Top Girls

“Don’t you get angry? I get angry.”

Because the women Marlene speaks to in the first act are long dead, she can reveal to them truths that she does not reveal to anyone else. The dinner is a celebration, but if Marlene is as happy with everything as she pretends to be in the second and third acts, why is she angry? Lady Nijo asks this question, but Marlene does not answer, implying that even in her fantasies, she won’t fully admit her anger to herself.

“I knew coming to dinner with a pope we should keep off religion.”

Isabella’s statement, in response to Pope Joan’s angry declaration that the Church of England is “heresy,” reads as an ironic understatement. Isabella is enforcing the rules of dinner party etiquette, trying to maintain a pleasant atmosphere, while Pope Joan is speaking as a former head of the Catholic Church, making a claim that—centuries after Joan’s death—led to actual wars and executions. The triviality of etiquette—often associated with women as keepers of domestic tranquility—is ironically juxtaposed with the world-historic dimensions of these women’s lives.

ISABELLA: Well I always travelled as a lady and I repudiated strongly any suggestion in the press that I was other than feminine.

MARLENE: I don’t wear trousers in the office. I could but I don’t.

Isabella makes this statement in response to Pope Joan talking about dressing like a man. Because she was travelling and exploring alone, she had to repeatedly defend her