Humour as Defence Mechanism: Coping with Grief and Guilt in Fleabag

1 Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas Traballo de Fin de Grao Curso 2022/2023 Humour as Defence Mechanism: Coping with Grief and Guilt in Fleabag Autora: Nerea Grobas Barciela Titor: Jorge Sacido Romero Traballo de Fin de Grao presentado na Facultade de Filoloxía da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela para a obtención do Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas 2 Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas Traballo de Fin de Grao Curso 2022/2023 Humour as Defence Mechanism: Coping with Grief and Guilt in Fleabag Autora: Nerea Grobas Barciela Titor: Jorge Sacido Romero Traballo de Fin de Grao presentado na Facultade de Filoloxía da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela para a obtención do Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas 3 4 Título en galego, español e inglés, resumo e palabras chaves • Humour as Defence Mechanism: Coping with Grief and Guilt in Fleabag • El humor como mecanismo de defensa: afrontar el duelo y la culpa en Fleabag • O humor como mecanismo de defensa: afrontar o dó e a culpa en Fleabag Summary Fleabag is a monologue written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and first performed in 2013. It was later adapted for television as a series on the life of Fleabag, a young London woman, who faces the deaths of the two central female figures of her life. The first one is her mother, dead because of breast cancer three years before the beginning of the story and, more recently, her best friend Boo, who died accidentally flattened by a group of cyclists when trying to get herself hurt. Despite the tragic events mentioned before, the tone of the monologue is comic and irreverent, just like the protagonist, as she confronts the deaths and her life’s troubles with humour. The aim of this study is to analyze the process of grief from a psychoanalytic perspective based primarily on Sigmund Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia (1917) and Humour (1928). Humour is a self-defense mechanism used by the grief-stricken and guiltridden protagonist, Fleabag, to cope with a reality that is actually extremely painful for her. Particular attention will be paid to the two mother figures, Mother and Boo, whose absence pushes Fleabag into a frenzy of sexual relations that never develop into fully satisfactory relationships with men. Fleabag’s pain is aggravated by a profound feeling of guilt for her detachment from her family and for Boo’s death. Keywords: Psychoanalysis, Fleabag, mourning, melancholia, lost object, guilt, humour, trickster, persona, social mask. 5 Declaración de orixinalidade Eu, Dna. Nerea Grobas Barciela, estudante do Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas na Facultade de Filoloxía da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Declaro que: O presente Traballo de Fin de Grao, denominado Humour as Defense Mechanism: Coping with Grief and Guilt in Fleabag foi elaborado respectando a propiedade intelectual de todos e cada un dos autores referenciados, en virtude do cal afirmo que esta obra é inédita e da miña única autoría. En Santiago de Compostela, 28 de Xullo de 2023. Asdo. Nerea Grobas Barciela 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………7 2. Theoretical Framework…………………………………….……………...………………..9 2.1. On Mourning, Melancholia and Guilt…………………………...……………..…........…9 2.2. On Defence Mechanism, Humour and A New Persona……………………………...….14 2.2.1. Defence Mechanism and its types……………………………………...…………...…14 2.2.2. Theory of Humour……………………………………………………………...……...16 2.2.3. Humour as the foundation of a “persona”: Jung and Goffman……………………..…19 3. Analysis of Fleabag……………………………………………………………………….22 3.1. Fleabag: coping with mourning and guilt……………………………………………….22 3.2. Fleabag and her persona through humour: the Female Trickster………………………..36 3.2.1. Trickster’s motifs………………………………………………………………………36 3.2.2. Female persona vs female trickster: Claire and Fleabag………………………………39 3.2.3. Fleabag and feminism…………………………………………………………….........41 3.2.4. Fleabag and humour…………………………………………………………………...42 4. Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………..45 5. Works cited………………………………………………………………………..…….…46 7 1. INTRODUCTION The aim of this BA thesis is to develop an extensive analysis of humour as a defence mechanism in the process of mourning and guilt of the protagonist Fleabag in the eponymous monologue, published in 2016. I have chosen grief and humour as the main focal point of the project for various reasons. Grief is an intrinsic consequence of death or loss, which means that every human being that lives in society is doomed to experience the disappearance of a loved person. One of my major motivations for choosing this topic was my mother’s experience with bereavement, as she lost her mother when she was still a child and, later on, when already an adult, her father. Each of these situations of grief were processed differently, on the one hand, because of the stages in life my mother was in, and, on the other hand, because of the historical period in which they happened (the early 1980s and the early 2000, respectively). Moreover, I was also inspired by works from different literary traditions such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1603) and Federico García Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba (written in 1936; first published and performed in 1945). Each of them approaches loss from a distinctive perspective, is inscribed in a different historical context, belongs to the cultural tradition of the country and feature characters with different personal traits. Yet, it is plausible that grief that is experienced during same stage in life will have common characteristics to help overcome the death of a loved one. However, as time progresses, other means of coping with loss are available, such as is the case with humour represented by the title-character: Fleabag. The protagonist stars in a play set in modern-day London in which she, a sex-obsessed woman with a broken family and a failing business, tries to overcome the recent death of her best friend Boo as well as the deeper and more intense grief for her mother’s passing. The use of humour as a way of dealing with a reality in which neither Boo nor her mother exist any longer serves, at first glance, to assuage or fence off the pain caused by both deaths. Fleabag has not only succeeded in being a relatable character through her playful demeanour that sometimes revealed her true vulnerability, but also has become a representation of a postmodern world in which humour plays an essential role not only in interacting with others but also in overcoming traumatic events. This play, later adapted into a TV series, is part of the boom of witty comedy in TV series, such as The Office (2005) or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015). This work addresses, therefore, two major aspects of postmodern life, as well as universal themes of world literature such as the loss of a loved object and humour as a mechanism to 8 cope with such loss. Therefore, a close reading enriched with psychoanalytical theory will be conducted in order to, first, provide an understanding of how the identity of the protagonist of the play is forged during grief as well as to identify the origin of the character’s sense of guilt and the role it plays in her psychic development. Humour will be analysed as a mechanism to help Fleabag cope with the death of the two loved ones. Humour reveals itself as a doubleedged instrument: on the one hand, it does serve Fleabag to cope with grief; in a seemingly effective manner, and, on the other, said mechanism functions in a self-defeating way which creates further obstacles for the protagonist in truly overcoming the death of her mother and Boo. These reactions