SOURCE: "Fefu and Her Friends," in Women in American Theatre: Careers, Images, Movements, edited by Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins, Crown Publishers, 1981, pp. 316-20.

In the following, which was first published in 1981, Pevitts reads Fefu and Her Friends as a feminist play.

Maria Irene Fornes explores basic feminist issues in her play, Fefu and Her Friends. Although set in 1935, the play explores lives of contemporary women. The sensibility, the subject matter, the "universal" female characters, and the very structure of the play are clearly feminist. The eight women's lives viewed in Fefu are seen, especially in the second part of the play, as being repetitive and capable of being viewed in any random sequence; yet even as women we do not respond negatively to this suggestion. In the very repetition of the four scenes that are played simultaneously we view intimately women's need for women. Although...