Bird of Paradise

Historical Context

BETSABÉ NAVARRO

“I was quite pleased with my own play but not very confident about it, not as confident as I felt about the novels.” Thus wrote Margaret Drabble about her only play for the stage, Bird of Paradise (1969). “I didn’t know how to stand up for myself, or didn’t want to try, and I had a feeling that nobody really knew what the play was about.”¹ With the hindsight of time, Drabble’s words are all the more telling in that the play reveals itself to be an interesting experiment in theater in a period when all sorts of innovations in the arts were under way and were somehow a sign of the times. In what follows, I try to set out the complex picture behind Drabble’s only venture into the world of the theater.

What should be stressed, first of all, is that despite the author’s disparaging comments about what she wrote, the play moves swiftly, with a pervading sense of gliding effortlessly over the different topics of its day. It is as if the author assumed from the outset that because it was an anomalous project, she felt entitled to play with the form, thus avoiding, for instance, a thorough analysis of British society, something that would be more appropriate for a novel. Perhaps being relieved of this pressure allowed Drabble to tackle different issues in a straightforward manner, but not at all lightly (the seriousness and depth of Lady Garfield’s insight, for instance, is remarkable), yet without preambles or underlying themes. The points are made and followed by a rapid change of focus in a dynamic sense of theatrical sequencing, including the deployment of different settings on stage.

The play was written and performed during the period in which Harold Wilson’s governments (1964–69) were in full swing. Wilson was a Labour prime minister whose aim was to reverse the trend of the previous thirteen-year Tory rule. His priority during his terms in office was to modernize the country, to make a “new” Britain that was in tune with the contemporary world, and to move with “the white heat of technological change,” as he stated in his well-known speech of 1963. What he called the technological revolution was meant to illustrate the role that science and technology had in the new society as well as Labour’s progressive alternative to the traditional values that the Conservative Party represented: “The new prime minister claimed that his government would harness the ‘white heat’ of the technological revolution to transform the UK’s economy and society, halting the process of decline that the country had suffered in comparison with its European competitors” (Hughes 2015, 1). Wilson’s domestic agenda included liberal social policies on education, health, housing, pensions, and employment as well as on other controversial issues such as homosexuality, divorce, abortion, and immigration. Redistribution of wealth improved the standards of living for a great majority of the population and allowed working-class families to “catch up with middle-class incomes,” ending the “collectivist proletarian way of life” (Fielding 2003, 7).

The Labour reforms grew in parallel with Britain’s cultural revolution, as the prime minister took great pains to support and participate in the new wave, the so-called Swinging London that was to be considered the “golden age . . . when the old secure framework of morality, authority, and discipline disintegrated” (Marwick 1999, 3). The permissive society led to profound changes in racial, sexual, generational, and personal relations, causing structural transformations in ethics, beliefs, and values. The 1960s was the decade of the hippie movement par excellence, with drugs, popular culture, pacifism, and a new spirituality all in vogue. New youth subcultures opposed to the old established society became trendsetters that marked new lifestyles and were at the forefront of protest movements embodying the political opposition to injustices throughout the world.

British culture dominated and influenced neighboring Western nations. Britain celebrated modernity, with British music at the top of music charts around the world (including pop groups such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones), British films and actors (Sean Connery as secret agent James Bond being the most popular, but also Michael Caine and Terence Stamp), designers such as Mary Quant (who popularized the miniskirt, setting a worldwide trend), and progressive values and lifestyles becoming references for other more powerful and politically dominant countries such as the United States: “British artists came to achieve commercial and artistic dominance . . . offer[ing] young people new ways to interpret their surroundings and to construct their identities, marking a defining moment at which ‘mere’ pop comes of age as a potent cultural force” (Philo 2015, xxxi).

Economic prosperity endorsed the mass-consumption society of the “happy 1960s.” Higher disposable incomes meant that people could afford new material comforts and allowed young people in particular to spend money on trifling consumer goods and leisure activities at unprecedented levels. A new kind of youth culture had emerged, which not only created a generational confrontation between parents and their children but also established itself as the model of a new consumer society that was here to stay. Teenagers and young adults became powerful middle-class consumers who could afford to spend money on their own entertainment, interests, and concerns: “Affluence encouraged the unparalleled expansion of the commercial youth market, which in turn allowed the young to express their identity through consuming particularly magazines, television programmes, films, music and clothes” (Fielding 2003, 15).

