Albee’s “filthy” use of sexual themes and profanity.
Two of the jury’s members resigned in protest. In
the 21st century, the play’s content no longer shocks,
leading Albee (b. 1928) to create a 2002 update,
which includes even more intense language.
Language and sex and sexuality may have
been the most unsettling qualities of the play in the
1960s, but it is the play’s unrelenting exposure of
violence at the heart of marriage that continues
to challenge its audiences. Family, specifically mar-
riage, is treated as a destructive institution, built on
lies. Violence is a constant of the relationships in
the play. Indeed, the play is an act of violence: It is
a “murder” of George and Martha’s imaginary son.
George has told Martha that if she ever speaks of
their “son” to others, he will “kill” him. In the midst
of these brutal relationships, Albee employs alien-
ation as a symptom of the violence at the heart of
institutions, in this case marriages. Thus, he does
what he has regularly claimed is the act of a good
writer: understands the hopelessness of existence
and yet struggles for a hopeful angle on it. In Woolf,
the hopelessness centers on the brutal communica-
tions and manipulations at the heart of marriage.
Ben Fisler
alienatiOn in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Were it not for the sacrificial psychic murder of the
fictional child, Edward Albee’s play might read as
true theater of the absurd, a style of theater popular
in the mid-20th century that grew from the concept
that life has no meaning. The play encapsulates the
communication breakdowns, disconnected conver-
sations, and identity confusions of the absurdists
Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, or Samuel Beckett.
The death of the boy, however, disrupts the exis-
tential despair as clearly as it disrupts the violence
inherent in George and Martha’s verbal exchanges.
By killing the boy, George destroys the most domi-
nant lie at the core of their failed marriage. The
ritual sacrifice of the child allows the dawn to rise on
a new world. However, that new world is not neces-
sarily one of simple hope. Martha is terrified to look
on the new day, prophetically answering the ques-
tion of the play, “who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf,”
with her paralytic, fearful “I... am... George...
I... am.. .” (Act 3). If Albee’s indictment were
merely against a dysfunctional marriage, or some
dysfunctional marriages, the new world might come
into clearer focus. But, as it is Albee’s view that the
fundamental destructiveness of family discourse is
itself the problem, he is no more certain than his
characters what the new world will look like. He
is sure that the destructive institutions need to be
demolished if anything better is to be uncovered, but
he cannot tell us what the alternative will look like,
if indeed an alternative exists.
Clearly, however, institutions are themselves the
problem. As Albee focuses his sardonic wit on mar-
riage, he incorporates attacks on the educational sys-
tem, career, and fatherhood. Martha thinks Nick is
a math professor, even arguing about it with Honey.
George likewise questions Nick’s certainty about
his profession, admonishing him; “Martha is sel-
dom mistaken... maybe you should be in the math
department, or something” (Act 1). George refers
to his degrees, combining A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. to
make the distorted acronym ABMAPHID, which
he then reflects “has been variously described as a
wasting disease of the frontal lobes and as a wonder
drug. It is actually both” (Act 1). He then suggests
that Nick might run the history department when
he is 40 and looks 55, prompting Nick to remind
George once more that Nick is a biologist. George
tells of the time he briefly ran the history depart-
ment while the other faculty fought in World War
II. He is bitter that they returned: “Not one son-
of-a-bitch got killed” (Act 1). He also states that a
faculty member who died in the cafeteria line was
buried in the bushes around the chapel, comment-
ing that faculty members “make excellent fertilizer”
(Act 1). It is only one of many lashes at Martha’s
father, whom he variously calls a “god” and someone
who “expects his... staff... to cling to the walls,
of [the university] like ivy” (Act 1). Martha’s father,
of course, appears to have always been cruel to
George, mocking his novel about his own horrific
childhood experience and threatening to fire him
if he publishes it. Yet he has also exerted tyrannical
control over Martha, forcing her to annul her mar-
riage to the gardener who was her first real love. The
combination of these secondary stories of abuse and
humiliation, from George’s contempt for his own
education to Martha’s overbearing father meddling134 Albee, Edward