Male Authority and Female Marginalization: A Feminist Re-reading of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party

Abstract

Female characters in the plays of Harold Pinter are often neglected because they appear subservient (except in ‘The Homecoming’) and ‘The Birthday Party’ is no exception to this paradigm. However, simply because the characters do not heroically slam the door on patriarchy like Ibsen’s Nora they cannot be ignored as ideal representatives of all the injustices carried out against women. Through a feminist and contextual analysis of characters like Meg, one can uncover the deep rooted seed of male dominance which has become normalized over time. This paper seeks to examine the women characters of ‘The Birthday Party’ against their male counterparts to uncover the conditioning that women undergo. Meg is represented as merely caring about her food or her party and domestic chores and her character is reduced to the stereotypical image of a woman who does not seek autonomy, only acceptance. This power of acceptance which is granted to men by society is so strong that women are forced to mould themselves according to the men they wish to impress. Meg does not have, what Mary Wollstonecraft said was ‘power over themselves’, she merely has power over domestic chores. Hence, there emerges a need for a thorough examination of the constant marginalisation of women in order to promote a dialogue on the prejudices that have become naturalised and are being represented as such.