are not mutually exclusive: that is, Fleabag may have used humour in a mature way in the first instance. However, as a result of a possible inadequacy in dealing with the profound grief caused by the loss of her mother and Boo, she adopts humour as a primary way of interacting with the world, revealing her inability to establish a deep and intimate relationships. The present work is divided into two chapters: the first one provides the theoretical framework in which psychoanalytical concept are supplemented by sociological notions related to grief, guilt and humour, whereas the second one analyse the play and focuses mainly on the protagonist: on how grief affects her and her interaction with the world and in particular with men, and, furthermore, on the function of humour as an aid in dealing with the death of the loved ones. The theoretical framework more precisely rests on primarily Sigmund Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia or on his conceptualisations of libido and (de)sublimation. It also draws on Donald L. Carveth’s typology of five classes of guilt, on Anna Freud’s definition of “defence mechanism” and a first classification of these, on George E. Vaillant’s later typology of defence mechanisms (which includes humour), on Terry Eagleton’s approach to the three main theories of humour (release, superiority and incongruity), on C. J. Jung’s theory of archetypes, persona, shadow and the trickster, and finally, on sociologist Erving Goffman’s distinction between primary and secondary frameworks as the way to organise individual and collective experience, he helps to amplify the theoretical and analytical approach from individual to society. 9 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 2.1. On Mourning, Melancholia and Guilt Before engaging in the analysis of the primary work, it is imperative to clarify certain points concerning the terms “mourning” and “melancholia”, as both bear some basic similarities. To do so, we will use Sigmund Freud’s essay “On Mourning and Melancholia”, originally published in 1917 and included in On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia by Freud (2005). In it, the father of psychoanalysis explains both the differences and the similarities between the two notions. First, Freud warns us the line that dives them is permeable, as in certain cases mourning can become so severe that it might be transformed into a state of melancholia. The differential element between those, then, resides in the fact that, in melancholia, the ego has not accepted the loss of the love object, while in mourning the ego is grieving such loss during a determinate period of time. In other words, in melancholia, the change in the role of the love object is linked to the unconscious, as it is responsible for doing an internal work to exhibit the melancholia. Another similarity that can be found between the two phenomena are the patient’s reaction to the lost object. The widespread characteristics of such processes are: The same painful mood, the loss of interest in the outside world – except as it recalls the deceased – the loss of ability to choose any new love-object – which would mean replacing the mourned one – turning away from any task that is not related to the memory of the deceased. (Freud, 2005, 273) However, melancholia contains another trait: the disorder of self-esteem, in which the patient feels a “reduction in the sense of self, expressed in self-recrimination and self-directed insults, intensifying into the delusory expectation of punishment” (Freud, 2005, 274) and thus, a great loss of ego libido. This disorder of self-esteem is due to the fact that the ego has not accepted the new reality in which the love-object is not found, as well as the fact that the ego may feel responsible for such loss. Therefore, the difference lies in the cause of such suffering, in the case of mourning, the loss of the love object due to its death makes the world become an empty place where there is no room for happiness, while in melancholia, in addition to the world, it is the ego who has become empty and has no capacity for love and for coexistence in the world. Anna Freud distinguishes between two terms that reinforces the difference of the ego’s reaction in mourning or melancholia: inhibition and restriction of the ego. The author establishes that “in the former the ego is defending itself against its own inner processes and in the latter against 16 classification establishes a hierarchy based on the adaptiveness or matureness of these defences: that is, those which help the ego during a long period of time, rather than being beneficial only for a brief period. Level I, pathological defence mechanisms, includes defences that correspond to A. Freud’s delusive projection and denial regularly present in dysfunctional individuals. To Level II, immature defences, belong those mechanisms that preserve indirectly the feelings of the patient and keep the ego from having to confront reality. This level includes passive-aggressive behaviour, acting out, hypochondriasis, projection and schizoid fantasy. Level III, neurotic defence mechanisms, which includes displacement, reaction formation, intellectualization, dissociation and repression, are regularly present and normalized in adults. Lastly, level IV, mature defence mechanisms, to secure the ego’s protection and are perceived as the correct forms to face and attenuate conflicts. To Level IV belong altruism, anticipation, sublimation, suppression and humour. Apart from the previous classification, Perry and Henry (2004, qtd. in Jesse A. Metzger 2014, 479) propose the following typology and its corresponding hierarchy: 2.2.2. Theory of Humour Humour, the main topic of analysis in the present section, is included in both classifications. In addition, all the authors agree on the fact that humour is a high adaptive or mature coping mechanism, since it helps the ego to be resilient and liberates it from “despotism of the reality principle and allows the pleasure principle scrupulously regulated free play” (Terry Eagleton, 2021, 19). Sigmund Freud affirms the following regarding the function of humour for the ego: 17 Humour has something liberating about it; but it also has something of grandeur and elevation . . . . The grandeur in it clearly lies in the triumph of narcissism, the victorious assertion of the ego’s invulnerability. The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure. (S. Freud qtd. in Jesse A. Metzger 2014: 485) Terry Eagleton asserts that “the notion of humour as a form of relief forms the basis of one widely influential view of it, the socalled release theory” (2021, 10). The release theory which Eagleton has cited previously is one of the major approaches to humour, as well as the superiority theory, supported by authors such as Thomas Hobbes, Henri Bergson and Charles Darwin among others. Moreover, there exists a third major theory of humour, that of incongruity. These three theories are not the only ones that exist, for there are many others such as the play theory or the ambivalence theory; however, these could be included within the incongruity theory. The release theory is distinguished by the delivery of the anxieties or fears of everyday life through laughter. Make a joke requires a balance between the moral injunctions of the superego and the primary impulses of the id. Yet, the humour present in jokes springs from different points. S. Freud believes, for instance, that humour in inoffensive jokes arises from “the release of the repressed impulse”, while in brutal or profane jokes it stems from “the relaxation of the repression itself” (2021, 12). “Desublimation”, as conceived by S. Freud, plays a major part in such theory: The energies we invest in some noble ideal or exalted alter ego are released as laughter when it is rudely punctured. Since sustaining such ideals