Victoria

Character Analysis

The Lifeless Doll

In Act 1 of Cloud 9, Victoria is actually played by a lifeless doll. So she doesn't exactly get any lines. Caryl Churchill makes an interesting point by making little Vicky a doll. Basically, Churchill is saying that when girls are very young, they are treated like blank canvases that the world tries to paint with conventional ideas about gender and femininity.

For example, when Clive takes Victoria on his knee and asks her how her day was, she obviously can't answer because she's a doll. But Clive just presses on in her silence and says, "Did she wear Ellen's big hat like a lady? What a pretty" (1.1.195-196). In other words, Churchill casts a lifeless doll as Victoria in order to show that young women can't speak for themselves when the world is trying to force a certain version of femininity on them. In the end, they're just treated like dolls.

Now She Can Talk

In Act 2, however, we suddenly meet a fully-grown Victoria who's perfectly capable of speaking her mind and deciding how to live her life. On top of that, we learn that she has a son named Tommy and a husband named Martin. Martin's not a total patriarch like her dad Clive was. The guy makes some effort to be progressive about gender, but his efforts are usually clumsy and awkward.

We also quickly learn that Victoria herself isn't the dainty little lady her parents tried raising her to become. One of the first things she says to her son Tommy is, "…it's Jimmy's gun. Let him have it. What the hell" (2.1.33-34). This kind of comment instantly shows us that Victoria has a laid-back way of dealing with her son that's a far cry from her own mother's more traditional model of ladylike behavior. On top of that, Victoria has some really deep reservations about her relationship with her husband Martin, and she's thinking about leaving him.

Bi-Curious

Toward the start of Act 2, Victoria's best friend Lin drops the bomb that she is a lesbian and is interested in having a relationship with Victoria. When Lin asks, "Will you have sex with me?" (2.1.276), Victoria seems more curious about whether it would count as cheating on her husband than shocked at the prospect of having sex with her friend. Initially, it sounds like Victoria isn't interested in having sexytimes with Lin.

As the act continues, though, Victoria decides that having a sexual relationship with Lin might be kind of fun. And she certainly seems to enjoy herself when she, Lin and her brother Edward engage in an orgy in the park. But she also keeps saying, "I'm going to Manchester anyway" (2.4.153), where a job opportunity has come up for her, so it may well be that this intimacy with Lin is destined to be a short-lived exploration rather than a commitment.

Honestly, it's not quite clear what Victoria wants at the end of the play. But what is clear is that even though she might not know what she wants, she's not about to let someone else tell her what to do.