Although Fefu and Her Friends is highly experimental and abstract, one thing is quite clear: it is, in its most simplistic form, a play that examines the ins and outs of friendship. The play’s title itself demonstrates this, in addition to the fact that the play centers around a gathering of eight old friends. All of the women who have come to Fefu’s house have different relationships with each other. Christina and Fefu, for example, don’t know each other very well and thus are in the beginning stages of their relationship. But Paula and Cecilia, on the other hand, are intimately acquainted because they used to be lovers. Regardless of how well the women know each other, though, there’s a prevailing belief amongst them that community and mutual support are vitally important, since this is the best way for them to avoid the loneliness and alienation that unfortunately comes along with the period’s sexist expectation that women should lead mostly isolated domestic lives. “We cannot survive in a vacuum,” Cecilia says at one point. “We must be part of a community, […].” In keeping with this idea, Julia—who has frequent “hallucinations”—says that she has actually asked to be hospitalized in the past, since she’d like to be surrounded by people who are going through the same thing as her. Unfortunately for her, though, doctors aren’t sure how to diagnose her, so they don’t want to send her to a psychiatric facility. As a result, she often feels “isolated” from other people, since nobody around her understands what she’s experiencing. Although she is surrounded by friends at Fefu’s house, then, she doesn’t necessarily feel the same sense of “community” that the other women experience. And though the circumstances surrounding Julia’s death at the end of the play are quite strange and hard to fully understand, the fact that she dies perhaps reinforces the idea that human beings “cannot survive in a vacuum.” Everyone needs some sort of support network, the play implies, especially people who are facing hardship and struggling with mental health issues.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Friendship and Mutual Support ThemeTracker
Friendship and Mutual Support Quotes in Fefu and Her Friends
([…] Julia goes to the gun, takes it and smells the mouth of the barrel. She looks at Cindy.)
CINDY: It’s a blank.
(Julia takes the remaining slug out of the gun. She lets it fall on the floor.)
JULIA: She’s hurting herself. (Julia looks blank and is motionless. Cindy picks up the slug. She notices Julia’s condition.)
CINDY: Julia. (To Christina.) She’s absent.
CHRISTINA: What do we do?
CINDY: Nothing, she’ll be all right in a moment. (She takes the gun from Julia. Julia comes to.)
JULIA: It’s a blank . . .
CINDY: It is.
JULIA: She’s hurting herself. (Julia lets out a strange whimper. She goes to the coffee table, takes a piece of chocolate, puts it in her mouth and goes toward her room. After she crosses the threshold, she stops.) I must lie down.
FEFU: […] I am in constant pain. I don’t want to give in to it. If I do I am afraid I will never recover. . . . It’s not physical, and it’s not sorrow. It’s very strange Emma, I can’t describe it, and it’s very frightening. . . . It is as if normally there is a lubricant . . . not in the body . . . a spiritual lubricant . . . it’s hard to describe . . . and without it, life is a nightmare, and everything is distorted.
CHRISTINA: […] I think she is an adventurer in a way. Her mind is adventurous. I don’t know if there is dishonesty in that. But in adventure there is taking chances and risks, and then one has to, somehow, have less regard or respect for things as they are. That is, regard for a kind of convention, I suppose. I am probably ultimately a conformist, I think. And I suppose I do hold back for fear for 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.
JULIA: […] Why do you have to kill Fefu, for she’s only a joker? (With a gravelly voice.) “Not kill, cure. Cure her.” Will it hurt?
(She whimpers.)
Oh, dear, dear, my dear, they want your light. Your light my dear. Your precious light. Oh dear, my dear.
PAULA: I felt small in your presence . . . I haven’t done all that I could have. All I wanted to do. Our lives have gone in such different directions I cannot help but review what those years have been for me. I gave up, almost gave up. I have missed you in my life. . . . I became lazy. I lost the drive. You abandoned me and I kept going. But after a while I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know how to go on. I knew why when I was with you. To give you pleasure. So we could laugh together. So we could rejoice together. To bring beauty to the world. . . . Now we look at each other like strangers. We are guarded. I speak and you don’t understand my words. I remember every day.
JULIA: […] 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.—Hallucinations are real, you know. They are not like dreams. They are as real as all of you here. I have actually asked to be hospitalized so I could be with other nuts. But the doctors don’t want to. They can’t diagnose me. That makes me even more isolated. (There is a moment’s silence.) You see, right now, it’s an awful moment because you don’t know what to say or do. If I were with others who hallucinate, they would say, “Oh yeah. Sure. It’s awful. Those dummies, they don’t see anything.” (The others begin to relax.) It’s not so bad, really. I can laugh at it. . . .
JULIA: He loves you.
FEFU: He can’t stand me.
JULIA: He loves you.
FEFU: He’s left me. His body is here but the rest is gone. I exhaust him. I torment him and I torment myself. I need him, Julia.
JULIA: I know you do.
FEFU: I need his touch. I need his kiss. I need the person he is. I can’t give him up. […]
