Resisting Motherhood in Thomas Kilroy’s Talbot’s Box

Abstract

This paper discusses the heretofore unexamined role of women characters
as performing agents in Thomas Kilroy’s play, Talbot’s Box.
Employing a close analysis of textual patterns, it argues that the
first Priest Figure and the Woman represent a collaborative effort by
two women to highlight and to resist their confinement into roles
of symbolized motherhood. In this aim, they are ultimately unsuccessful.
Their relationship is fractured, and its object thwarted by
the actions of the play’s male characters. We see their suppression as
shameful indictment of what it means to be a woman in the world
Kilroy is showing us, and by drawing attention to their pain, we are
better able to understand why Matt Talbot seeks a life of solitude.