The play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is set on the campus of a small, New England university. It opens with the main characters, George and Martha coming home from a party at her father's house. The two of them clearly care deeply for each other, but events have turned their marriage into a nasty battle between two disenchanted, cynical enemies. Even though the pair arrives home at two o'clock in the morning, they are expecting guests: the new math professor and his wife. Of course, as it turns out, this new, young professor, Nick, actually works in the biology department. He and his wife, Honey, walk into a brutal social situation. In the first act, "Fun and Games," Martha and George try to fight and humiliate each other in new, inventive ways. As they peel away each other's pretenses and self-respect, George and Martha use Honey and Nick as pawns, transforming their guests into an audience to witness humiliation, into levers for creating jealousy, and into a means for expressing their own sides of their mutual story. In the second act, "Walpurgisnacht," these games get even nastier. The evening turns into a nightmare. George and Martha even attack Honey and Nick, attempting to force them to reveal their dirty secrets and true selves. Finally, in the last act, "The Exorcism," everyone's secrets have been revealed and purged. Honey and Nick go home, leaving Martha and George to try to rebuild their shattered marriage. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a sensation in its own time because of the powerful themes that it touched on. By writing a play, with its inherent tension between actors and audience, rather than a novel or a short story, Edward Albee uses his genre to illustrate one of these themes. He brings up the idea of private and public images in marriage. Inherent in this idea of public and private faces is the theme of phoniness. Many couples, Albee seems to say, project false images of themselves in public situations. In fact, that phoniness is generally preferred to exposing all of one's problems and indiscretions to the world. Yet, Albee also shows that people not only make up images of themselves for their friends and neighbors, they create illusions for their husbands and wives as well. Both of the couples in this play make up fantasies about their lives together in a somewhat unconscious attempt to ease the pains that they have had to face along the way. Over the course of the play, both kinds of masks are torn off, exposing Martha, George, Nick, and Honey to themselves and to each other. Perhaps, though, this exposure frees them as well. One of the difficulties that Martha and George experience in their marriage is his apparent lack of success at his job. Albee shows the power of this failure through George's cynical disgust with young, ambitious Nick. Through George, Albee questions the reason for this desire for success, and demonstrates how the desire can destroy one's self-esteem and individuality. From the relationship between Martha and George, it seems that women can be more caught up with the idea of success than men. Martha is disappointed in George's professional failure, perhaps more than he is. One of the reasons for this expectation and hope for her husband could be the fact that she wants to live through his experience. Women had careers much less frequently in the 1950s and 60s than they do today, so Martha might have felt limited. Part of the ideal of familial success is children. Albee explores how children and parents affect each other. Neither couple in this play has a child, a fact that seems to come between both sets of parents. For Martha and George, their lack of a child is another failure. For Honey and Nick, it is another ground upon which they are not communicating. Both couples furthermore, are deeply influenced by the wife's father; the play forwards the thought that none of the characters is ready to have children in part because they are all living like children themselves. George - A 46-year-old member of the history department at New Carthage University. George is married to Martha, in a once loving relationship now defined by sarcasm and frequent acrimony. Martha - Martha is the 52-year-old daughter of the president of New Carthage University. She is married to George, though disappointed with his aborted academic career. She attempts to have an affair with Nick. Nick - Nick has just become a new member of the biology faculty at New Carthage University. He is 28 years old, good-looking, Midwestern, and clean-cut. He is married to Honey. Honey - Honey is the petite, bland wife of Nick. She is 26 years old, has a weak stomach, and is not the brightest bulb of the bunch. PLOT STRUCTURE ANALYSIS The play is divided into three acts, which all have titles-- "Fun and Games", "Walpurgisnacht" and "The Exorcism". In the first act Albee begins to probe the lives and the values of his four characters. The conflict between Martha and George is revealed as well as the secret that binds them to each other. To spite her husband, Martha breaks the code of secrecy and exposes their imaginary child. They use this rupture of their illusion to hurt each other. The guests and their hosts - Nick and Honey indulge in playing games with them, not understanding the magnitude of these oddly constructed battles. The title of the second act - "Walpurgisnacht" is an allusion to the German legend. According to the legend, on the eve of May Day the witches held an orgiastic Sabbath on the heights of the Broken, the highest peak in the Harz Mountains. This act continues the games from the previous act, only the action reaches a climax as all the characters act in ways that are extreme versions of themselves. The drinking is increased, stories and secrets are revealed, sexual proclivities occur between Martha and Nick, and George decides to play the biggest game yet called "Kill the Kid." There is a sense of these people being out of control and directed by their most basic instincts and desires. The third act marks a climax as George and Martha's fantasy child is killed. It is called "The Exorcism" as George decides that Martha