Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: Summary Essay

This essay will analyze Judith Butler’s theory of ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ in Caryl Churchill’s play, ​Cloud 9. The essay will analyze Churchill’s use of gender swapping her character of Betty, the forced female role placed upon her, and her sexual liberation in Act Two as a way to criticize gender behavior and norms.

Judith Butler in ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ says that gender is not biological, but is socially and culturally constructed, and thus gender-based codes and identities can be changed. Butler states that gender is a ‘stylized repetition of acts’ that regulates heterosexual identity which she calls a ‘performative accomplishment’ (519). Individuals who do not perform these gender-assigned behaviors or movements will be punished by society through exclusion. When analyzed, these acts do not appear to be coherent but sometimes random. For Butler, seeing gender as a performance gives more of an opportunity to critique gender and to find those incoherent acts as a way to possibly subvert gender (Butler, 1988).

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In ​Cloud Nine, ​the character of Betty in Act One is played by a man. Churchill uses this technique of a man playing the character of Betty to show how to separate the female gender from the female body and thus is able to critique socially constructed gender roles. Betty is introduced by Clive as ‘My wife is all I dreamt a wife should be, And everything she is she owes to me’ (Churchill, 3-4) and Betty’s first opening lines are ‘I live for Clive. The whole aim of my life is to be what he looks for in a wife. I am a man’s creation as you see, and what men want is what I want to be. And what men want is what I want to be’ (Churchill, 4).

Immediately, Betty is introduced as an inferior and submissive character to that her husband, Clive, the dominant patriarchal figure of the house. Betty is the perfect embodiment of the Victorian woman, whose main duty is to be a wife, dutiful and submissive. Her complete reliance and devotion to her husband are clearly seen in her use of language when she expresses that she ‘live[s] for Clive’ (Churchill, 4).

The first introduction Clive gives to Betty shows the dominant patriarchal nature of society when it comes to gender, which ‘encourages men to accept the male privilege and perpetuate women’s oppression’ (Johnson, 19). When he states that ‘everything she is she owes to me’, is an example of the power and dominance men exert over women to keep them in an oppressed role. Having a male actor play the role of Betty, ‘makes gender visible by separating feminine gender from the female body’ (Kritzer, 113).​ ​And it clearly shows the disconnect between Betty as a biological female and the traditional female behavior portrayed by the character.

Butler states that gender is not biological, but is a culturally constructed ‘stylized repetition of acts’ (519).​ ​Because of Clive’s oppression, Betty no longer values herself and is played by a man in Act One as it shows her overwhelming need to be what men want her to be. Churchill also uses the fact that Betty is played by a man to show how ridiculous the forced submissive role women have is. It forces us to recognize that female identity is culturally constructed and completely separate from the female body. To ‘be a man’s creation’ means to conform to masculine expectations not by mimicking the misogynist or murdering the feminine, but by leaving nothing to the woman except the name and the clothes’ (Herrmann, 311).

Churchill’s use of a man playing a female also challenges the understanding of gender and highlights the difference between gender and ‘gender performance’. To Clive, Betty is the perfect wife and ideal woman, ‘My Wife is all I dreamt a wife should be’ (3), ​but Betty isn't physically a woman. Clive also believes he is accountable for creating the perfect wife and woman. ‘And everything she is she owes to me’ (4).​ ​This implies that Clive changed who Betty is, meaning that the ideal of femininity is malleable and is based on what is perceived to be feminine. This is an example of Butler’s theory of ‘gender performance’ as Betty’s feminity is very much a product of the time she is living in and her gender is therefore culturally constructed. Clive stating that he created who Betty is, means that gender is malleable, thus these gender-based codes can be changed. Butler believes that gender is not a stable identity, but is linked to the historical context of that time and what is perceived to be ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’. Certain repetitive ‘bodily movements’ create the illusion of gender but have no connection to us internally or bodily (Butler, 519). As Reinelt states, Churchill ‘challenges notions of fixed identity and normative sexual identifications’ (28). Betty being seen as the ideal wife but being played by a man, shows the disconnect between gender and the body and that gender is just a ‘constructed identity’ that is performed so that we are accepted by society (Butler, 520).

In the introduction, Betty also claims to be ‘man’s creation’ (4). In this play, feminity is defined by patriarchal ideology. ‘The women in the Victorian era were traditional and their world consisted of their husbands. They had to behave as their husband liked’ (​Şiklar, 347). ​The character of Betty is restricted to her traditional feminine role of being a mother and a wife. ‘You’re a mother. And a daughter. And a wife’ (31). The success of a woman in the Victorian Era was defined by their marriage, ‘You are looking very pretty tonight. You were such a success as a young girl. You have made a most fortunate marriage’ (14). Betty eventually reveals that she is unhappy and bored in this traditional feminine role and uses love to escape the monotony of marriage and motherhood. She admits her love for Harry and her desire to run away with him but is fearful of the repercussions if she is shown to be an unfaithful wife and leaves Clive.

In ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’, Butler speaks about the punishment faced by society if one does not perform their gender correctly (522). In Cloud Nine, when Clive discovers Betty’s feelings for Harry, he condemns her and all women who break out of their assigned gender roles.

‘Women can be treacherous and evil. They are darker and more dangerous than men. The family protects us from that; you can protect me from that… If I shot you, every British man and woman would applaud me. But no. It was a moment of passion such as women are too weak to resist. We must resist this dark female lust, Betty, or it will swallow us up (44).

