Fefu and Her Friends

“You see, that which is exposed to the exterior… is smooth and dry and clean. That which is not… underneath, is slimy and filled with fungus and crawling with worms. It is another life that is parallel to the one we manifest. It’s there. The way worms are underneath the stone. If you don’t recognize it… (whispering.) it eats you.” 

Fefu argues that there is a stark difference between the neat, clean way that people appear on the surface and the messiness underneath that they hide away from the world. She asserts that even if the other women pretend to be shocked by the discussion of things that are usually private, they are all truly interested in that which is horrifying and revolting.

“With the men [women] feel safe. The danger is gone. That’s the closest they can be to feeling wholesome. Men are muscle that cover the raw nerve. They are the insulators.” 

Fefu claims that women are unable to be comfortable with each other. She says this is because women are weaker and unable to control their rawness and irritability when they are alone together. This is a patriarchal assertion that works to prevent women from forming strong alliances without the observation and approval of men. Over the course of the play, however, the women show that they are certainly capable of connecting as friends without male intervention.

“We are made of putty. Aren’t we?”

Here, Christina refers to Julia’s survival after the hunting accident. But although Christina seems to be talking about Julia’s resilience, on a deeper level Julia and the other women are “made of putty” because they are able to be molded. Just as Julia allowed the invisible judges to change who she was so she could survive, the women adapt and change themselves in order to get along in a patriarchal society.

“She’s hurting herself.”

Julia is distressed to learn about Fefu’s strange ritual of shooting her husband, even with blanks. This is because Julia’s hallucinations led her to believe that women who refuse to conform to gender roles are in danger. By attempting to assert masculine dominance, Fefu is putting herself in harm’s way and setting herself up as the next target for the judges.

“I mean, how can business men and women stand in a room and discuss business without even one reference to their genitals. I mean everybody has them. They just pretend they don’t.” 

Emma’s musings about genitals seem light-hearted, earnest, and even childish. She points out the fact that genitals are mostly hidden away. It’s impolite to talk about them or to tell someone else about one’s genitals. Yet genitalia are the basis for social conditioning and gender expectations. They shape every aspect of how men and women function in society.

“You see, on earth we are judged by public acts and sex is a private act. The partner cannot be said to be the public, since both partners are engaged. So naturally, it stands to reason that it’s angels who judge our sex life.” 

Emma refers to sex life as the most private aspect of human interaction. The domestic sphere, which is the setting for the play, is generally referred to as private. But the play shows that one must perform even in the privacy of one’s own home. Emma identifies sex as a type of interaction that is intimate and real, and one that doesn’t involve performance. Therefore, the way one treats a lover provides insight into who they truly are as a person.

“Then emotions have bristles?”

Here, Cindy and Christina discuss the term “swept away.” Cindy’s question points out a harsher aspect of love and affection. Emotions aren’t harmlessly abstract; they have bristles and can cause real hurt and damage.

“And I suppose I do hold back for fear of being disrespectful or destroying something—and I admire those who are not. But I also feel they are dangerous to me. I don’t think they are dangerous to the world; they are more useful than I am, more important, but I feel some of my life is endangered by their way of thinking.” 

Christina is new to the group of women, and she is the most bothered by Fefu’s eccentricities. The other women are accustomed to Fefu acting unconventional, and they find her charming. Christina is the most traditional of the women in terms of her view of gender roles, and Fefu makes her uneasy. Even as she recognizes that Fefu’s actions are necessary, she feels the need to hang on to a system in which she has become comfortable, even if that system is oppressive.

“I wanted to say respect me. I wasn’t sure whether the words coming out of my mouth were what I wanted to say.” 

In Cindy’s dream, she endures sexual violence and tells the men to show restraint instead of telling them to show respect. This is a subtle difference which shows that although she feels empowered to demand that the men behave as per social convention, she can’t quite bring herself to demand that they see her as a human being who is worthy of respect and consideration.

“I told them the stinking parts of the body are the important ones: the genitals, the anus, the mouth, the armpit. All important parts except the armpits. And who knows, maybe the armpits are important too. That’s what I said. […] He said that all those parts must be kept clean and put away.” 

Julia’s invisible judges order her to behave as a woman and obey gender roles. She describes the parts of the body that announce themselves because normal bodily functions make them conspicuous in messy and smelly ways. But the judges tell her that as a woman, she must control those body parts because women are supposed to pretend that they do not have the same bodily functions as men. In particular, controlling the mouth is not just about smell but also about showing restraint and control in what a woman says.

“Isadora Duncan had entrails, that’s why she should not have danced. But she danced and for this reason became crazy. […] She wasn’t crazy.” 

Julia’s judges tell her that women are weighed down by their organs. Only ballet dancers are organless and therefore permitted to show and move their bodies. Isadora Duncan was a modern dancer who allowed her body to show its gravity, which the judges claim made her unfit to dance. As with Julia or the young college women who were sent to therapy, the judges insist that this refusal to conform made Duncan crazy.

“The human being is of the masculine gender. The human being is a boy as a child and grown up he is a man. Everything on earth is for the human being, which is man.” 

Julia repeats what the judges tell her to say: that women are inferior and the world is constructed for men. She describes women as fundamentally sinful and flawed, stating that women go to hell to be purified and eventually turned into men. In the judges’ patriarchal worldview, women are not even seen as human.