has to be purged of the cherished illusion she holds and that he once held in order for them to be whole again. Moreover, Honey confesses her desire to have a child despite the pain that she fears. This act indicates that the characters are on the path to recovery and shows both Martha and George as being in similar positions, the power structure has been leveled and they must start life anew. This is the denouement of the play. THEMES - THEME ANALYSIS Major Themes Albee's main concern in this play is to present the hollow nature of American ideals of success and question the American way of modern life that devalues compassion and equality while elevating success and ambition as the pinnacle of achievement. It shows how this prevailing ideology can have destructive and alienating effects as well as harmful social consequences. All of the characters are portrayed as well-educated, middle-class people who should be ideal citizens who represent the best of American culture. Yet their descent into barbaric behavior during the course of the night reveals how the prevailing ideology of the times has tainted even the most privileged sector of society. Though Nick is a relatively minor character, he is significant in illustrating this theme. He has decided to employ unscrupulous means to get his way up the professional ladder. He represents a young ambitious professional who is out to get what he wants at whatever cost. He treats his wife as a child and she complies by behaving in a child-like manner. The relationship between the two couples is especially significant. Both depend on illusions to keep their marriages in tact. George and Martha have to even depend upon an imaginary son in order to be able to have a meaningful communication. The entire matter of the son in fact is supposed to remain a private affair between them. Even when they do communicate otherwise, Martha never treats George as an equal. In the first part of the first act, the audience is shown the different ways in which Martha devalues him. First she remarks "You make me puke," indicating how intolerable she finds him and then almost immediately she demands "a great big sloppy kiss" from him. This hints at the fact that she also wants him to be her lover but nothing else. In fact as George later implies, she either sees a man as a "flop" or a "stud" depending on how he can perform in bed. This itself shows the warped scale of values that Martha upholds. The fact that they use games in order to entertain and indeed derive entertainment from their guests is an indication of their abnormal attitude. George is constantly scheming ways to avenge Martha's insults. She in turn wonders aloud that George is always catching up with her new rules (of the games that she plays) just as soon as she changes them. Games have become such an important part of their lives that they cannot exist without them. George is also not quite human in his behavior. He deploys absurd practical jokes like aiming and firing the popgun at Martha that have a violent edge to them. On the other hand he resorts to violence when he cannot handle her harsh indictments. In fact, as Martha herself suggests, he probably puts up with her because he is a masochist. Moreover, it is indicated that he requires someone like her so that he can have someone else to blame for all his failures in life. This type of behavior is again absurd. Honey is another character who behaves abnormally. She giggles out of place and indulges in eccentric activities like lying on the bathroom floor and peeling the labels off the liquor bottles. She does not share an intimate relationship with her husband and pretends to ignore George's hints about the adultery that his wife and her husband are committing in the kitchen. Her hysteric pregnancy, if considered as a fact, is an important indication of her abnormal personality. Sucking her thumb, sleeping in a fetal position and other tendencies point to her unwillingness to accept herself as an adult. She is obviously afraid of bearing a child and her paranoia takes the form of her habit of throwing up. In the end though there is a significant change in her, when she is moved by George and Martha's account of their son and announces her decision to have a baby. An important turning point for George is Martha's apparent seduction of Nick. It is quite unusual that a woman over fifty years can seduce a man under thirty. Although she has played the game of "Hump the Hostess" for years, she has never actually gone this far. That George, who should be protesting, calmly continues with his reading, is a sign that their relationship has reached a point of uncaring detachment. Indeed there is not single relationship in the play that is portrayed to be healthy and stable. Minor Themes The play also questions the modern way of American life that succumbs to illusions rather than confronts reality, and the unwillingness to face facts and accept them, however unpleasant they may be. The creation of George and Martha's son embodies their desperate need of illusion in a life whose reality is either too bitter to digest or too bland to bear. The deliberate intention to confuse and intimidate their guests with insidious games show how George and Martha have traded a sane reality for an illusory one. The details that the two relate surrounding the birth of their son convince the audience that their illusion is so extended and complete that it has moved into a realm close to madness. Indeed a climactic event is the realization by George that they cannot subsist on illusion for long. The need to revert to reality, however intolerable or dreadful, is imperative. This translated in the need to "kill" the son, who has been a source of hope of survival for much of their married life. This is suggested by the important metaphor of peeling off the label, or the skin, as George suggest, until one reaches the marrow of things and there is nothing else to be explored. This is when he manages to bring Martha face to face with reality. Of course he is aware of the hurt that this will bring her; however, he is doing it for a greater good. He realizes that if he and Martha