Even Betty herself feels compelled to punish herself for her actions when confronted by Clive. ‘​There is something so wicked in me Clive’ (44).​ ​Clive connects the desire Betty feels towards Harry as something ‘dark’ and evil and thus being beyond her control. He tells Betty that they both must work together to help her resist these ‘dark’ desires. By Clive convincing Betty that her female lust is caused by an evil force, and is therefore out of her control, it takes away any of her free will. Betty following and accepting her desire for Harry was a sign of her exerting her free will outside of the restrictions of the forced traditional female role and regaining her identity. To Clive, this was a sign of his lack of masculine power over Betty and in order to regain control, and force Betty back into her assigned female role, he demonizes female lust. He also tells Betty that if she is weak and succumbs to her ‘dark’ female desires, it is his obligation as the dominant patriarchal figure to force her to leave the family. Even Harry, who also has feelings for Betty, rejects her advances as he believes her sole role is that of a faithful wife to Clive, which cannot be changed. The threatened forced exclusion from society and the demonization of her actions is an examples of the punishment received by individuals who do not conform to their assigned gender roles.

In Act Two, the act of Betty leaving Clive to live independently is the start of her sexual liberation and awakening to herself as an individual, free from the patriarchal gender constraints forced on women. For this reason, Betty is played by a woman in the second act because ‘she becomes real to herself’ (Churchill, 1996, 246). According to Butler, ‘​to be a woman is to have become a woman, to compel the body to conform to a historical idea of ‘woman’, to induce the body to become a cultural sign, to materialize oneself in obedience to a historically delimited possibility, and to do this as a sustained and repeated corporeal project” (522). By Betty being finally free of Clive in Act Two, she is no longer constrained by traditional patriarchal views and can explore her sexual identity and desires. Whereas in Act One, she was forced to suppress them as they were seen as something outside of her assigned gender role. Throughout Act One, Betty was devoid of any individual power or freedom and is ‘made to submit to Clive’s patriarchal values, as a result of which she attributes secondary importance to her individuality and desires’ (Yilmaz, 66).

‘One night in bed in my flat I was so frightened I started touching myself. [...] and I felt myself gathering together more and more and I felt angry with Clive and angry with my mother and I went on and on defying them… Afterward, I thought I’d betrayed Clive. My mother would kill me. But I felt triumphant because I was a separate person from them. And I cried because I didn’t want to be. But I don’t cry about it anymore (316). In this scene Betty finally realizes the importance of her own sexual desires, thus realizing the importance of her own individuality outside of the forced patriarchal oppressed role of the feminine. She begins to value her own identity as separate from any other individual, ‘ I was a separate person from them’ (105), without feeling any guilt or punishment for doing so, as she would have in Act One if she were still with Clive. Betty is finally being true to who she is, which is why Betty from Act One and Betty from Act Two embrace one another, as it is a reconciliation with her past self. Churchill uses Betty’s discovery of her own identity, separate from any other person as a way to critique ‘gender performance’. Betty in Act Two subverts traditional patriarchal norms of gender which forces the audience to confront the reality that these roles and performances are not fixed, and just as they were constructed, they can be deconstructed in a subversive way to challenge the dominant patriarchal ideology that creates these expected behaviors. Kritzer similarly states that the two Bettys embracing ‘breaks apart the unitary patriarchal construction of woman and creates an empowering moment of theatrical doubleness for women audience members (27).

As Butler states, gender is established through the repetition of certain acts, which have no connection to our identity, but are solely a creation of the society around us. Butler believes that the key to gender transformation is to subvert these forced gender acts, which we see Betty do in Act Two by giving into her sexual desires and valuing her own identity separate from everyone else.

Judith Butler’s theory of ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitutions’ can be clearly seen in Caryl Churchill’s play, ​Cloud Nine, ​particularly through the character of Betty. Through theatrical strategies, such as Betty being played by a man in Act One, Churchill shows the audience that gender is just a construct based on the dominant patriarchal and historical views of the society at that time and thus gender can be deconstructed to subvert these dominant ideologies. Churchill wants to abandon the simplistic roles of gender and their associated ‘bodily gestures’, that create the illusion of gender, and to adopt a more complex view of gender identity and sex.

References:

1. Butler, Judith. ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.’ ​Theatre Journal, ​The Johns Hopkins University Press,​ ​Vol. 40, No. 4, 1988, pp. 519-531. ​JSTOR, ​http://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893. Accessed: 20 April 2019.
2. Churchill, Caryl. ​Plays. 1st ed., Methuen Drama, 1996.
3. Churchill, Caryl. ​Cloud 9​. 1st ed., Routledge, 1988.
4. Johnson, Allan G. ​The Gender Knot. 3rd ed., Temple University Press, 2014.
5. Herrmann, Anne. 'Travesty And Transgression: Transvestism In Shakespeare, Brecht, And Churchill'. ​Theatre Journal, vol 41, no. 2, 1989. ​JSTOR​, doi:10.2307/3207855. Accessed 25 Apr 2019.
6. Kritzer, Amelia Howe. 'The Plays Of Caryl Churchill: Theatre Of Empowerment'. ​Theatre Journal, vol 45, no. 3, 1993. ​JSTOR​, doi:10.2307/3208371. Accessed 25 Apr 2019.
7. Reinelt, Janelle. “On Feminist and Sexual Politics.” ​The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill, edited by Elaine Aston and Elin Diamond, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 18–35. Cambridge Companions to Literature.
8. Şiklar, Ece. 'A Study Of Epic Theatre In Caryl Churchill’S Cloud Nine'. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND CULTURAL STUDIES, vol 4, no.
9. 3, 2017. doi:2356-5926. Accessed 25 Apr 2019.
10. Yilmaz, Neslihan. ‘Gender Politics and Feminism in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine.’ Department of English and German, ​University of Barcelona, 2011, ​Semantic Scholar, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/91ac/f505689a3051219d7bde23607bf72789c846.pdf. Accessed 20 April 2019.
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