In view of this prevailing cultural environment, it is not a coincidence that Drabble opted for the world of fashion as the professional sphere of the protagonist of Bird of Paradise, Sophy West. In the 1960s there had been an explosion of creativity in this field, and a great variety of fashion styles were available. Men and women could choose what they liked to wear, although there was a clear tendency toward the explicit and the sexually provocative as signs of personal identity: “The extraordinary changes in fashion and style, and in attitudes towards the body, expressed shifting concepts of individuality and identity in a newly consumerist culture” (Armstrong 2014, 7). By the mid-1960s, British fashion could be proud of rubbing shoulders with French and Italian design. It certainly achieved a strong international presence. Among the top British designers of the day were Mary Quant, John Stephen, Barbara Hulanicki, Foale and Tuffin, and Ossie Clark. Most of them had opened independent boutiques in the finest neighborhoods of central London (Chelsea, Kensington) and produced affordable and stylish models that entered the casual and easily commercialized markets in Britain and overseas, helping their creations quickly attain a global reputation.

Mary Quant was perhaps the preeminent figure of British designers in the 1960s: “Quant saw the conservative fashion industry as outdated and irrelevant, and cultivated an insistently young and modern woman’s fashion style. Her ‘Chelsea look’ made extensive use of synthetic material such as plastic and PVC, and mixed spots, stripes and checks in self-conscious violation of traditional canons of good taste” (Douglas 1999, 180). Somehow it seemed natural that if Margaret Drabble wanted to choose a representative of the new women of the 1960s, the main character of the play should be involved in this line of business (the name of the play, incidentally, bears a close resemblance with a famous London Transport bus converted into a boutique on wheels, Birds Paradise). Fashion was at the avant-garde of the times, implying as it did the triumph of youth, of course, but also an openness to the world, wealth, a carefree pursuit of pleasure, and an abandonment of the drab Britain of the 1950s: “The pulsating nightclubs and fashionable boutiques of ‘Swinging London’ also fed into notions of Britain entering an age of bold, liberating modernity” (Osgerby 2005, 132). Apart from her iconic status, Mary Quant was the template that Margaret Drabble had in mind for the character of Sophy West. Quant was the most successful female entrepreneur in British fashion in the 1960s and thus might have been difficult to avoid if the fictitious Sophy were to occupy a top position in the world of design.

By the time Bird of Paradise premiered in February 1969, Quant was already an established name in the fashion industry. She had opened her first boutique, Bazaar, on the King’s Road, London, in 1955, together with her husband, Alexander Plunket-Greene, and their associate Archie McNair. Drabble might well have made use of the combination of talents represented by the three members of this team as a model to work on the development of a triangle of personalities for her play, although they would be completely modified in terms of character and function: Sophy West would be glamorous and cool in public but depressed and insecure in private; Derek would be a bitter, chauvinist husband, envious of his wife’s talent and success; Lacey would in turn be transformed into Sophy’s confidant and subordinate, a gay man whom Sophy teases for her own sake, feeling safe and playful with his undemanding and sophisticated company. What surely made Drabble choose Quant as an unstated referent, apart from the modern and cosmopolitan atmosphere in which the designer lived, which fit Drabble’s idea of a representative milieu for a woman of her time, was the opportunity that Quant’s style of clothing provided as a means of addressing Sophy’s ambivalent sexuality. Quant certainly had oriented her fashion toward the blurring of strict gender stereotypes: “I loved using overtly masculine suiting fabrics and mixing them with fragile feminine textures like chiffon, satin crêpe and georgette” (Quant 2012), and somehow the contact with new clothes, textures, and fabrics stimulated the exploration of hidden facets in Sophy’s personality and easily introduced the possibility of cross-dressing.

Drabble’s strategy in the play is to place a woman at the forefront of a highly innovative business, a symbol of modernity, but also to create someone who is at the same time subject to forces that have traditionally modeled feminine subjectivity: obedience to a husband, an obligation to look fresh and beautiful at all times, the delegation of important decisions to a masculine figure, and so on. What emerges from this conflict is, as in many of her novels, a heroine who decides to stand up for herself and to take responsibility for her own actions, even if the decisions she makes are not the most profitable for her firm at that precise moment. Drabble places at the heart of the play a moral dilemma (whether to accept a substantial offer for her company), one that the heroine takes seriously, although at times she may be overwhelmed by the burden of duty, and that will ultimately be resolved on her own terms, regardless of the consequences for her personal or professional life.

