Character Clues
Character Analysis
Clothing
When all of the characters first walk onstage at the beginning of this play, you might notice that Betty is played by a man and Edward is played by a woman. Churchill does the same thing in Act 2 when she casts a man as the little girl Cathy. And the point of all of this is… what, you ask?
Well, Churchill wants to show us just how much our everyday assumptions about gender are based on performance instead of reality.
As you read Act 1, for example, we're willing to bet that more than once you'd forgotten that Betty is played by a man and Edward is played by a woman. That's because it's just too easy to slide back into the assumptions we tend to make in our everyday lives about the appearance and behavior of men and women. Churchill, though, is here to make sure that we question these assumptions.
Family Life
Dear old Clive wants so badly to have the "perfect" family. We put quotation marks around the word "perfect" here because Clive's idea of a perfect family is really old-fashioned, and the dude doesn't seem to realize how much his idea of perfection comes at the cost of his family's happiness. His wife Betty, for starters, is super-bored all the time because she's not really allowed to do anything other than be a wife and mother.
On top of that, Clive treats his youngest son Edward like dirt because Edward isn't as manly as Clive would like him to be. When Edward plays with his sister's doll, Clive refuses to acknowledge that Edward might actually like the doll and instead says, "Yes, it's manly of you Edward, to take care of your little sister. We'll say no more about it" (1.1.225). Clive is in total denial here, and his unwillingness to accept his son for who he is makes Edward totally miserable.
In Act 2, Lin treats her daughter Cathy similarly to the way Clive treats Edward. The difference is that Lin wants Cathy to not be too ladylike, because Lin is a progressive woman and wants Cathy to grow up to be independent. Lin gets annoyed and tells Cathy she'll "have a smack" (2.1.241) if she doesn't stop asking for typically girly things like beads, earrings, and necklaces.
With the characters of both Clive and Lin, Churchill is criticizing parenting that tries to force their kids into (or out of) typical gender roles.
Sex and Love
If you think that people can be easily defined by whom they love or want to have sex with, Cloud 9 is going to throw you for a loop. At first, everything seems kind of traditional. Betty, for example, loves her husband Clive and he loves her. Fair enough. But early in Act 1, we also find out that Betty has a big crush on Harry Bagley and that Clive has had an affair with a neighbor named Mrs. Saunders. Okay, we're used to a little relationship intrigue in literature… things are just getting a little juicy.
Things take a total left turn, though, at the end of Act 1, Scene 1, when Harry Bagley suddenly asks the black servant Joshua, "Shall we go in the barn and f---?" (1.1.406). All of a sudden, we realize that everything goes on in the sexual lives of Churchill's characters. It's only a little bit later that we find out that Harry has also had a sexual experience with young Edward. And then we realize that the governess, Ellen, is in love with Betty.
Act 2 doesn't slow down at all in the sex department. Edward wants to have monogamous sex with his boyfriend Gerry, but Gerry wants to be totally promiscuous. So what does Edward do? That's right, he has an orgy (in the freaking park!) with his sister, his sister's husband, and his sister's new lesbian lover.
Churchill's treatment of sex gives us intimate details about characters' lives—but Churchill also has a lot of fun being raunchy, shocking, and totally unpredictable. That's because part of the project of Cloud 9 is to show us that our sexual desires are only part of our characters and that we can't be put into neat little personality boxes as a result of them.
Props
Edward is a little boy who is very in touch with his feminine side, and Churchill's main tool for showing us this is through props. More specifically, Edward loves to play with his sister's doll. On several occasions, Clive and Betty try to take the doll from him, and they tell him to act more manly. Edward also shows his feminine side by stealing his mother's necklace.
Edward's relationship with the doll causes more and more problems for him as the play continues. Eventually his mother Betty becomes fed up and tells him:
"You must never let the boys at school know you like dolls. Never, never […] You won't grow up to be a man like your papa." (1.3.65-68)
This, of course, is totally devastating for Edward, because the poor little guy just wants to be himself and be happy. In Act 2, Edward has grown up to become a gay man, and even though his boyfriend is a jerk, we know that at least he's found a way to express himself sexually.
In Act 2 the opposite situation comes up, and Churchill again shows us this contrast by using a clever prop. This time, she uses Betty's necklace to show how much the little girl Cathy wants to look like—and more importantly, be—a proper lady. And just in case we don't catch the symbolism of the prop, Churchill has Cathy's mother Lin speak directly to the audience when she says, "It is the necklace from Act 1" (2.1.219). In other words, Churchill wants us to see the necklace as something whose significance carries over from Act 1 into Act 2.