Table Of ContentWomen in Edward Bond
TRANSATLANTIC STUDIES IN BRITISH
AND NORTH AMERICAN CULTURE
Edited by Marek Wilczyński
VOLUME 25
Susana Nicolás Román (ed.)
Women in Edward Bond
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in theinternet at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.
ISSN 2364-2882
ISBN 978-3-631-77365-9 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-77443-4 (E-Book)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-77444-1 (EPUB)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-77445-8 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/b15005
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To Elizabeth Bond, the woman
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 9
Susana Nicolás Román
My Female Characters. An interview with Edward Bond ............................... 13
Sam Haddow
Are We Saved yet? Riot, Revival and the Feminine Passive in Saved ............. 25
Susana Nicolás Román
Female Wickedness and Violence: Narrow Road
to the Deep North and Lear ................................................................................... 37
Susana Nicolás Román
The Revolutionary Woman in Human Cannon ................................................ 51
Harry Derbyshire
“Four-square behind the Sputum”: Dramatic Form, Female Characters
and Implacable Politics in Restoration and Summer ......................................... 65
David Tuaillon
Other Mothers Courage: The War Plays ............................................................. 93
Kate Katafiasz
Castrated Ladies: Bond’s Mirthless Mothers ..................................................... 129
Chris Cooper
Strong and Active Women in the Big Brum Plays ............................................ 151
Introduction
Women in Bond focuses on an unexplored area of Edward Bond’s writing. While
different studies have examined the violence present in his plays or his dra-
matic theory, questions around his powerful female characters have remained
unsolved. None of the criticism has developed specifically the role of these
women as speakers of their social context. Remarkably, the presence of women
in Bond’s plays is dominant in contrast to his contemporary playwrights. Female
protagonists and powerful secondary characters abound in Bond from the begin-
ning of his career. And the author himself has often stated that he was interested
in women’s problems. Yet, the metaphysical human condition Bond describes
is not gender-specific. Bond’s human world is one that inscribes its figures in
an apocalyptic aura, but it is a world in which the word ‘human’ subsumes both
male and female voices without prevailing conditions.
This collection approaches femininity focusing on the importance of the his-
torical and social context in which women grow as characters. This project has
mainly concentrated on women in Bond’s plays, describing and studying their
evolution; discussing the forces that influenced their depiction; and illustrating
their significance in his writing, and more generally, their relation to the depic-
tion of women in modern society. In the following chapters, Bond’s progress in
the conception and delineation of female characters will be analyzed through a
grouping of plays which mark distinctive stages of development.
In his early plays from Saved (1965) until The Woman (1978), we find op-
pressed women with the only possibility to show their presence in the world
through violence. Bond himself assumed that men are the same as women
for this effect: “I put women on an equal status with men: they have to accept
responsibility for changing their society, not merely be its victims, acquiescing or
otherwise” (Stuart, 1995: 201). We find powerful examples of female evil in Early
Morning, Lear, Narrow Road to the Deep North or The Sea. The characterization
of these figures aligns different traces to femininity such as religious obsession,
sexual power or craving desire for extreme torture. The later female-focused
plays can be interpreted as depictions of female responses to the same suffering
and limit situations. From The Woman, Bond’s main domain is on political and
social heroines in different historical contexts. Opposingly to the early women,
these heroines (Restoration, Human Cannon, The War Plays, Summer) take ac-
tion and change their society becoming the voice of the author and his political
commitment.