involves a degree of psychological strain, not having to do so can be a gratifying sensation (S. Freud qtd. in Terry Eagleton 2021: 14) The superiority approach, first found in T. Hobbes’s Leviathan, is characterized by the absence of sympathy since the latter “is the mortal foe of humour” (André Breton qtd. in T. Eagleton 2021, 43). The commonly named “black humour” would fit into this theoretical approach due to its distinctive sense of brutal and insensitive jokes. Such lack of empathy stems from the feeling of superiority, whether of class, gender or intelligence, that one must possess in order to make these kinds of jokes. For instance, Hélène Cixous maintains that “women’s laughter [is seen] as a puncturing of male pretentions, and thus as a strike at superiority rather than a specimen of it” (Hélène Cixous paraphrased in Terry Eagleton, 2021, 40) 18 Lastly, the incongruity theory consists of a range of absurdities or rowdy jokes that unsettles the interlocutor, such as, for instance, a blasphemous joke in a serious context as is a funeral. Thomas Nagel creates a classification of absurdities, i.e., the falling of one’s trousers, which are part of humorous incongruity (T. Eagleton, 2021, 68). For Michael Clark, humour that derives from incongruity is comic –not necessarily funny– because its absurdity, as in the case of surrealist comedy. Plays such as Beckett’s Waiting for Godot or Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano are comic for their absurd nature –the waiting for someone/-thing unknown and the deficiency in communication between characters. – Other incongruencies are delight because of their politically incorrect style, while other jokes are overshadowed by feelings of guilt, disgust or fear. It is worth noting that the theories are not excluding, but inclusive. Jokes may be approached from more than one of these theories. This fusion occurs insofar as they achieve a more complete type of humour. An example is Charles Darwin, who considers humour to be composed of both superiority and incongruity. Humour, then, is more than a performance or more than a “question of the body” (T. Eagleton, 2021, 102): it is a complex act that can be transgressive, have political or economic meanings, affirm a sense at once of individuality and community, be intelligent, absurd, excluding, critical, superior, heartless, and a form of repression or relaxation. British humour will provide a more complete and direct context for Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. British humour is notable for the presence of bathos, a term first found in Alexander Pope’s “Peri Bathous” (1727), which consists of a rhetorical anticlimax. Over time, the concept has been extrapolated to the realm of comedy, where it serves as a tool for understanding the physical function of humour (a merger of release and incongruity). According to Harold Nicolson, British humour in the nineteenth century corresponded to one that crossed class boundaries. He states that: “English humour, he maintains, is characterised by tolerance, kindliness, sympathy, compassion, gentleness, affection, shyness and diffidence” (T. Eagleton, 2021, 123). However, the best-known view of British society is that founded in a class conflict, in which the upper class ridiculed the middle class through wit, a type of ingenious and sarcastic humour in which word games or the drawl are to be found. Nowadays wit is a characteristic of every British comedian, as much as wit is a way of life: 19 Wit is a vein of humour which disrupts conventional expectations, deviating mischievously from the predictable; but it does so for the most part lightly and casually, without the rancour of the political militant or the heavyhandedness of the bourgeois. (T. Eagleton, 2021, 128). 2.2.3. Humour as the foundation of a “persona”: Jung and Goffman The psychoanalyst C. J. Jung created a range of archetypes that refer to universal tangible conceptions derived from abstract philosophical ideas of the collective unconscious that are transmitted through dreams. These are closely linked to Plato’s philosophy of the world of ideas, in the sense that both authors consider that there are certain universal ideas that find a worldly manifestation. In the case of Plato perfection, purity and mutability would be included in a metaphysical place, named the Hyperuranion. On the other hand, for Jung, the main archetypes include the “person”, the “shadow”, the “anima/animus” and the “self”. From this series of inherited concrete representations, the individual forges his or her own being out of the common characteristics of these four archetypes, that is, they are key elements of selfrealization or individual integrity. The archetypes most relevant for our analysis are the ones of persona and shadow, which are the first two steps of the “process of individuation”. Both phenomena are inversely associated, since the persona is the mask that the ego puts on in order to adopt social norms, whereas the shadow is the representation of the repressed impulses of the ego. The persona is a mask that every ego wears so as to be socially accepted. Masks include every external aspect of the ego: clothes, gestures, cultural practices, forms of communicating and behavioural norms. This archetype, then, is a bridge between the ego and society, a mechanism that aids the life in a community. It is not a portrayal of the true self, but a set of general and detached patterns. The persona performs in the same way as an actor, whose audience is every person he or she has to deal with, it is “una ‘voz teatral’ del inconsciente colectivo” (‘a “theatrical voice” of the collective unconscious’) (Anna Giardini, 2017, 95). This refers back to the original meaning of the word, the Latin term persona (‘mask’). In Ancient Times, the persona illustrated the wooden masks that Latin and Greek actors used in their plays in order to disguise in a more accurate form their characters and to help the audience to identify and understand the play better. One must bear in mind that it is essential to maintain a balance between the persona and the ego, otherwise the persona would coincide with the ego, leading identity conflict or loss. Thus, the shadow is everything that the persona rejects, the repressed impulses that are not accepted by society, what does not mean that they are negative or pejorative. Such archetype is divided into 20 the personal shadow, associated to an individual experience, and a collective shadow, linked to certain historical and cultural events from which discrimination arises (i.e., racism). However, archetypes are always hypotheses or deduction, as they always require a perceptible representation. Terrie Waddell explains that such representation is called “image” and functions as “a projection of the archetype, an invisible, universal component of the collective unconscious, whereas its imaginal representation is determined by social and historical influences.” (2012, 13). Mythology and folklore culture are essential in Jung’s thinking because they provide a concrete representation of the archetypes. The “trickster” is said to be the representation of the shadow archetype, hence, a figure that is characterized by being deceitful, playful and disruptive. The portrayal of this archetype in literature and art is seen in instances of the female trickster, Eris, the Greek goddess of Discord and of the male trickster, Loki, the Nordic god of fire. The female trickster has been always perceived as a transitory path, associated with shapeshifting, in the traditional male trickster journey. Far away from reality, female tricksters have their own autonomy and agency, share some characteristics with male tricksters, but possess distinctive features. Ricki Stefanie Tannen (2014) distinguishes the female trickster in three main aspects: her postmodern embodiment, in which women are