Theme Of Gender In Cloud Nine

While Fefu and her Friends portrays gender as a fixed idea in terms of women fulfilling the role of being biologically and having indifferent behavior in front of men and women, and men being dominating and strong, Cloud Nine portrays gender as an unstable idea thinking of gender being a spectrum which is constructed by the type of performance one gives depending on his or her opinion and not the society’s norms which is having the idea of gender as one either being a man or a woman innately and keeps imposing the same.

The play Cloud Nine strongly critiques the societal standards of a person being a man or woman by birth and portrays the radical idea of gender to be different from the biological sex with the help of cross-gender casting. The play begins with the introduction where different characters are introduced by Clive. Clive introduces his wife Betty, a submissive housewife, who is played by a man in Act 1 but by a woman in Act II as mentioned in the stage directions (Cloud Nine 6). Furthermore, Clive introduces his son Edward, who is played a woman in Act 1 and a man in Act II as depicted in the stage directions (Cloud Nine 6). Thus, with this cross-gender casting, the play is deconstructing the traditional ideas of a biological man and a

In the beginning of the play, the role of Edward is played by a woman who says, “What father wants I’d dearly like to be, I find it rather hard as you can see” (Cloud Nine 6). This cross-gender casting is to show that gender is an artificial construct and even though Edward is biologically a man, he may possess the traits which may resembles the traits which is feminine according to do the societal norms, but is the true identity of Edward. Eventually with time, Edward is represented as a homosexual as Harry