‘The Significant Other’: Motherhood Discourse in Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls

Abstract

This paper attempts to trace the representation of motherhood in Top Girls (1982) with a view to assess the evolutionary pattern of motherhood as an institution throughout ages. As Kimberley Reynolds points out motherhood is the simplest and the most complex of relationships. It is simple because it is associated with the inbuilt biological and physical capacities of a woman; it is complex, as it is bitter, time and identity consuming, pleasure sacrificing, guilt pricking and non-unitary experience. In last quarter of the twentieth century world mothering has been entwined with social, psychological and ideological issues, and process has been transformed from simple procreation and basic caring to profession, obsession and a paradox ultimately.