Drabble depicts “the dilemmas faced by women as a result of marriage, dependency and sexuality” (Pugh 2000, 322). And yet, despite the dual conflicts that Sophy faces at the time, like other privileged, influential women she experiences the paradoxical license of power, autonomy, and heavy responsibility. Mary Quant was the prototype Drabble used, but other women succeeded in fields beyond the fashion industry, such as Barbara Castle in politics, the first woman elected Cabinet minister for overseas development in 1964; Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, who received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964; and athlete Mary Rand, the first British woman to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field in 1964. All were exceptional leading women in both the public and the private sectors.

However, this kind of heroine was rare in a society in which very few women, in spite of their blooming rise in paid work, became entrepreneurs because it was hard for them to reach top positions. Sheila Rowbotham argues that doing so was difficult because of male employers’ and trade unionists’ prejudices, women’s lack of ambitious goals, and women boycotting other women (1997, 351). In addition, husbands saw in executive women a challenge and a threat to their masculine role as providers. Helen McCarthy further elucidates the source of this threat, explaining that “women’s wages did not free them wholly from economic dependency, but they nonetheless offered a small slice of financial autonomy and elevated wives’ status within the marriage relationship” (2017, 46).

From 1950 to 1970, the female workforce had risen considerably, to the point that in 1971 women workers represented 53 percent of all women (UK Office for National Statistics 2013). This sociological change had an impact on the cultural picture of Britain in terms of how women’s role was conceived, whether as housewives or workers, and the dilemmas that this dual identity conveyed. Legislation in the 1960s, together with women’s determination, was also responsible for creating a new climate of empowered and freer women. Wilson’s elected government in 1964 provided a liberal background for many of these reforms to take place. The 1960s marked a turning point in historical patterns of women’s role in the labor market, which was in turn associated with women’s new legal condition after the passing of certain reforms on women’s rights. In 1961, Harold Macmillan’s conservative government had introduced legislation that made the contraceptive pill available to all married women but granted doctors the power to decide to whom they prescribed it. Changes were timidly and slowly implemented until 1967, when the pill would be accessible to all single women. In 1964, the Labour government approved the revision of the Married Women’s Property Act, by which women were allowed to keep half of the savings coming from their husbands’ allowance, thus granting an equal share of family incomes and providing some economic freedom for severely dependent women. In 1967, the Abortion Act legalized abortion if approved by two doctors on the grounds that pregnancy could represent a psychological or physical threat to the mother’s life, and in 1969 the government passed the Divorce Reform Act, allowing couples to end their marriage on the basis of mutual agreement or at the request of one of the parties.

However, in spite of the newly introduced transformative policies, the Wilson government also signified a disillusionment with liberalism’s romanticized narrative as “reform fed the growing expectations of women without satisfying them; and the new prime minister, who won power as a modernizer, appeared to be more receptive to women’s influence than was really the case” (Pugh 2000, 313). Women remained dependent on men because they earned much less and because “they often needed a signature from their father or husband to gain credit or buy bigger items” (Cochrane 2013). Retrospective oral testimonies about this period describe women workers’ reality as frustrating, recounting how in the 1960s women had limitations on obtaining credit cards or loans. For example, citizen Christine Edwards, talking to the BBC, stated that she wanted to buy a moped, but they requested a man’s signature on the contract (Bates 2016). Also, citizen Susan Woolley declared that even if she earned more than her husband, she still needed his signature to buy a three-piece suit on installment (Bates 2016). A third citizen, Shenna Fraser, affirmed that she could not build a credit score on her own because she was the second person named on a bank account with her husband, and so she was repeatedly denied rents, loans, and mortgages (Bates 2016). Eventually, the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 sought to prevent discrimination against women in the acquisition of goods, services, and loans; however, “women were still considered second-class citizens by lenders” (Bates 2016).

Demands for egalitarian reforms in the 1960s gave shape to the second wave of the feminist movement that was motivated by the many goals to be achieved: free abortion, sexual freedom, a nonpatriarchal definition of women’s identities, and, last but not least, the abolition of sex discrimination in women’s access to education, job opportunities, and equal pay. From the 1930s on, feminists had long fought for their right for equal pay, something that unions for women workers had traditionally demanded in some public sectors, such as teaching, civil service, and local government. It was not until the 1940s and early 1950s that this demand was conceded to in these specific areas (Holloway 2005, 195). In 1970, the Equal Pay Act was passed, with a five-year phase implementation, guaranteeing equal pay for the same kind of work done by all women and men (Holloway 2005, 212).