able to recognize their physical agency; the use of irony and humour as a revolutionary weapon; and the refusal of being victimized. Ervin Goffman’s sociological study of the self and its communication with the world diverges from Jung’s, in the sense that Goffman draws attention to the social interactions within a community, rather than focusing on the individual. Social life is perceived as a “mixed-motive game” (Philip Manning, 2013, 68) based on rules, codes and norms of behaviour, in which the more adapted to social norms one is, the more manipulated and deceived one becomes. The introduction of the self into society is similar to the relation between an actor and the audience, as every social interaction or every situation is articulated by frames. The frameworks are distinguished in relation to the organization of individuals’ everyday experience. Attention must be drawn into the following classification: “primary” or “serious framework” and “secondary framework” (Eric Weitz, 2009, 5). The first consists of activities that require the immediate attention of the individual in order to protect his/her well-being, i.e., 21 crossing a busy street, whereas the secondary is based on the suspension of the social norms that are enforced by the serious framework, in which humour belongs to the former. 22 3. ANALYSIS OF FLEABAG 3.1. Fleabag: coping with mourning and guilt First of all, we must focus on distinguishing whether what Fleabag is suffering is mourning or melancholia. As explained above, both phenomena are very similar, stemming from the loss of a loved object, as in this case is the protagonist’s best friend, called Boo, and contain several common traits, among them the loss of interest in the world and the loss of the libido of the ego that was concentrated on this now lost loved object. However, we find certain remarkable differences, which are decisive for understanding the distinction between these processes. The most determined is the denial of the loss of the loved object in melancholia, which produces a restriction of the ego and makes the process pathological, whereas in mourning, it is a temporal process in which there is an inhibition of the ego, produced by external stimuli. Having clarified mourning and melancholia in general terms, we can state that Fleabag is undergoing a process of grief for, primarily, two reasons: the first is because in all instances in which Fleabag speaks of Boo, she refers to her in the past tense, being aware that Boo is nothing more than a reminiscence of the past that will remain in her memory. The second reason lies in the fact that the protagonist explicitly mentions on numerous occasions that Boo is dead and therefore not present in her life. We see how already at the beginning of the play she not only mentions the death of her friend, but also explains the cause of her death to the audience: I opened the café with my friend Boo. She’s dead now. She accidentally killed herself. It wasn’t her intention, but it wasn’t a total accident. She didn’t think she’d actually die, she just found out that her boyfriend slept with someone else and wanted to punish him by ending up in hospital and not letting him visit her for a bit. She decided to walk into a busy cycle lane, wanting to get tangled in a bike. Break a finger, maybe. But it turns out bikes can go fast and flip you into the road. Three people died. She was such a dick. I didn’t tell her parents the truth. I told her boyfriend. He cried. A lot. (16) This passage, in addition, shows how Fleabag engages her audience, with an unusual and irreverent way of recounting experiences. Her language, full of comedy and humour, is key to the following analysis because it originates from tragic events in her life that lead her to take refuge in humour as a method of escape or, as we will see in the next chapter, a defence mechanism. Fleabag tells us that her friend Boo died unintentionally, in a fatal bicycle accident, pretending to simply get hurt, as a way of reprimanding her boyfriend for sleeping with another woman. It is evident that both author and protagonist decide to write a comic death to introduce the audience to the form in which the play will unfold, as well as to introduce the light-hearted and playful character that Boo was until the very last day of her life. Another important piece 23 of evidence is that Fleabag does not tell us all about the reason why Boo threw herself in the middle of a bicycle crossing. Instead, she chooses to tell us that “she just found out that her boyfriend slept with someone else”. An audience completely external to the play might argue that the use of a generic noun group such as “someone else” to refer to the person the boyfriend slept with is justified in that the identity of that person is not relevant to the story. However, after reading or viewing the entire play, we know that this is completely false, as this identity is the focus of the story, since the third person in question is Fleabag. The protagonist accepts her friend’s death; however, the immense guilt she feels leads her to hide the true nature of Boo’s death from the audience. It is not until the end that something related to the death of the café’s co-founder is mentioned again: “SISTER. After what you did to Boo. / FLEABAG (to audience). That wasn’t my fault. He wanted me... he... wanted me so...” (47). Her sister, angry at what her husband has told her earlier about Fleabag, lashes out at her in what is most painful: namely, Boo. The protagonist, far from making a joke about it, puts aside her characteristic comedy to try to explain to the audience what has happened. And yet, she is unable to produce a coherent argument out of her mouth. The first thing she does is defend herself, saying, “It wasn’t my fault”, implying that, in effect, this guilt that she says does not belong to her, is what she feels most guilty about, followed by some stammering in an attempt to defend her position. The absence of comic trait suggests that Fleabag is beginning to open up to herself and therefore to the people around her. She is beginning to accept her pain and live with it without needing to use humour as an escape. The acceptance of the pain becomes more tangible in the second half of the play when the following voice message from Boo is repeated up to three times: “BOO (recorded voicemail). Hi this is Boo. I can’t come to the phone at the moment but leave a messiagio and I’ll get back to you” (38, 42, 45). The first time Fleabag plays it is due to the fact that his sister Claire has not lent her the money she needs to pay the rent of the coffee shop, consequently, she could lose the coffee shop she founded with Boo; the second time occurs after the rejection of Arsehole Guy, because he refuses to go to her house to have sex, so Fleabag, in a moment of desperation, decides to send a message to many people with whom she has slept in order to get some of them to accept her proposal. Finally, she seeks support from her father, who did not bother to open the door, spending all night watching pornography in an attempt to fulfil her sexual desire, while her sister does not answer her phone. All these instances express Fleabag’s desperation to be loved, and the pain she suffers every time someone rejects her. She constantly strives for some stability and love in her life, and yet no one, except for Boo, is willing to offer 24 it to her. Each time Fleabag feels lonely, she proceeds to listen to Boo’s voice message in order to be comforted by her friend’s voice and to feel her, even if only for the duration of the message, present in her life. Through numerous flashbacks, the reader/audience learns how important Boo was in Fleabag’s life. The protagonist recalls not only significant anecdotes about their friendship, including the guinea pig Fleabag gave Boo for her birthday, which became the theme of the café