continue to live in this delusional world, they will not be able to leave the vicious circle that will eventually bring them to the brink of madness. The presence of the name Virginia Woolf in the title of the play brings to mind the famous novelist. Virginia Woolf did suffer an imbalance of mind and committed suicide, probably because she could not face life as it was. This idea is echoed in her characters who become detached from reality because of an intolerable life. Similarly, in this play, the main characters, George and Martha resort to fantasy, as they cannot bear their reality. However, it is George who realizes the danger of indulging in such extreme fantasies. He is horrified to find that at a point, Martha cannot even distinguish between truth and illusion. This is a play about the shattering of illusions. During the course of the play, for instance, Martha realizes that George is not as inadequate as she supposed him to be. Indeed, he is the one who provides her with the physical and emotional comfort that she requires. No one can take his place; this is reflected in her disappointment with Nick. In the end of the play, Martha is divested of her fantasy of being a mother and admits for the first time that the reality scares her. She has realized how stark a life can be without an illusion to furnish it. Virginia Woolf was a writer famous for her stream of consciousness style. Woolf tried to show the emotional truths churning behind the eyes of her characters; she tried to get inside their heads and really show what it was like to be them. Also, Woolf, like Albee, was a product of the upper class. Her work often criticized and peeled back the layers ofpretension that masked her social peers. The fact that Woolf was all about truth and layer peeling, leads some to think that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is just another way of asking, "Who's afraid to live without illusion?" Albee confirmed this in a Paris Review interview in which he said, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf mean who's afraid of the big bad wolf…who's afraid of living without false illusions" (source). We think it's also possible that the meaning of the title could go beyond its specific reference to Virginia Woolf. It might represent a concept on which the play is based: absurdism. Absurdists believe that life has no meaning (at least not one that we can ever be sure of), therefore everything we do to create meaning in our lives is ultimately pointless or absurd. So, what does that have to do with the title? Think about it, the title comes from a joke. It's a parody of "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Disney's The Three Little Pigs. Some unknown person sang the parody at the party that the characters attended earlier, and it was apparently hilarious. Notice, though, that Albee never tells us in what context the little ditty was sung. It's like we're getting the punch-line to a joke but not the set-up. Or maybe, it's the set-up without the punch-line. In any case, the title is a joke whose meaning the audience doesn't know. The characters are up there laughing it up, while the rest of us are left wondering just what's so funny. Doesn't that kind of sum up the whole absurdist view of life? It's all a big joke, whose meaning is ultimately unknowable. The main action of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? centers around thevicious battle of wills between George and Martha. Martha is a ruthless opponent, and George doesn't get the upper-hand until nearly the end of the play. After being brow beaten, humiliated, and cheated on, George defeats Martha with four simple words: "our son is…dead" (3.245). Martha reacts to this news by erupting into a bestial howl and collapsing to the floor. It would seem pretty normal for Martha to react dramatically to the death of her son if she actually had a son. The thing is that George and Martha's son is purely imaginary. When they found out they couldn't have kids, they solved the problem by just making a kid up. Even though he's imaginary, both George and Martha have deep attachment to the boy. Martha reveals the depth of her feeling when she says that he is, "the one light in all this hopeless…darkness" (3.401). The darkness in question is probably her "sewer of a marriage," which she also describes as "vile" and "crushing" (3.401). This dream of a son seems to be so precious to both George and Martha because it's one of the few things they share. They created him together in order to escape from their "sick nights, and pathetic, stupid days" (3.401). The boy is the one bit of real intimacy that the unhappy couple shares. When George "kills" the son it's like he dropped a nuclear bomb. Now George and Martha are left with no illusions behind which they can hide. By the end of the play, they must stare, unblinkingly, into the charred battlefield that is their lives. Major Themes Reality vs. Illusion Edward Albee has said that the song, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" means "Who is afraid to live without illusion?" At the end of the play, Martha says that she is. Indeed, the illusion of their son sustains George and Martha's tempestuous marriage. Ultimately, George takes it upon himself to "kill" that illusion when Martha brings it too far into reality. Throughout the play, illusion seems indistinguishable from reality. It is difficult to tell which of George and Martha's stories about their son, about George's past are true or fictional. Similarly, Nick and Honey's lives are based on illusion. Nick married for money, not love. Though he looks strong and forceful, he is impotent. Honey has been deceiving him by using birth control to prevent pregnancy. As an Absurdist, Albee believed that a life of illusion was wrong because it created a false content for life, just as George and Martha's empty marriage revolves around an imaginary son. In Albee's view, reality lacks any deeper meaning, and George and Martha must come to face that by abandoning their illusions. Games and War The title of the first act is "Fun and Games." That in itself is deceptive, for the games that George and