| Summary: | This study aims to examine the role of women’s bodies in two of the contemporary Canadian playwright Judith Thompson’s plays, The Crackwalker (1981) and Lion in the Streets (1992), through the lens of the radical feminism, in particular, Kate Millet and Shulamith Firestone. Thomson, who has left a lasting impression upon Canadian theatre through her rather influential and avant-garde style, explores in both works the interrelationship between women and men within the patriarchal system. In The Crackwalker, Thompson wanders through the themes of marriage and sexuality through the characters of Theresa, Alan, Sandy, and Joe, both in relation to themselves as well as in relation to one another. After Theresa marries Alan, she becomes forced to give in to his desire to become a father. Sandy, who is married to Joe, has spent too much of her relationship submitting to his abuse. Lion in the Streets, on the other hand, focuses on the themes of male-female as well as family interrelationships. In the play, Thompson shows us women who are cheated, and how men belittle women in order to satisfy themselves. In neither play does Thompson make room for the picture-perfect married couples. What is more, she goes as far as to portray how the institution of marriage, to one extent or another, eats away at women’s bodies [there within the patriarchal framework] to the point out that they ever so slowly become consumed.
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