itself, or when they would close the café and get drunk together to the tune of a song, they had written themselves, but also common days working in the café: Ten past eleven at the café. Quiet. Eerily so. Boo always used to play music, read out horoscopes and shrivel crisp packets in the microwave. Used to make the place stink, but she’d turn the little packets into key rings and give them to the people who were especially polite. (18) It is at moments like the one above, a regular day when nothing out of the ordinary is happening, that Fleabag most noticeably perceives the absence of Boo. The protagonist describes the atmosphere of the cafeteria as “eerie”, a sentiment that suggests darkness, sadness and even fear, associated with Fleabag’s own current feeling. This sentiment contrasts with the atmosphere that Boo used to cause. Although Fleabag did not agree with certain activities that Boo did at the café, as it is shown in the use of “stink”, an adjective with clear negative connotations, to describe the smell of the “shrivel crisp packets”, she remembers with particular fondness how kind and generous Boo was: “but she’d turn the little packets into key rings and give them to the people who were especially polite”. Boo was part of Fleabag’s daily routine, making her absence all the tougher to cope with, and so she recalls with pain and even yearning for tasks she once abhorred. Both friends owned a guinea pig-themed café. Fleabag gifted guinea pig named Hillary for Boo’s birthday, with whom she became deeply obsessed. Hillary and Boo, animal and human, end up mimicking each other both physically and psychologically: Boo made sense of the guinea-pig theme. She was all small and cute and put pictures of guinea pigs everywhere. I pretend they’re not there. Which I suspect makes the whole guinea-pig-café experience a bit creepy. Boo was built a bit like a guinea pig. No waist or hips. Straight down. She rocked it. And she was beautiful. Tricky though. Jealous. Sensitive. But beautiful and… my best friend (17) After the death of Boo, Fleabag is left in charge of Hillary, who is also mourning the loss of her owner: “She called it Hilary and now I'm left with it”. (35). Knowing that Boo was the 25 person on whom Fleabag most relied, it is quite conceivable that she created a narrative in which Hillary had been turned into the reincarnation of Boo, as a way of coping with the mourning more bearably, through the transfer of some of the libido attributed to Boo to something related to her. However, as Fleabag begins to come to terms with her grief, she no longer uses humour consistently and allows herself to experience a range of feelings such as anger, frustration or violence. In the following scene we observe how Fleabag allows thoughts of violence to creep into her mind: Hilary’s teeth are going again. Crashing against each other. The noise is unbearable. Relentless chattering. They do that when they’re distressed or angry or – I can’t listen to it. I take her out of her hutch. I hold her little body to my naked chest. I can feel her claws. She can hardly move. Her bones feel bent and her breathing is shallow. But the teeth are going like – she won’t – I stroke her body. I look into her face through her ginger, punky bit. I imagine sticking my finger in to make her eyes pop out. I imagine it. I imagine doing that – I can’t imagine doing anything else and as my hand moves down her body – I – I – (48) Hillary is, then, the only thing that Fleabag has left of Boo next to the café that the two of them used to run. In this very passage, Fleabag is so angry by the sound of Hillary grinding her teeth (“I can’t listen to it” [48]) that she decides to take Hillary in her arms and imagines that she is exploding her eyes with her thumbs. This thought suggests that Fleabag is in such immense psychological pain over the death of her friend that she needs to get rid of everything associated with her, including the guinea pig. It could be, in a sense, the same mental process that takes place with self-harm. In both cases the mental pain is so unbearable that they transfer it to physical pain because it is more manageable, and thus focus their attention on the tangible pain, temporarily pushing the mental pain aside. Fleabag reaches the point in the play where she would rather get rid of all living traces of Boo than face the pain and guilt she feels after sleeping with her boyfriend, Fleabag sees herself as the cause of her friend’s death and, although she is beginning to explicitly process the mourning, she is unable to accept the guilt and move on. She is paralysed in a state of guilt, she believes that she deserves the pain she is suffering and instigates herself to suffer it because it is her punishment for the events that have transpired. The climax of the play is at the end of the story, which is constituted by Fleabag’s final monologue in which she bursts wide open and admits that she is indeed responsible for all the bad decisions that have led her to lose control of her life: 32 that she’s totally spun out because she has to be something other than a predatory woman or a sexual woman. [15:27-16:59] Fleabag’s inability to form romantic relationships stems from the lack of intimacy, care and love in her family. A closer look at her family circle reveals an absent father, a sister who is distant and diffident to Fleabag’s values, a drunken and abusive brother-in-law, a selfish godmother and, most significantly for Fleabag’s development, a deceased mother. The first thing we are told about Fleabag’s brother-in-law, that he (Martin) is always drunk and abuses women with the excuse of being a joke: “He’s one of those men who is explosively sexually inappropriate with everyone. But then makes you feel bad if you take offence because he was just being FUN” (24). Martin, who is a self-centred, manipulative and unprincipled character, represents the canonical white man: a privileged middle-aged man who feels in control of every event he is invited for the very reason of being a man. Martin is possessive towards Claire, he cannot conceive of his wife being more successful than he is, and thus manipulates her into not taking the job in Finland. In addition, Martin uses alcohol as a pretext to get out of any immoral action he intends to take. Fleabag reports to Claire that: “her husband tried to touch me up at Christmas.” (24), and it is Fleabag herself who, alienated from the patriarchal ideology, excuses Martin for such an indecent act as the violation of a woman’s sexual freedom, by saying “I don’t know why I said it. It’s true, but he was drunk so…” (24). The relationship between Fleabag and her sister, Claire, is quite distant, as expressed clearly in the following statement: “These lectures are every three months. It’s virtually the only time I see my sister. She looks tired. We sit in the waiting room.” (22). They rarely see each other, and when they do, it is in organised events rather than for an informal gathering. This estrangement may be due to the fact that Fleabag and Claire are women with completely different approaches to life. On the one hand there is Claire, a traditional woman, she obeys the role of a white middle class woman, the so-called “perfect life”: a husband (“her husband isn’t ‘other people’. That her husband is her life” [p. 24]), a (step)son (“Jake is her stepson. He’s really weird, probably clinically, but no one talks about that” [23]) and a stable, well-paid job: so I ask her about her super-high-powered, perfect job-work-super-life. She tells me she’s finally been offered the wet-dream of a job in Finland. Apparently they want to overpay and underwork her and she won’t have to wear power suits any more. (23) On the other hand, there is Fleabag, a woman on the margins of society, who does not conform to any norms of what an adult woman should comply with. She is single, lives