The feminist movement during the 1960s exploded precisely in 1970 when the women’s liberation movement held the First National Women’s Liberation Movement Conference at Ruskin College in Oxford. The same year, the movement organized the boycott of the Miss World beauty contest in the Royal Albert Hall, London. The feminist activists also disrupted the event by throwing flour, smoke, and stink bombs, by bearing signs against the competition, and by criticizing a male-dominated industry that constrained female beauty and forced women to look a particular way. The extremism of this campaign initiated a new radicalism that seemed to differentiate itself from the feminist actions of the previous decade, now with a focus on deconstructing and fighting sexual prejudices and cultural constructs of what a woman was meant to be. More specifically, “Women’s Liberation [sic] was concerned with ways in which visual and cultural representation and conventional ideas of femininity contributed to the oppression of women” (Caine 1997, 255). The movement was driven to battle preconceptions of male reactionary power that determined what women could wear and how they were supposed to look and behave. Women’s liberation became a plan of action focused on raising consciousness about feminism as a technique to transform a male-controlled system as well as traditional cultural institutions such as marriage and family (Pugh 2000, 319). This new radicalism, therefore, relied more on a cultural rhetoric of unchaining women from an oppressive discourse than on a political program of reforms, although this emphasis did not prevent organized legislative action. Beyond the existing political demands in the movement’s campaigns, “the key point, one might argue, is that feminism ceased to be defined in terms of women’s political and legal ‘emancipation’ and became concerned with their personal ‘liberation,’ and that this was a point of very significant change” (Caine 1997, 225).

The politics of aesthetics played a pivotal role in the feminist movement as women’s combative discourse aimed to voice the relevance of the apparently banal and ordinary areas of personal conduct and behavior, choice, and outward appearance—all of which were ultimately used as political weapons. Among the many different ways that women fought cultural stereotypes that oppressed their sex and misrepresented their identities, the methods used to transform the beauty and fashion industry were particularly decisive. As a result, first-generation feminists accused their heirs of abandoning a political strategy in their demands and of focusing instead on the superficiality of aesthetics. This dynamic is evident in Drabble’s play when Sophy West is brought down by the feminist burden placed on her shoulders. Not the least important of these pressures was the legacy bequeathed to the women of her generation by the pioneers of the women’s movement, those who had devoted their lives to attaining basic rights for women, such as access to higher education and the right to vote. In light of contemporary women’s concerns regarding clothes and beauty, for instance, the dismay expressed by Lady Garfield, the representative of this former generation in the play, seems justified: “Disappointment is a mild word for my emotions,” and she adds, “I look around me, I read the newspapers, I switch on my television, and all I see is arguments about miniskirts and maxiskirts, and news items about film actresses and dress designers and model girls—no wonder one hears the old cry of back to the kitchen sink. I don’t like to think that the only freedom we acquired was freedom to show our thighs and bare our bosoms, but so it seems to be” (p. 52).

The author takes an equidistant position between both groups of women, those who fought for “real” causes in the first decades of the twentieth century and the younger ones who are benefiting from the reformist zeal of the previous generation and who now want to pursue happiness and enjoy life. On the one hand, Drabble seems to share Lady Garfield’s tenets, treating this character with due respect and investing her opinions with full moral authority (the juxtaposition of the two interviews at the beginning of the play, with Lady Garfield and Sophy West, respectively, gives all the credit to the former). Drabble, defined as a writer who is a “cautious feminist,” has in interviews distanced herself from some views of the second wave of feminism: “I have watched with interest the rise of feminist publishing, the rise of a separatist movement in the women’s movement, and my version of feminism, of the struggle for independence, has become old-fashioned to some younger feminists” (Drabble 1991, 73).

On the other hand, the depiction of Sophy West in the center of the turmoil of her life (her tug-of-war with her husband over handing the company to a bigger firm, the domestic violence she undergoes, her personal insecurities) and as a complex figure (young, sexy, beautiful but also stubborn, practical, hardworking, professional, smart with the media) indicates Drabble’s acknowledgment that modern women still have much ground to conquer in their fight for full equality. Sophy’s situation reflects the idea that women’s situation is far from being a bed of roses, that the younger generation of women are fully aware of their position at the crossroads, and that they will have to find out for themselves which path to take: “History meets in my bones. It lifts my hand to pour the coffee at breakfast, it hardens my tones, it smiles in my smiling public face, it lifts my skirts and it bares my bosom,” says Sophy (p. 68).

