Title: The kitchen as battlefield ‐ with special reference to the award winning play, Kitchen Blues<sup>1</sup>, by Jeanne Goosen
Abstract:Summary Goosen takes a strong feminist stand, challenging the conventional view people hold regarding violence, war, women, sexism and the romantic hue surrounding the military. In this hour long one ...Summary Goosen takes a strong feminist stand, challenging the conventional view people hold regarding violence, war, women, sexism and the romantic hue surrounding the military. In this hour long one woman play, Goosen returns women to the kitchen, claiming that a woman's kitchen is her “memory bank”, stating that the actual power base in society is located in the kitchen. The entire play is set in the kitchen which becomes the battlefield, the source of the social and political conflict. Life/creation and death/destruction are brought into sharp focus as balancing forces. While the main character, simply called Kitchen Woman, cooks (and kills) she attempts to write (create) just one immortal sentence while a politically inspired war rages on outside the kitchen. She is aware of the violence outside, the violence which marks a war, but it is not part of her. She slaughters, and then chops up and cooks the chicken while surveying and commenting on the most deadly weapons found in any house: the kitchen utensils. She experiences what people in battle experience in the same manner a voyeur might, when she viciously cuts up the chicken. She has to kill to live, to survive. She is aware of the outside world, of the past, the future. Her best friend is involved in clandestine political activities which result in her death ‐ a death which serves as the culmination of all the horror of war and is the main character's internalisation of the violence. The Kitchen Woman gives voice to the voiceless, asks all the unanswered questions people ask during times of violent conflict, takes a defiant stand against God, the ultimate patriarch, who allows, perhaps even condones, the senseless killing.Read More
Publication Year: 1993
Publication Date: 1993-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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