her sexuality 33 explicitly and runs a bankrupt business. Fleabag is aware that their ways of coexisting within a community create a barrier between the two. In spite of this, Fleabag reluctantly seeks her sister’s help in regard to the café’s rent debt. At the beginning, in the scene of the feminist conference, Claire, more open-minded, agrees to lend her the money she needs to save the café but also decides to take the job in Finland and leave Martin. However, at the end of the play Claire changes her mind and refuses her the money, causing Fleabag to appeal to the bank and go to the interview that takes place at the beginning. This radical change of mind arises because of Martin, and what is certainly fear of his wife’s more progressive mentality. Martin, in order for Claire to stay with him, tells her that it was actually Fleabag who tried to touch him and Claire, not trusting her sister, believes her husband, thus Fleabag, once again, is left alone when she is most needed. Fleabag’s father’s absent presence, reminiscent of Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘O absent presence’ poem, derives from the father’s inability to maintain a paternal-filial relationship based on nurture and affection. As Fleabag herself says in the play: “Dad’s way of coping with two motherless daughters was to buy us tickets to feminist lectures, start fucking our godmother and eventually stop calling.” (22). Fleabag’s father, instead of being a safe haven for his daughters after their mother’s death, decides to withdraw physically but, most importantly, psychologically from them, leaving them symbolically orphans, by establishing a relationship with the protagonist’s godmother, who was a friend of the mother. Even so, Fleabag continues to return home to be comforted, for in the most critical moments her inner child comes to the surface, in need of a paternal embrace. Fleabag goes twice to visit her father for emotional support, the first one, he opens the door, which seems to imply a willing to cover his daughter’s emotional deprivations: Suddenly I’m at a familiar doorstep. I ring the bell. [...] A light goes on. I see his silhouette as he trudges down the stairs. He must recognise mine through the door, because his body language changes suddenly. He slowly unhooks the latch and opens the door. (To DAD, very drunk.) Alright, Dad! DAD. What’s going on? [...] FLEABAG (drunkenly). Okay… I don’t…. yeah… uh… what? It’s a… hm… okay fuck it. Okay. I have a horrible feeling I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, mannish-looking, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist. 34 He looks at me. DAD. Well… You get all that from your mother (31) On this occasion, the father, presenting himself as emotionally unable, is found to be inept at establishing an honest and intimate conversation with his daughter, unavailable to be vulnerable and genuinely supportive of his daughter. Instead, he responds nervously with a joke, causing the conversation to drift away from expected intimacy. However, the second time Fleabag goes to her father’s house, he decides not to come down and open the door for her: “I can see his silhouette at the top of the stairs but he doesn’t open the door.” (43). The act of not opening the door could symbolise an emotional estrangement from his daughters, his real reluctance to support them, which transforms him into a ghost in life. In a way, attending feminist lectures is a way of dealing with the paternal absence. Finally, the mother of the protagonist dies of breast cancer two years before the beginning of the play, hence before Boo’s death. The implication of this is that Fleabag is not only processing the grief of her best friend but also that of her mother, which means that Fleabag, in a matter of two years, has lost two love objects who were the most pivotal figures in her life, and all the libido that was invested in them has been returned to the protagonist’s ego. This resulted in a great ego restriction and enhanced her narcissistic traits. According to the psychoanalysis, girls identify with their mothers. However, there are various approaches that differ with regard to the reason for the girl’s identification with her mother. Freud (2017) establishes two phases in the development of the girl child: pre-Oedipus complex and after the Oedipus complex. The first is characterised by the child’s adoration of the mother and the next by the child’s rejection of and jealousy towards the mother after the discovery of a certain sexual attraction towards the father, which implies a change of object. Other psychoanalysts such as Melanie Klein, Luce Irigaray, Deanna Holtzman and Nancy Kulish disagree with this classification, adopting alternative options to the canonical mythological metaphor. On the one hand, Irigaray and Holtzman and Kulish opt for the DemeterPersephone/Kore myth to theorise the introduction of the girl’s sexuality into her identity and the mother’s overprotection of hers. Irigaray uses said myth “as a potential model of a motherdaughter relationship that represents the relation as benign and necessary for the flourishing of and respect for fertility and life.” (A. Jacobs, 2007, 180), whereas Holtzman and Kulish declare that “women blame their mothers, on the one hand, for not protecting them and, on the other hand, for keeping them ignorant of their genitals and their capabilities.” (Paula P. Bernstein, 35 2004, 615). On the other hand, Irigaray and also Klein draw on the myth of Electra to represent the girl’s rage towards her mother. Irigaray states that in adopting the Electra role, the girl “takes on the burden of the madness in relation to the mother that belongs to a whole culture” (Irigaray, qtd. in Amber Jacobs 2007, 186) while Klein believes that ‘Electra’s condition from the “frustration of her longing to be loved by her mother” and her rivalry with her mother for her father’s love’ (Klein, qtd. in A. Jacobs 2007, 186). The complex mother-daughter relationship is enhanced by the girl’s desire to possess her mother’s body in a sense that exposes the daughter's ambivalence towards her mother: on one side, adoration, on the other, anger and jealousy. What occurs, then, when the mother is absent? The most noticeable thing is that, without the presence of a mother, the daughter has a series of deficits related to maternal affection and caregiving which, most probably, will result in a series of affective shortcomings in the rest of her interpersonal relationships. Carmen Alborch states: “la relación madre-hija es el vínculo más íntimo, más intenso, más simbiótico y simétrico que se conoce entre dos seres humanos” (2011, 87), which encapsulates the relevance of the mother figure. Despite her utmost relevance in the development of the child, the mother figure is often absent in popular culture, which is defined as the dead mother trope 3 , into which Fleabag’s mother-daughter relationship fits. This trope is usually employed to create a more dramatic plot to connect with the reader/audience. The fact that her mother is dead, and thus absent, does not mean that she cannot still be present in some way in the protagonist’s life. In Fleabag’s particular case, her mother is not mentioned much during the play, yet she is represented through her breasts, a very relevant imagery for her character since she died of breast cancer. Through the few allusions to the mother, Fleabag’s ambivalence towards her mother can be perceived: on the one hand, Fleabag worships her mother’s breasts, which are the representation of femininity and sexuality: “It was particularly hard because she had amazing boobs” (21). But at the same time, she is jealous of both her mother’s body and her sister’s body: “My sister’s got whoppers. But she got all of Mum’s good bits.” (22) Likewise, the dead mother trope creates another one: that of the evil stepmother. In the case of Fleabag, the godmother usurps the physical and metaphorical space of the mother. Although she is only mentioned twice, on one of the occasions the godmother’s spatial appropriation is 3 The trope is traced back to the 19th century with the publication of Kinder-und Hausmärchen in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm, who use the trope of the dead mother in stories such as “Snow White”, “Cinderella” or “Hansel and Gretel”. 