Predicament of Women Characters in Carly Churchill’s Vinegar Tom

Abstract

Carly Churchill is renowned contemporary playwright in British literature. Her writings are mainly concentrated on the theme of women’s marginality. The play Vinegar Tom, includes different voices such as old beggar widow Joan, a single mother Alice, rebellious girl Betty, and a mother who miscarries Susan. These women are oppressed by the patriarchy and their economic disadvantages. Churchill attempts to analyse that there is a close relation between class and gender. Those women accused of practicing witchcraft because of their because of their deviant between, which is against social and patriarchal norms. This present paper attempts to evaluate the theme of women’s marginality due to patriarchal system. This play is about witches, but there are no witches in it, only four women accused of being witches. The dramatist portrays different kinds of women such as divorced, widowed, married and single in the light of the patriarchal set up of the British society. This chapter also represent to show how the patriarchal social order resulted in a biased social milieu and the response of the women to it. The dramatizes aspire to reverse the conventional expectation of gender roles. The characterisations of women reinforce the all odds stacked against them, they have to struggle hard in the patriarchal society. This play leads a kind of unity to the study though they belong to different families.  concept that with