Ruhr-Uni-Bochum
Englisches Seminar

Hauptseminar: Typen der modernen englischen Komödie

Thema der Hausarbeit:
The concept and impact of gender roles in Joe Orton’s plays

von

Maritta Schwartz

WS 1996 / 97

Contents

1. Introduction ... 4

2. What are gender roles? ... 4

3. The concepts of sexuality and gender in Orton’s plays ... 4

4. The Conception of the Characters ... 6

5. Sex and Crime in "Loot" ... 7
    5.1 Fay ... 7
    5.2 McLeavy ... 9
    5.3 Hal and Dennis ... 10
    5.4 Truscott ... 11
    5.5 The Mummy ... 12
    5.6 Summary ... 14

6. The Triangular Relationship in "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" ... 14
    6.1 Kath ... 14
    6.2 Ed ... 17
    6.3 Sloane ... 18
    6.4 Kemp ... 20
    6.4 Kath, Ed and Sloane – the triangular relationship ... 20

7. Role Switching and Sexual Identity in “What the Butler Saw” ... 21
    7.1 Dr. Prentice ... 22
    7.2 Mrs. Prentice ... 26
    7.3 Dr. Rance ... 27
    7.4 Nick ... 30
    7.5 Geraldine Barclay ... 31
    7.6 Sergeant Match ... 32

8. Conclusion ... 33

9. Bibliography ... 35

1. Introduction
There are certain characteristics in Joe Orton’s plays that are very typical and of distinctive significance. The aspect of gender roles is one of those characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to explain, why the aspect of gender roles is so important, which different concepts of gender roles we can distinguish in Orton’s plays and, eventually, to show and explain those different concepts explicitly at three selected plays.

2. What are gender roles?
Before we are going to discuss the impact of gender roles in Orton’s plays, we should give a short definition of what is meant by this term.

Sex and gender are two terms that have to be clearly distinguished from each other. Whereas the term sex means the natural sex of a person, animal or thing, the term gender is aimed at the grammatical and sociological system of sex-references. In the German language, e.g., the grammatical gender of a girl is neuter (das Mädchen) although her natural sex is, of course, feminine. In our context the term gender refers to the different concepts of roles that exist in society, i.e. different sets of norms for behaviour that are associated with being either feminine or masculine and thus create sexual identity. A traditional concept of the feminine role would, for instance, be the one of the housewife and mother, staying at home, cooking and looking after the children. Accordingly, the traditional concept of the masculine role would be the one of the hard-working head of the family. Of course, there are lots of other concepts, some of which we will find in Orton’s plays.

3. The concepts of sexuality and gender in Orton’s plays
Nietzsche distinguishes between two different concepts of sexuality, namely the Apollonian and the Dionysian spirit. He gives the following definitions: “The Apollonian spirit emphasizes individuality and hence self-knowledge , rejecting excess and hubris.” The Dionysian spirit represents “sexual ambivalence and the extreme.”¹ No doubt, Orton tended towards the Dionysian spirit, the disruptive, boundary-breaking power that attacks society’s morality. He once stated himself:

I always say to myself that the theatre is the Temple of Dionysus, and not Apollo. You do the Dionysus thing on your typewriter, and then you allow a little Apollo in, just a little to shape and guide it along certain lines you may want to go along. But you can’t allow Apollo in completely.²

The sexuality we find in Orton’s works is aggressive and subversive. It is a challenge to authority, which includes parents as well as God. All kinds of limits and norms are rejected and instead the freedom of imagination and action is supported and celebrated. This works, because a challenge to sexual norms implies automatically a challenge to normative values in general. According to Adorno, the “common ground of Western moralists and ideologists of social realism is a hatred of sex”.3 This was exactly the vulnerable point, that Orton chose to attack recklessly. In his point of view, a complete sexual licence was the only way to overthrow society as it existed and exists. For Orton, boundaries existed to be violated in order to generate meaning. Dialectics and rational restraints are replaced by erotic and irrational energy.4 Sex is seen as separated from guilt. It symbolizes the world of impulse with a dreamlike, self-gratifying, wish-fulfilling and narcissistic quality.5 Orton’s plays disturbed the moral response of his audience and he was a nuisance of a sexual rebel to quite a lot of his contemporaries.

At this point it is certainly important to mention Orton’s own homosexuality, as it had a great relevance for his work. His homosexuality gave him a position somewhere at the edge of society and its norms. From this kind of outside position he could mock on society. Treated with contempt by society himself, he stroke back, attacking a system for which he had no respect, using the art of farce as a very elegant vehicle to do so. He ridiculed a society, which had committed itself to meaning and order, by joyfully introducing disorder, insanity, a careless proliferation of roles, madness, chaos, the subversive and the contingent. Plots and characters are exaggerated to such an extent that they become a parody of reality. At the same time both show a hermetic quality, as in all the plays we have a private world that is closed off against the external world. The expression ‘microcosm’ would probably fit quite well. Incest, as well as the hospital or the camp as a setting all represent this hermetic closure. As for the characters, they try to shut themselves off against reality and self-knowledge by wearing masks.6 But we will have a closer look at the conception of the characters in the following paragraph.

[...]

1 Bigsby, C.W. E; Joe Orton, London, 1982. (p. 66)
2 ebenda, p. 66
3 ebenda, p. 66
4 ebenda, p. 68
5 Charney, Maurice; Joe Orton, London, 1984. (p.100)
6 Charney, p. 68f.