36 observed, as she sleeps in Fleabag’s father’s house, in the room that formerly belonged to the mother: “I can hear my godmother trying to be quiet at the top of the stairs.” (p. 32). In relation to the symbolic space, it is the father himself who sullies the image of the mother by comparing, through a joke, both mother and daughter in a pejorative way: “I have a horrible feeling I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, mannish-looking, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist. / He looks at me. / DAD. Well… You get all that from your mother” (32). This “situate[s] them both [Fleabag and her mother] outside the new family unit: the father and the stepmother, who live together in the family home, discuss Fleabag and her mother as if they were exterior to it, which, in effect, they now are.” (J. WilsonScott, 2020, 280). The cause of the few mentions of her mother could be due to the fact that the pain Fleabag feels towards her mother’s death is so insufferable that the protagonist is unable to cope with her death with the defence mechanism of humour. Such mechanism, used since the beginning of the play, has been most certainly adopted by Fleabag in imitation of her father’s interpersonal behaviour-one must remember the scene in which Fleabag goes to her father's house in despair and he responds with a joke instead of consoling and reassuring her-. This pain, which she cannot even cope with through humour, is so deafening that needs to be confined in a tiny, obscure space of her mind, which she cannot access very often and, when she does, that said event is fully detached from all the feelings associated with it, which is why, according to the classification established by Anna Freud, she uses the defence mechanism of isolation, a process that functions as follows: “it simply removes the instinctual impulses from their context, while retaining them in consciousness” (2018, 39). It is worth noting that, in the first season of the Fleabag series based on this theatrical monologue, the mourning process of the mother is distinguished from the one developed in this play, due to a major difference between both artistic pieces: the period of time in which they unfold. The monologue takes place over three days, while the play takes place over a longer period of time, which allows for an evolution on the behalf of the protagonist, who leaves behind the isolation related to her mother’s death, a sign of a certain overcoming of her mother’s grief, and instead uses her characteristic humour to talk about her. She even manages to express herself honestly about the memory of her mother., i.e., her mother’s memorial lunch (episode 5, season 1). J. WilsonScott argues that Fleabag’s mother is simultaneously absent and omnipresent through breast imagery: 37 A form of feminine symbolism frequently associated with sexuality, breasts also have the power to evoke motherhood, all the more important in narratives in which a mother is absent, and it is through extensive breast imagery in Fleabag that the lost mother comes to be omnipresent. (2020, 276) 3.2. Fleabag and her persona through humour: the Female Trickster 3.2.1. Trickster’s motifs Jung’s archetype of the trickster is embodied by a disruptive, playful, foolish male or female character. Associated with the shadow, this archetype expresses a willingness to experiment with repressed impulses. The presence of a trickster in a narrative is detectable through a series of defining features and motifs of this character type. According to Helena Bassil-Morozow (2020), these are entrapment, shapeshifting, boundary-breaking, having a nickname instead of a name or having several names, the presence of animals, boundless creativity, loss of control, dissolution of the character at the end of the narrative, scatological jokes and promiscuousness. The subject of analysis, the eponymous protagonist, clearly exhibits many of these characteristics or motifs: entrapment, having no name, loss of control, presence of animals, scatological jokes and promiscuousness. We may find an early instance of entrapment in the Odyssey, the episode in which Odysseus is trapped in Ogygia by the nymph Calypso, entrapment gibe is frequently identified in trickster narratives as a physical imprisonment. Nonetheless, entrapment can be metaphorical or symbolic as well. In Fleabag we find the latter. Fleabag is entrapped in a range of problematic conducts that lead her to feel frustrated, confused and guilty about her decisions in life, and hence, unable to move forward and leave behind the current state of paralysis. Fleabag’s behaviour might remind us to James Joyce’s Dubliners, which portrayed the widespread spiritual and moral paralysis of Dubliners at the time. The city of London might function as a symbolic prison: “I’m in a cab. I can go anywhere. So I tell him to take me to… my flat.” (32), similar to the way Dublin works for Evelyn in the eponymous short story, included in Dubliners. Evelyn has the desire to leave Dublin for Buenos Aires, and yet, she is unable to leave the capital, unlike Fleabag. The latter not only has the possibility of going anywhere, but also the freedom to pursue another path in life after overcoming the death of her mother and of Boo, and after changing her unhealthy habits. Though Fleabag is aware that she can change her life, she decides to go back to a familiar place. Her paralysis seems to prevail over her urge to 38 escape from everyday routine. The protagonist is incapable of letting her feelings of guilt go away, for two reasons: on one hand, she wants to torture herself because she feels responsible for Boo’s death, and on the other, because she has become so accustomed to living in this way that it is now a comfortable and does not actually want to leave. As mentioned before, the presence of nicknames and thus, the absence of titular names is crucial for the play. Helena Bassil-Morozow believes that “having a nickname instead of a name marks the trickster’s departure from the norm; it demonstrates its inability to belong to society (and the state) that aims to record individuals’ credentials and to neatly profile them.” (2020, 37). Fleabag, having no name of her own, is, in effect, a marginal character who disobeys social norms. Bassil-Morozow comments on the loss of control motif that “[a] trickster narrative is a story of loss of control, of temporarily existing in a liminal space: in its course, the characters (including the protagonist) and their environment undergo a transformation brought about by chance, chaos or other unpredictable forces” (2020, 34). In Fleabag, there is no grand tragic collective event such as a war or a famine, it is just the disruption of the small community of family and friends whose life is disturbed by the deaths of Boo and her mother. The protagonist, then, embarks on a journey towards her wellbeing, in which she will have to overcome the liminal situation in which she is, leaving behind the shield of humour that kept her stranded in a marginal zone. Hillary, Boo’s guinea pig, is an essential part of Fleabag’s life, since she is her friend’s last remain. This creates an ambivalent relation between the animal and the protagonist. According to Bassil-Morozow, in trickster narratives animals embody the trickster’s energy as well. Moreover, they are usually related to shapeshifting, for the reason that most tricksters have altered, at some point of the