The final scene clearly reveals that the burden placed on modern women is perhaps too much to bear. In an exhaustive policelike interrogation of Sophy, Lady Garfield asks political questions “in an accusing, denouncing tone” (p. 69, italics omitted), revealing the expectations for women to be perfectly rounded individuals, knowledgeable about current issues, politically concerned, serious, and learned: “What do you think of Abortion Law Reform, Homosexual Law Reform, the contraceptive pill? . . . What do you think about income tax? . . . What about South Africa?” (pp. 69–70). At the same time, they should be able to discuss in public their personal affairs and to merrily comment on trivial issues of fashion and trends: “Tell us about your private life. . . . What about the hemline? . . . Do you think haute couture is dying?” (pp. 69–70). No wonder Sophy turns to the world of fashion and is keen on contemplating fabrics and patterns with their rich textures and colors as a way of finding a realm of beauty in which to experience calm and enjoyment.

Another important topic dealt with in the play is indirectly connected with the exceptional situation of Sophy as a woman in the 1960s who leads a successful company and makes important decisions by herself. In other words, the exploration of the boundaries of her sexuality and her ambiguous relationship with her subordinate, Lacey, appears as one of the consequences of her awareness of “the constraining power of male dominated heterosexuality, and its important role in sustaining gender inequalities” (Pilcher 1999, 82). It comes as no surprise that in facing estrangement from her brutish and insensitive husband, Sophy gravitates toward the influence of her subordinate, Lacey, with whom she can explore new sensations in an atmosphere free of competition and stress.

In this play, Drabble was riding the wave of normalization that followed the end of persecution and secrecy concerning homosexual practices among adults: “1967 was a year of dramatic significance for British homosexuals. In July, the Sexual Offences Bill received the Royal Assent. The stigma of illegality was at last to be lifted from adult consenting homosexual acts in private. The first battle in what was to prove a long campaign had been won” (Drabble 1996, 366). Drabble, perhaps following the example of her admired friend Angus Wilson, was one of the many writers who contributed here through the portrayal of homosexual men as a means of propagating the idea that gay people, far from being outcasts, “could be seen as excellent prototypes of Good Caring Homosexuals—music-loving, garden-loving, law-abiding decent citizens” (Drabble 1996, 243).

The Sexual Offences Act of 1967, which granted legalization and visibility to homosexuality in Britain, was emblematic of the zeitgeist of the 1960s. Harold Wilson was elected prime minister in 1964 with an ambitious domestic agenda that included generally considered liberating reforms with respect to individual rights (divorce, abortion, homosexuality, women’s power). Notwithstanding the liberal nature of these reforms, they existed within the nonradical political and social context of popular and parliamentary opposition.

Several earlier attempts to decriminalize homosexual behavior had been made before 1967. The legalization of homosexuality had been on the public agenda since the early 1950s, being a reform not exclusive to the Labour Party. It was under the Conservative Party rule that the Home Office called for a commission to debate the issue of homosexuality and consider a change to the current legislation. The Wolfenden Commission (named after the committee chair, John Wolfenden) was instituted in 1954 and resulted in a report in 1957 that affirmed that private adult and consensual homosexual behavior should be decriminalized. It was the Wolfenden Report that pioneered a redefinition of the criminalization of homosexuality, until then considered a public offence, and called attention to the distinction of the private and public spheres of homosexual behavior in criminal law (Gleeson 2008, 395). Without regard to questions about the morality of homosexual behavior, the report stated that such behavior was not an issue of public order and implied that homosexual acts were a private, not a public, state matter (Gleeson 2008, 406).

After Wolfenden, attempts to pass a decriminalizing law encountered political turbulence from all parties owing to a cleavage that divided Parliament into voting blocs over the Sexual Offences Act. Similar bills had been rejected in 1965 and later in 1966, and it would not be until 1967 that a proposition gathered strength to become the later ultimate law. This final motion was sponsored by the committed Labour member of Parliament Leo Abse and received broader support from both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party; in spite of being a Labour initiative, it was approved by consensus of the two main parties in the House of Commons on July 3, 1967.

