Gender Roles in Cloud 9

In Schechner’s chapter 5 part II, the origin of gender roles are discussed.  This chapter claims that these roles are not due to power structures or class, but rather, “consist not of naturally determined operations but of something built and enforced by means of ‘performance’” (130).  Simone de Beauvoir’s example is used to describe this phenomenon with her quote, “One is not born, but, rather, becomes a woman”.  This happens through society constructing and then prescribing gender roles.  In Cloud 9, Churchill reorganizes the “rules” of gender roles with the choice of who plays the characters.   For example, Betty is played by a man and Edward a woman.  These visual cues force the audience to realize that the concept of a woman played by Betty cannot exist as a woman character because it is a male constructed ideal.     Also, Edward’s character is played by a woman to show his short comings as the man that his father wants him to be.  These roles constructed by Clive, the head of the family, are interpreted through the eye of an opposite gender of what the role is actually supposed to be, perhaps to show Clive’s corrupt version of how a man or woman should actually be.  Schechner describes the construction of gender roles as a “humanly constructed concept designed (consciously or unconsciously) to accomplish human ends” (130), which can also further the notion that the roles of Betty and Edward are creations of Clive.  This act may be a commentary on the Victorian version of a male and female and Churchill may be pointing out how these roles are problematic.