Presentations of Femininity in Patrick Marber's Closer

Abstract

This essay explores the presentation of femininity in Patrick Marber's play Closer from perspectives borrowed from Michel Foucault and feminists inspired by post-structuralism and social constructivism. Foucault describes how self-policing subjects, or docile bodies, are created through the internalisation of dominant discourses in the performances of every-day life under the disciplinary powers of regulation, surveillance and classification. These dominant discourses are created through the production of knowledge and truth by dominant groups in society. However, as Foucault does not pay enough attention to the specific circumstances in the subordination of women, perspectives will also be borrowed from feminist theorists such as Susan Bordo, Sandra Bartkey, Judith Butler and Jana Sawicki, among others. They have shown how the engendering of beauty and sexuality through dominant discourses of femininity contributes to the subordination of women in a patriarchal society. It is from these perspectives Closer will be read as a reflection, and both the reproduction as well as the critique, of constructions of gender and femininity within late modern, Western society.