Vinegar Tom

Performance Material

Play written by Caryl Churchill 1976

Brechtian

Key themes are:

Feminism, social class/character stereotypes, witch trials, religion

Second wave feminism

Second-wave feminism is a period of feminist activity and thought that first began in the early
1960s in the United States, and eventually spread throughout the Western world and beyond. In
the United States the movement lasted through the early 1980s.[1] It later became a worldwide
movement that was strong in Europe and parts of Asia, such as Turkey[2] and Israel, where it
began in the 1980s, and it began at other times in other countries.[3]

Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to
gender equality (e.g., voting rights, property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the
debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto
inequalities, and official legal inequalities.[4] Second-wave feminism also drew attention
to domestic violence and marital rape issues, establishment of rape crisis and battered women's
shelters, and changes in custody and divorce law. Its major effort was the attempted passage of
the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the United States Constitution, in which they were
defeated by anti-feminists led by Phyllis Schlafly, who argued as an anti-ERA view that the ERA
meant women would be drafted into the military.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism

The 1960s may have brought the pill and the sexual revolution but as the 1970s dawned equality of the sexes

was still a long way off. Women could be paid less than a man for doing the same job, posts were advertised by

gender and 'sexual harassment' was an unknown term.

No wonder then that the 1970s saw the self-titled second wave feminists motivated to abolish sexism wherever

they found it. This collection of television and radio programmes remembers some of the major feminist thinkers

of those years and highlights the issues they addressed and attitudes they contested.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/70sfeminism/

Oppression appears in different forms such as the oppressive forces of capitalism on working
class people, the oppressive forces of patriarchy that is, of men towards women, and the
oppressive forces of women over other women. The aim of this paper is to investigate the
oppressive forces of capitalism on working and middle class women and the oppressive
forces of patriarchy including both men and women over these two kind of classes in the
society of Caryl Churchills Vinegar Tom (1976). Caryl Churchill has explored such issues in
her works mainly pertaining to the position of women in male-dominated societies. Indeed,
some of her works utilize various plot structures to harness support for the improvement of
the position of women in society while some attempt illustrate womens vain struggle against
oppressive patriarchal agents

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.663.4846&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Social Class

Gender implies a psychosocial and cultural tool as opposed to sex which denotes a mere
physiological criterion. As an important concept of feminist discussion, it owes much to the
ideas of Simone de Beauvoir, who held women to be greater victims of social injustice than
biological difference with men. Gender, over the years, came to be recognized as an
important site for exploring the politics behind sexual difference that societies continuously
try to uphold in their pursuit of consolidating and perpetuating patriarchy. And, gender
politics explains a societys stance on sexual difference and gender. It assists us to identify
what sort of behaviour a particular society appropriates based on its perception of sexual
difference and at the same time to understand the dynamics of power relations that operate
among different gendered categories. Gender politics, thus, shows how women are unjustly
treated and overpowered within patriarchal societies simply because of their sexual difference
with men; and thereby calls for a debate or criticism of the same such that better space for
women can be secured within societies. As a feminist writer experimenting with theatre,
Caryl Churchill has touched upon the issue of gender politics in numerous ways. In this
paper, an attempt has been made to analyse how Caryl Churchill has explored the dynamics
of gender politics and patriarchy in her play Vinegar Tom (1976). In course of the study
primary stress has been given to thematic understanding of Caryl Churchills Vinegar Tom
(1976), which is treated as a dramatic text for the present analytical study.

http://www.ijhsss.com/files/S-K-Seal---Dr_1s9n51l0.-D-Das.pdf

Caryl Churchills Vinegar Tom is a critique of patriarchy (especially patriarchy fueled by

religious extremity), given added scorn with implicit sallies on capitalist tendencies. The
repression of women by patriarch standards is embodied in the victimization of a number of
deviant females living in a village in 17th century England. However, there are also instances
of self-victimization which do not fit into the patriarchal pattern of inhibition, but rather
provoke apparently undecided questions, fulfilling Churchills expectation of playwrights in
general who, according to her, dont give answers; they ask questions (quoted in Aston,
Diamond, 2009, p. 10). Following her own precept, Churchill mocks religious fanaticism
harboring belief in witches and their association with the devil, while simultaneously asking
unanswered questions implicit in the "devilish" behavior of her characters.

http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/jltr/vol04/02/11.pdf

Witch trials

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people
accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May
1693. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, fourteen of them
women, and all but one by hanging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials

Several centuries ago, many practicing Christians, and those of other religions, had
a strong belief that the Devil could give certain people known as witches the power
to harm others in return for their loyalty. A "witchcraft craze" rippled through Europe
from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Tens of thousands of supposed witches
mostly womenwere executed. Though the Salem trials came on just as the
European craze was winding down, local circumstances explain their onset.
 http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-
175162489/

Historical Aspects

What was happening

1970

U.S. President Richard Nixon orders an invasion of Cambodia, widening the

war in Vietnam. ...
The U.S. Senate repeals the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that had given
Presidents Johnson and Nixon sweeping powers in the Vietnam War.
The Beatles break up.
Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nassar dies

www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe70s/worldevents_01.html