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    A Study Guide for Maureen Duffy's "Rites"
    A Study Guide for Maureen Duffy's "Rites"
    A Study Guide for Maureen Duffy's "Rites"
    Ebook35 pages26 minutes

    A Study Guide for Maureen Duffy's "Rites"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Maureen Duffy's "Rites," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 3, 2016
    ISBN9781535832168
    A Study Guide for Maureen Duffy's "Rites"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Maureen Duffy's "Rites" - Gale

      3

      Rites

      Maureen Duffy

      1969

      Introduction

      Rites, by British playwright Maureen Duffy, was first performed in 1969, at the National Theatre Repertory Company in London. The play takes place in a woman’s public restroom, and has an all-female cast. The characters are representative working class women of London, including the restroom manager and attendant, three office workers, and two widows in their sixties. The action and dialogue of the play reveal the anger and resentment the women feel toward men in their romantic and sexual relationships, and at work. The play finally erupts in a few moments of frenzied violence in which the women kill someone they believe to be a male spy, only to find that their victim is a woman.

      Rites is very loosely based on The Bacchae, a play by the ancient Greek dramatist, Euripides, which describes the conflict between the largely female worshipers of the god Dionysus and the male representatives of law and order in the city of Thebes. Like Rites, The Bacchae culminates in a frenzied killing by a group of women.

      Rites was written at a time when the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s was gathering strength. Like the women’s movement, the play exposes the stifling effects on women of gender stereotypes at many levels of society.

      Author Biography

      Maureen Duffy was born on October 21, 1933, in Worthing, Sussex, England, the daughter of Cahia Patrick Duffy and Grace Rose Wright. She grew up in an impoverished environment, and at age six, when World War II broke out, she was evacuated with her mother to Trowbridge in Wiltshire. When she was fourteen, she returned to the family home in Stratford, London. After leaving grammar school, Duffy taught for two years at the City Literary Institute, Drury Lane, London, before going to King’s College, London. After graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in English, Duffy taught creative writing for five years in state schools.

      Since the 1960s, Duffy has distinguished herself as a poet, playwright, novelist, and biographer. Her first play, The Lay-Off, was produced at

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