“They say when I believe the prayer I will forget the judges. And when I forget the judges I will believe the prayer. They say both happen at once. And all women have done it. Why can’t I?” 

Julia identifies the way that women internalize their own oppression and even advocate for it because they obey the unseen judges. Women are guided and subjugated by invisible social forces until they punish themselves and each other for failing to comply. It doesn’t matter that Julia agreed to stop fighting oppression in order to preserve her life. She can still see it, so she is tortured for it.

“That’s good for celibacy. If you walk around with one of these in your mouth for seven years you can keep all your sequences straight. Finish one before you start the other.” 

Here, Sue jokes about the uses of an ice cube. She suggests that women are responsible for being above emotions and managing love affairs without succumbing to messiness. A woman must stay cold and resist temptation, while being responsible for controlling a man’s desire for her.

“Well, the break-up takes place in parts. The brain, the heart, the body, mutual things, shared things. The mind leaves but the heart is still there. The heart has left but the body wants to stay. The body leaves but the things are still at the apartment. You must come back. You move everything out of the apartment but the mind stays behind. Memory lingers in the place. Seven years later, perhaps seven years later, it doesn’t matter anymore. Perhaps it takes longer. Perhaps it never ends.” 

Paula attempts to use logic to reason her way out of her lingering feelings for Cecilia after their love affair ended. Her reasoning shows the absurdity in Sue’s suggestion that a woman can remain icy instead of being moved by emotions. Even though Paula tries to limit the time in which a painful affair can affect her, she also admits that the hurt might never go away.

“Now we look at each other like strangers. We are guarded. I speak and you don’t understand my words. I remember every day.” 

Seeing Cecilia for the first time since their affair ended, Paula comments on the changing topography of interpersonal relationships. Even though they once felt incredibly intimate with each other, they are now uncomfortable and awkward together. This suggests that the nature of romantic relationships is inherently unstable, and therefore one cannot rely entirely on them for security.

“We cannot survive in a vacuum. We must be part of a community, perhaps 10, 100, 1000. It depends on how strong you are. But even the strongest will need a dozen, three, even one who sees, thinks, and feels as he does.” 

Cecilia explains that people surround themselves with others because they need people who will validate their beliefs. However, this understanding of the need for community is fairly self-serving, which suggests that Cecilia’s presence at this communal gathering of women is also self-serving. This is perhaps why Cecilia arrives late and leaves early after her interaction with Paula.

“My hallucinations are madness, of course, but I wish I could be with others who hallucinate also. I would still know I am mad but I would not feel so isolated.”

Julia responds to Cecilia’s assertion about community, explaining that she is completely alone because of her hallucinations. However, Julia doesn’t seek someone to validate her hallucinations or to affirm that they are real. She just wants to be around others who understand how she feels.

“Society restricts us, school straitjackets us, civilization submerges us, privation wrings us, luxury feather-beds us. The Divine Urge is checked. […] Thus we are taken by indifference that is death.” 

Emma gives a dramatic performance of the prologue to “The Science of Educational Drama” by Emma Sheridan Fry. She argues that society and daily life make people trapped and unable to respond sensitively to the world. She further argues that theatre is a way for children to think beyond social training. In terms of social change and the assertion of women’s rights, when approaching other women, the biggest issue isn’t hatred but indifference that comes from learning to adapt and be comfortable with the status quo.

“They forgot what the fight was about.”

Christina refers to the water fight, commenting that the women have gotten so caught up in the fighting that they forgot the reason behind it. Julia adds, “That’s usually the way it is” (52), suggesting that in most cases—as in her fight to save her own life, even at the cost of her own agency and identity—the fight becomes the focus rather than the cause. Similarly, Fefu is so embroiled in her fight against gender conformity that she loses sight of what she actually wants.

“In there it seemed funny but here it isn’t. […] It’s a kitchen joke. Bye.” 

Paula enters and makes a joke about rotten milk, which fails to land. Then she reenters and makes a second joke in which the answer to the question “Who is that lady I saw you with?” is “That’s no lady, that was my rotten wife” (53). When this second joke also receives no response, Paula concludes that humor is a matter of setting, as if a joke is funny in one room but not the other. But the second joke is misogynistic and wasn’t likely to elicit a laugh among a group made entirely of women. Therefore context did in fact change the meaning of the joke, but not in the way Paula describes.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies, since our material is too shocking and avant-garde, we have decided to uplift our subject matter so it’s more palatable to the sensitive public.” 

Although she says this to the other women, Paula’s announcement is meta-theatrical because the play is avant-garde and deals with subject matter that makes audiences uncomfortable. Fornés makes the subject of gendered oppression more palatable by setting the play in a different era and making it absurd. After this statement, Paula pretends to take a picture with an imaginary camera, and the women pose as if the camera is real, heightening the absurdity and meta-theatricality of the moment.

“Everybody ended up going to the psychiatrist.” 

Julia and the other women are discussing the young women they knew in college who were forced into therapy for being too extraordinary. Julia exists as an additional example of the way intelligence and strength are pathologized in women and how a psychological diagnosis can be a means of controlling a woman by calling her sick instead of strong.