story, their appearance from human to for an animal-like. In a sense, such metamorphosis is what occurs with Boo and Hillary. Boo, also an unruly character, much similar to Fleabag in personality, died and her soul, presumably, was then transmitted to Hillary. Jung, on his part, explains that the animal motif emerges in order to “show the transitional nature of the trickster; the fluidity of its consciousness as it learns to become human but is not there yet” (Bassil-Morozow, 2020, 39). This liminal space in which the trickster dwells might be equivalent to the mourning process the protagonist has been living through. Fleabag has been residing in a space between the depression for having lost two love objects and her new reality of overcoming said loss. In this in-between space, Hillary functions as the 39 transition, as Fleabag’s helper in taking a step forward in her path towards personal growth and stability. Fleabag, parallel to other tricksters, is obsessed with sex, with meaningless encounters with men and with the consequent emotional detachment and unsatisfaction. The reason of such obsession has been discussed in the previous section of the analysis. However, the connotations of Fleabag’s obsession with sex are different from those in male tricksters. The female is judged and pointed at because of her gender and insofar as it clashes with what is expected in a woman in society. Finally, the last motif present in Fleabag is scatological jokes. As we now have learnt, Fleabag’ humour, a major feature of her character, is mostly scatological and is mainly expressed through taboo-breaking jokes. She opens up with comments that are not well received coming from a woman: she talks about the period, defecation and female sexuality: “I stood staring at a handprint on my wall from when I had a threesome on my period.” (2016, 16); “Boo loved poo stories, so couldn’t actually deal with the glory of this one”. (28); “The TV has gone and it smells like he did a shit. He never used to shit in the flat. He was really weird about it. Used to go to the pub over the road.” (43, 44). Fleabag, like every female trickster, expresses her anarchic energy through humour, which becomes an instrument of resistance against feminine standards. The protagonist uses humour to fight against the imposed female persona, which tends to conform a determinate canon that is misogynistic, old-fashioned and oppresses every woman who longs to break social life conventions that entrap human beings into inauthentic personas. 3.2.2. Female persona vs female trickster: Claire and Fleabag What is, then, the standard of womanhood? In Fleabag, we find a perfect example of this: Claire. We briefly mentioned before the differences between the protagonist and her sister. Claire reproduces the features of the “good woman”: she is a good wife and (step)mother, has a decent and stable job, and does not say bad words. Although Claire is supposed to have a satisfactory life, she is still unhappy. At the feminist conference, Claire makes it clear to her sister that she was willing to leave her persona behind in order to follow her dream job in Finland, and finally own her agency and her autonomy as a woman. Fleabag’s sister has finally realized that she had been wearing a mask in order to play along the social game, to fit in in a world full of manipulation and deception. However, the risks of escaping from a comfortable life were so huge that she decided to play her female persona, which, she feels, is at a far 40 remove from her true self. H. Bassil-Morozow claims that Claire is afraid of her own thoughts and emotions, and blames Fleabag for her attempt to pursue a new life: FLEABAG. You’re not going to Finland. SISTER. No. FLEABAG. Why is he still here? SISTER. He didn’t touch you. FLEABAG. He tried. SISTER. He said it was more like the other way round. FLEABAG. That’s not true. SISTER. Why would I believe you? FLEABAG. What? Because I’m your – SISTER. After what you did to Boo. (46, 47) Claire prefers to believe her husband instead of her sister so as to maintain her life in order. It is only in the TV series where we can perceive certain trickster-like conducts such as when she confesses having had a miscarriage, thus ruining the image of a “perfect family” (episode 1, season 2), or when she finally decides to escape to Finland with her coworker Klare (episode 6, season 2). On the other hand, there is Fleabag: a postmodern trickster. She finds her mental and physical agency through her sexuality and strange behaviour. Fleabag is not in search of perfection, but in search of a way to express herself freely, which means disobeying restricted social norms. She is the embodiment of the shadow and of the trickster archetype. Thus, she releases her repressed impulses, which includes politically incorrect jokes and sexual random encounters. She creates chaos around her and moments of embarrassing so that sometimes people (specially, Claire, her father, Martin) question the kind of life she is leading. However, the result of Fleabag’s troublesome behaviour and her view of life is emptiness, rather than fulfilment. She constantly challenges social norms, and, as a result, she remains trapped in a liminal space in which she is and feel detached from her fellow human being. Her comic behaviour, provisionally works as a way to overcome the death of her mother and of Boo, becomes other mask she puts on to never reach a deep level of intimacy. 41 3.2.3. Fleabag and feminism Fleabag has always had a complicated relationship with feminism. We have seen that she is quite disappointed about the equalitarian movement. Fleabag, despite her rebellious nature, wants to be perceived as a “good feminist”, someone who is in total control over her own body and mind. Feminism then works as a maternal figure for Fleabag since, on the one hand, the movement serves as a powerful support she does not want to be disappointed; but, on the other, she does not take the movement seriously, as if she had already given up the fight for an equality. This ambivalent relationship, similar to a mother-daughter relationship, is expressed thus: So, I pose the same question to the women in this room today: please raise your hands if you would trade five years of your life for the so-called ‘perfect body’? FLEABAG throws her hand in the air. FLEABAG. Both of us. Four hundred women stare at us, horrified. We are bad feminists. (26) This scene is part of the feminist conference where Fleabag and Claire attend at the beginning of the play. She has the desire not let down the movement. In this scene, both characters experiment the same sense of shame and guilt for not being “good enough feminists”. Such feeling arises from the persona that both adopt, which in the case of Claire, is frequently present in her conduct and social interactions, whereas in Fleabag’s case it is basically non-existent. Both characters want to feel part of the group of women gathered in the conference room. They want to be good feminists and be able to give up for instance, the desire of having ‘the perfect body’ that the media encourage women to covet. However, they fail to achieve their own agency regarding the image of their body. Said sense of guilt for not being a good enough feminist will haunt Fleabag throughout the play. In the scene where Fleabag and her father have a conversation in the latter’s house, she says: “I have a horrible feeling I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, mannish-looking, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist.” (32). Fleabag has a conflict with feminism, since she is constantly trying to have the movement’s approval as a substitute of her mother’s. In regards to the other side of the relationship with feminism, Fleabag affirms: “I’m trying to read an article about how the word ‘feminist’ has apparently become dirty. I try to engage, but