travel, about the reality of their menstrual blood which flows from hidden spaces and their love-hate relationship to the adult world. Later Kit seeks shelter from rain within the precincts of her friend's house while Angie herself is left outside with a feeling of rejection. The third act moves backwards in time. It takes place a year earlier than the second act.It is a confrontation scene between Marlene and her sister Joyce. They open out their past, the suppressed, sibling rivalry, Marlene's need to escape from her background, Joyce's support, the birth of Marlene's daughter Angie, and her adoption by Joyce, Joyce's mi scarriage, and her separation from her husband Frank. Women sacrifice their motherhood for a career; but at times they also have to sacrifice their marriage for their motherhood. Joyce is denied space within her marriage while Marlene is aware that men want her to turn into ‘‘the little woman’’ which she is not prepared to do.In all this it is Angie who feels confused and dispossessed. Keatley's play is also a three-act play with the first act having ten scenes and moving between 1905 and 1979. The second act is one uninterrupted scene located in 1982, and the third act is placed in 1987 diving back, towards the end, to 1923. There are five child-scenes spread over the play—Act I sc. 1, sc. 3 and sc. 8, and Act III sc. 3 and sc. 6 which act like a conjunction of events, like a voice from the past, like an abandonment of the chronological process. The movement of the play can be seen from the graph.The conjunction scene is shown as a circle with four different time streams flowing together. Covering four generations, it covers several