Martha play with their guests are not the expected party games. Rather, their games of Humiliate the Host, Get the Guests, and Hump the Hostess which involves the characters' deepest emotions. George's characterization of these emotionally destructive activities as games and assumption of the role of ring master reveals that all the events of the evening are part of a power struggle between him and Martha, in which one of them intends to emerge as victor. Martha and George's verbal banter and one upsmanship is also characteristic of their ongoing game-playing. Years of marriage have turned insults into a finely honed routine. By characterizing these activities of games, Albee does not suggest that they are frivolous or meaningless. Rather, he likens game-playing to war and demonstrates the degree to which George and Martha are committed to destroying each other. George and Martha in fact declare "all out war" on each other. What begins as a game and a diversion escalates over the course of the play until the characters try to destroy each other and themselves. History vs. Biology George and Nick's academic departments at New Carthage College set up a dialectic in which Albee presents a warning about the future of life. George is an associate professor in the History Department, while Nick is a new member of the Biology Department. Old, tired, and ineffectual, George exemplifies the subject that he teaches. What's more, he notes that no one pays attention to the lessons of history just as Nick ignores George's sincere advice, responding contemptuously, "Up your!" Nick, as a representative of science, is young and vital. In the words of George, he is the "wave of the future." Through Nick and George's argument about Biology and History, Albee demonstrates two clashing worldviews. George's lack of success in the History Department and inability to rise to power as successor to the president of the college contrasts with Nick's plans and seeming ability to move ahead first taking over the Biology Department, then the college. Albee clearly intends for us to perceive Nick's (half-joking) plan as a threat. George's criticism of Biology's ability to create a race of identical test tube babies all like Nick and Nick's ruthless willingness to take any means necessary (including sleeping with factory wives) to get ahead reveals the absence of morality and frightening uniformity in a future determined by science. What's more, in exposing seemingly virile Nick's impotence, Albee demonstrates the underlying powerlessness of science and in George's perseverance, the unexpected staying power of history. The American Dream The title of one of his earlier plays, the American Dream was a significant concern of Albee's. In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, he explores the illusion of an American dream that masks a core of destruction and failure. Writing during the Cold War, Albee was responding to a public that was just beginning to question the patriotic assumptions of the 1950's. His George and Martha reference patriotic namesakes George and Martha Washington. Albee uses this symbolic first couple's unhappy marriage as a microcosm for the imperfect state of America. When George and Martha's marriage is revealed to be a sham based on the illusion of an imaginary son, the viewer is led to question the illusions that similarly prop up the American dream. Nick and Honey, a conventional American dream couple, are also revealed to be presenting a falsely happy façade. They too secretly take advantage of and lie to each other. What's more, Nick's name is a direct reference to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, and his threat to George and Martha's marriage references the Cold War turmoil of America. The Christian allegory Subtle references to Christianity, particularly to Catholic rites and rituals, abound in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. For instance, Martha refers to her (imaginary) son as a "poor lamb," making him a Christ symbol for Jesus is also known as the Lamb of God. George chants the Kyrie Eleison, Dies Irae, and Requiem from Catholic liturgy. The doorbells chimes which sound at the end of the second act echo the chimes that sound during a Catholic mass. Albee even names the third act of the play "The Exorcism." That name, of course, refers to George's attempt to kill the "son" and thus exorcise illusion from his marriage. The killing of the "lamb" can also be seen as a sacrifice necessary to save George and Martha's marriage. George calls the proceedings "an Easter pageant," referencing the day the Lamb of God was sacrificed to save the world, and the scene even takes place early on a Sunday morning. Love and Hate In his portrayal of George and Martha's marriage, Albee seems to make the not-uncommon literary assertion that love and hate are two parts of a single whole. From their vitriolic banter, it clearly appears that George and Martha hate each other. In fact, they say as much and even pledge to destroy each other. Nonetheless, there are moments of tenderness that contradict this hatred. George even tells Nick not to necessarily believe what he sees. Some of George and Martha's arguments are for show, others are for the challenge of arguing, while still others are indeed meant to hurt each other. However, Martha's declaration that George is really the only one who can satisfy her suggests that there are or have been positive aspects to their marriage. Clearly, as much as they fight, they also need each other, even if just to maintain the illusions that keep them going. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a 1962 play by Edward Albee. It examines the breakdown of the marriage of a middle-aged couple, Martha and George. Late one evening after a university faculty party, they receive an unwitting younger couple, Nick and Honey as guests, and draw them into their bitter and frustrated relationship. The play is in three acts, normally taking a little less than three hours to perform, with two 10-minute intermissions. The title is a pun on the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney's The Three Little Pigs (1933), substituting the name of the celebrated English author Virginia Woolf. Martha and George repeatedly sing this version of the song throughout the play. Themes[edit] Reality and Illusion[edit] While other plays establish the difference reality and illusion respectively, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? starts out with the latter but leans to the former. More specifically, "George and Martha have evaded the ugliness of their marriage by taking refuge in illusion."