The bill was passed in spite of the opposition of many center-of-right Labour members of Parliament, who voted in favor of the reform but felt a strong revulsion toward homosexuality (Gleeson 2008, 400). As Lucy Robinson states, “These changes to the law were not necessarily representative of changes in attitude, in either the public or within the Houses of Parliament” (2013, 36), and instead served as a modernizing tendency within the Labour Party, sponsoring avant-garde measures more in tune with worldwide movements of liberalism than with a sincere conviction of equality for gay men: “The Act was not a clear victory in the interests of homosexuals but was the product of pragmatic revisionism within the Labour Party” (Robinson 2013, 35). For some authors, the law responded to the hypocritical intention of monitoring homosexual behavior in a society resistant to change rather than to a genuine commitment to protect or normalize homosexuality: “While the act is typically associated with a general idea of freedom, much parliamentary motivation concerned control and the prevention of sexual activities” (Gleeson 2008, 393). Although the passing of the law may suggest a more permissive society, “the act aimed to hide homosexual men by secreting them away in a fiercely demarcated zone of ‘privacy,’ where they may legally and quietly pursue their sexualities; elsewhere they were impermissible” (Gleeson 2008, 409, emphasis in original). Many homosexuals felt that uncomfortable and hostile attitudes were still common, and they remained under police pressure to refrain from “look[ing] like a queer” (Shennan 2017). Stares, frowning, and hate crimes did not disappear after the Sexual Offences Act of 1967; de facto, as homosexuality became more visible, arrests and hate crimes against gay people increased (Robinson 2013, 13–14).

The Sexual Offences Act partially decriminalized homosexuality, but it also established control over homosexual behavior. In spite of the act’s aura of liberalism, it also conveyed some conservative instincts of limiting, preventing, and controlling this sexual conduct. Although the act decriminalized homosexuality, its arcane exceptions and impossible requirements made it difficult to enforce. As a consequence, subjects conceded some legal ground in the public sphere (e.g., prosecution for public indecency) in order to achieve an expansion of legal freedom for homosexual behavior in private.

Personal narratives of the day indicate that the passing of the act increased the social visibility of gay rights and provided an institutional framework for equality at the same time that it legitimized heterosexuals’ support, sympathy, and friendly camaraderie toward homosexuals: “If anyone says anything to you, they will have to deal with me!” (as expressed in Shennan 2017). In Bird of Paradise, Sophy feels she can trust Lacey, a man with overtly camp manners, and she feels safe with him. They gradually build a tenuous but protective relationship that represents an alternative to the standardized and worn-out heterosexual relationship that Sophy has with her husband Derek. Sophy feels curious about this learned and restrained single man and opens up to him a facet of her personality that is hidden to the rest of the world: “This is my emotional life. The fourth side of the square. My love life, one might call it” (p. 64). Sophy is able to play the role of the insouciant designer, frivolous and trendy, in front of the media. At work, she is a tough entrepreneur who works hard for the company she has created, instilling respect among her employees, while at home she is a battered and frustrated housewife. In her childlike encounters with Lacey, on the contrary, she behaves like her true self, expressing her fears and anxieties but also her likes and longings in a natural, unpretentious way: “You are decadent, you know,” she says to Lacey over the phone. “No real touching, only touching over the telephone. You prefer me at a distance, don’t you?” (p. 57). In the company of Lacey, she has found a like-minded companion, someone who shares her distaste for strict gender categories: “I’m frightened of real live women,” says Lacey. “They scare me. Just like you’re frightened of real live men. Lucky for you I’m not one” (p. 57). Together they will play games over the phone (“Are you wearing tights or stockings?” Lacey asks her [p. 57]), they will exchange clothes, and they will embrace innocently. They represent the possibility of a different kind of couple, a nonproductive couple according to heterosexual standards, but a genuine couple in terms of complicity and affection. Sophy’s plea at the end of the play—“Why can’t we all be androgynous? I’d love to design for the intermediate sex” (p. 66)—and Lacey’s action of sliding his hands inside her shirt (“I wouldn’t mind a woman who had no breasts at all” [p. 72]) point to the possibility of this relationship actually working out and flourishing in its own particular way.

Works Cited

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1. Margaret Drabble, unpublished comments on her plays, 2012, document sent by Drabble to José Francisco Fernández.