1. Meet the guests in Act One – 40 minutes ish viewing
Top Girls
Meet the guests in Act One – 40 minutes ish viewing

2. Top Girls 16/10/2017 Learning objectives:
See Act One performed and think about how the characters interact – why the overlapping dialogue? Are they entirely without empathy?
Start developing an opinion – is Act One just confusing or is it a clever trans-historical tableau?
Start thinking about characterisation a) making notes on each character b) thinking about commonality between characters
Research the playwright and start understanding literary and historical context
Outcomes: 1. watch Act One on BBC adaptation
2. Print these slides (1-15)
3. Annotate slides 3-8 with 3 key quotes for each character from Act one
4. Complete all tasks on slide 10

3. Marlene – 20th century host
Managing Director of Top Girls – an employment agency
Dinner party to celebrate promotion
Hostess
Represents contemporary woman – 1982
No husband, no children.
Idolises Margaret Thatcher
Alpha female

4. Isabella Bird – 19th century guest
Lived in Edinburgh but travelled extensively from ages 40-70
Tried to conform to expectations: embroidery etc
For medicinal reasons, moved to Australia and developed love for outdoors and practical work
She dressed as a lady but could ‘make scones and lasoo cattle’
Married but found marriage a chore
When widowed she went travelling

5. Lady Nijo – 13th century guest
Emperor’s courtesan
When she fell out of favour with the Emperor she became a Buddhist nun, walking every day for 20 years
She takes several lovers and bears several children but does not bring up her children- taken away/killed
She seems not maternal but later cries about this
She dotes on the Emperor in spite of his mistreatment. Finally she takes revenge and beats him with a stick.

6. Dull Gret – 16th century painting, Mad Meg from Flemish folklore
Woman in an apron and armour leads a crowd of women charging through hell and fighting the devils.
Largely silent
Preoccupied with food / stealing plates
Took revenge for death of her children
Strong, physical, self-assured woman

7. Pope Joan – 9th century Pope (folklore)
Left home aged 12 dressed as a boy to access education
Became Pope
Eventually revealed as a woman

8. Patient Griselda – fictional character from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Arrives late
Peasant’s daughter
‘Patient’ and obedient – subject to an abusive husband
Children are removed without her consent
Subjected to a test of her love for her husband
Glimpses of a recognition of her victimhood at end

9. Why bring together all these women?
Their function is to represent the different aspects of the female psyche and partly to suggest a universal female experience
Collectively they provide an historical context for the new woman who is represented in this scene by Marlene
History which has traditionally been about men written by men is given a feminist perspective here

10. Independent learning:
Research: Who is Caryl Churchill? When writing? For who? About? Significant achievements? (20 minutes) Bullet points.
Top Girls vocabulary sheet – print and complete as much as you can (20 minutes)
Print and read Act One source material which you can find on the shared area: English / KS5 AQA English Literature A / A-level / Top Girls
Print the Top Girls context grid from the blog (5 minutes)
Update your folder/ exercise book and get everything stuck in and dated in your new section entitled “Paper 2 Texts in Context 1945-present : Top Girls”

11. Act 2.1 Jeanine Wants to earn more money to save up for her wedding
Wants to work in advertising
Vaguely ambitious

12. Legislation changes
1970 equal pay act – men and women doing same job must be paid the same
1975 Sex discrimination Act banned sex discrimination in employment, advertising and education
Employment Protection Act guaranteed women their jobs returning from maternity leave
Contemporary audiences watching in 1982 (it was written in 1979) would have fully absorbed the changes for women and would be fully conscious of the future for women
However, from 1985, workplace-subsidised nurseries were deemed a taxable benefit, adding £700 to £1,000 to women's tax bills. In 1987, the universal maternity grant was removed. The 1980s were dark days for maternity rights.
Now in 2016 (modern audience)
Maternity pay: first 6 weeks 90% of your full pay, then £139 per week for next 33 weeks
In 2001, Gordon Brown included men's right to paternity leave in his Budget and, from , male employees received paid statutory paternity leave for the first time
Maternity leave is 52 weeks (2016) and can now be shared between the mother and father.

13. Women continue to be under- represented in the top income groups
Top earners were considered in the top 3% of salaries; of this number only 2% were women in 1981
In 2016 women account for only 28% of the top 10% income group; 18% of the top 1% income group
In the UK, only 9 per cent of Britain’s top earners, who earn £456,000 or more, were women (Sept 2016)
In 2016 : A recent survey by Halifax found that a gender pay gap has emerged in the amount of pocket money UK parents give to their children, with boys receiving almost 12 per cent more weekly pocket money compared to girls.
Despite David Cameron’s vow last summer to “end the gender pay gap in a generation”, the UK is still lagging behind the European average
Relative equal pay at lower income levels

14. Women’s employment increases
Women became more available for work in the 1970s
45% of all waged workers were women
Birth rate fell; women had first child later (tend that continues… 2016 average age for first time mum is 28)
Sharp decline in male employment – particularly in manufacturing industries
More women were gaining academic and vocational qualifications
Financial independence is a sine qua non of women’s liberation. Virginia Woolf (1928) ‘women must have money and a room of her own’
Divorce rate increased / number of single mothers increased – further need for financial independence
Women choose employment in professions that do not offer high salaries (education/ administrative/health)

15. Changing lifestyle for women
Increasing number of mechanical aids to make housework easier – washing machine/ tumble dryer freeing up their time for other things
Increase in leisure opportunities: aerobics / fitness/ dance class got women out of the house and brought women together
Traditional domestic role (of the 50s) challenged
However, reconciling professional ambitions with being a mother and wife has always been problematic for women
Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money . . . Even if
You’re Starting With Nothing,” published in 1982 by editor of Cosmo.
The “Superwoman” ideal is a construct born out of the women’s movement in the ’s defined as women who can “do it all and have it all”
Today, “having it all” is evoked so frequently and facetiously
that it has become akin to some malign joke: the sad fate of the Career Bogeywoman, her soul sucked dry by her high-powered job, her children barely nourished by the dregs of maternal instinct that managed to survive her outsize ambition