[2] The disappointment that is their life together leads to the bitterness between them. Having no real bond, or at least none that either are willing to admit, they become dependent upon a fake child. The fabrication of a child, as well as the impact its supposed demise has on Martha, questions the difference between deception and reality. As if to spite their efforts, the contempt that Martha and George have for one another causes the destruction of their illusion. This lack of illusion does not result in any apparent reality. "All truth," as George admits, "[becomes] relative." [3] Critique of the Societal Expectations[edit] Christopher Bigsby asserts that this play stands as an opponent of the idea of a perfect American family and societal expectations as it "attacks the false optimism and myopic confidence of modern society."[4] Albee takes a heavy-handed approach to the display of this contrast, making examples out of every character and their own expectations for the people around them. Societal norms of the 1950s consisted of a nuclear family, two parents and a child. This conception was picturesque in the idea that the father was the breadwinner, the mother was a housewife, and the child was well-behaved. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? smashes these conventions and shows realistic families that are far from perfect and possibly ruined. The families of Honey and Martha were dominated by their fathers, there being no sign of a mother-figure in their lives. George and Martha's chance at a perfect family was ruined by infertility and George's failure at becoming a prominent figure at the university. Being just a few of many, these examples directly challenge social expectations both within and outside of a family setting. Inspirations[edit] Title[edit] The play's title, which alludes to the English novelist Virginia Woolf, is also a reference to the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney's animated version of The Three Little Pigs. Because the rights to the Disney song are expensive, most stage versions, and the film, have Martha sing to the tune of "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush", a melody that fits the meter fairly well and is in the public domain. In the first few moments of the play, it is revealed that someone sang the song earlier in the evening at a party, although who first sang it (Martha or some other anonymous party guest) remains unclear. Martha repeatedly needles George over whether he found it funny. Albee described the inspiration for the title thus: "I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf . . . who's afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual joke."[5] In interviews, Albee has said that he asked Woolf's widower Leonard Woolf for permission to use her name in the title of the play.[citation needed] Characters[edit] In an interview, Albee acknowledged that he based the characters of Martha and George on his good friends, New York socialites Willard Maas and Marie Menken.[6] Maas was a professor of literature at Wagner College (one similarity between the character George and Willard) and his wife Marie was an experimental filmmaker and painter. Maas and Menken were known for their infamous salons, where drinking would "commence at 4pm on Friday and end in the wee hours of night on Monday" (according to Gerard Malanga, Warhol associate and friend to Maas). The primary conflict between George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? derived from Maas and Menken's tempestuous and volatile relationship. Martha and George share the names of President George Washington and his wife Martha Washington, America's first First Couple. The play is incredibly fast paced and full of tongue twisters, very Albee-esque, but examines the breakdown of a marriage of a couple that are also each other's glue. Both Martha and George exhibit signs of bipolar disorder, but in an even more rapid succession. Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is characterized by episodes of mania and episodes of depression, either or can precede the other. Perhaps due to the self-medication of excessive consumption of alcohol and cigarettes, Martha and George are able to showcase a condensed version of their manic depressive states to their guests. A possible cause for their fractured mental states is the play's big reveal: the son they speak so adoringly, and so mysteriously about, does not exist. "A protracted and painful struggle with infertility seems to be part of the answer." [7] Post-partum depression affects nearly 9-16% of women,[8] and what is forgotten is that it can also affect up to 10% of men,[9] both prenatal and/or post-partum. But what happens to the couples who experience that depression when the child isn't even present? Some couples make the decision, and possible mistake, of having a child to save a marriage. George and Martha don't have that option, yet lie about a child as a game to keep some type of nuance in their union. The possibility that both George and Martha may have bipolar disorder, or some type of mental disorder, is harrowing on both. It is vital for them to have "open communication" and to "adjust to the tendencies of each other," [10] unfortunately, George and Martha butt the issues of their marriage with bouts of jealousy, rash insults, and twisted games to test the boundaries of each other's human emotional capacity. They demonstrate the characteristic of bipolar disorder or social disorder in their inability to recognize others' discomfort. Or perhaps they aren't mad at all and fully aware of their intentions. That would then make them emotional and mental sadists. 8