'Performative feminism' - dramatising this concept for the first time?

Guilt? Small awareness that they do share oppression as women, even if they are now of different classes.

Classism - that people who don't make it are responsible for their own failure, rather than a structural problem.

Critique of Thatcherism - that people shouldn't depend on the state, they are individuals responsible for their own failures.

On the one hand, rejecting traditional ideas of women's role in society. Marlene does not want to be a 'mother', as would be expected of her.

BUT, on the other hand, a socialist-feminist would say that this success and 'liberation' from traditional gender roles is only accessible to the wealthy. Pointing out the limitations

Ambiguous ending - did Angie overhear the conversation? Seems to be the suggestion in Act 2...

Frightened by the future that might take place...

"The personal is political"

Everything is political in the sense that it affects everyday lives. Sometimes politics more important than family ties.

Very limited choices available to Jeanine. Marlene plays the bearer of bad news. She doesn't sympathise with her. 'This is how it is'. This is despite her own experiences of similar problems.

What broader point is being made?

Very clear example of the limitations of the recruitment agency can do: working within the patriarchal system, rather than changing it.

Call back to Pope Joan scenes. The need to live up to 'masculine' standard isn't just a contemporary issue.

Good example of non-linear plot being important. This scene occurs after the argument in Act 3 about Angie 'making it' under Thatcherism even though she's 'stupid lazy and frightened'.

Even more pessimistic conclusion in light of Act 3: that Marlene thinks Angie is doomed and nothing can change.

Misogyny work by displacing men's shame and vulnerability onto women.

Good illustration of internalised misogyny - expectation of loyalty.

A good illustration - 'the glass ceiling'.

But the interviews with the women seem pretty cutting. They are trying to address sexism but they aren't changing the system. A lot of internalised misogyny in how they treat the women. Patronising, rather than solidarity.

Combining stereotypical 'feminine' outfit with an 'unfeminine' act of murder.

Who is the 'mother'? Is she referring to Joyce? Or is she referring to Marlene?

If it is Joyce, the dress is a real 'fuck you' to her (my 'real' mum gave this to me).

Where does the anger towards Marlene/Joyce come from: maybe overheard Marlene and Joyce's conversation (Act 3).

Deferring to authority of men... Joan as mouthpiece for patriarchy? Ironic... A Wizard of Oz Moment - the performativity of masculinity and authority (which are kinda the same thing).

Angie is also sixteen.

Drawing attention to age?

Pope Joan's speech is from Book Two of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things).

"It's pleasing, when over a swollen sea winds are sitting up the waters, to watch from the shore another's peril: not because his troubles are a cause of delight or joy, but because it's pleasing to recognise what troubles you are free from yourself. It's just as pleasing to witness battle being waged across a plain, when you're out of danger yourself. But nothing is more delightful than to occupy the calm of an ivory tower built on the teachings of wise men; from here you can look down on others as they wander about seeking some path through life, as they strive to be clever, to out-do each other in reputation, battling night and day to get to the top of the pile with their power and wealth. What miserable minds men have! How blind their hearts are! To waste their brief span of life in darkness, in peril! Don't they see all nature needs is for life to be lived without physical pain, while the mind, freed from cares, enjoys a sense of delight?"

See https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/13575341.1990.10806824?needAccess=true

This moment primes spectators to think about Marlene as having to undertake a similar process of compromising with patriarchal power in order to achieve a measure of life improvement. This is what makes her plight much more complex than a mere caricature of the Thatcherite 'material girl'. We are invited to see her circumstances as existing as part of a longer history of women compromising and even colluding with patriarchy to improve their dim circumstances, a realisation that does not detract from, but adds to, the play's critique of Thatcherism.