lations, and betrayals. Those most visibly showcased
in Woolf are referred to fancifully in the text as “the
bit about the kid,” “the mouse [that] got all puffed
up,” and “hump the hostess.”
It is unclear whether Martha and George were
unable or unwilling to conceive a child, but ulti-
mately this is an irrelevant question. The creation
of the fictional son is not a delusion meant to fill
some maternal/paternal gap in their lives, as there
is no evidence that either partner believes the child
to be real. Rather, the son is a lie that they created
to be the ultimate game. A son allows for limitless
possibilities in their ongoing assaults on each other.
Being a completely fictional human being, he can
be anything they want him to be that is convenient
to the current abuse. He can be disappointed in his
father; be an estranged but successful student; be
ashamed of his mother; or, as George finally, coldly,
determines, he can be dead.
Throughout the play, the couple manipulate the
gamut of the boy’s potential. In the first act, subtitled
“Fun and Games,” Martha decides their son’s birth-
day is coming soon and reveals this to Honey pri-
vately. Then the question of when the boy is coming
home is raised, and Martha tries to change the sub-
ject. Suddenly, she turns the discussion to the prob-
lems that George has. He expresses confusion over
who has the problems, himself or the child. Then
Martha suggests that “the little bugger” might not
be George’s before quickly putting that suspicion
to bed: “I wouldn’t conceive with anyone but you.”
Near the end of the second act, subtitled “Walpur-
gisnacht” (a reference to the pagan/Roman Catholic
festival that has variously been a time of games and
tricks, a time when demonic forces walk the earth, or
the celebration of Walpurg is, one of the saints who
brought salvation to Germany), George invents the
telegram of their son’s death. In the third act, “The
Exorcism,” they battle over the boy’s entire life story,
from his birth to his adulthood.
Each fiction about the boy is directed as an
attack on the other’s spouse. George states that
Martha had a difficult labor, questioning her health
and suitability for motherhood. Martha claims that
when the boy broke his arm, George cried and was
of no help, while she fashioned a sling and carried
him to safety. They argue whether the child was
ashamed of his father or his mother, trading blows
over Martha’s drinking and George’s career failings.
Even mentioning the child to a stranger is an act of
violence, a breach of protocol, which George decries
in his outburst “You goddamn destructive.”
Albee uses these verbal acts of violence to reveal
how individuals in marriages pit their careers, their
communications, and even their children against one
another. The choice to make Martha and George’s
child fictional underlines the symbolic meaning of
their marriage, already suggested in their names (an
allusion to George and Martha Washington). Such
is the cruelty at the heart of this marriage that the
couple has invented a child simply to abuse each
other.
Albee is determined not to allow the play to
describe only one disturbed couple. When George
learns of the lies at the source of Nick and Honey’s
marriage (the hysterical pregnancy and the wealthy
missionary), he waits a mere 30 minutes of stage
time (approximately) to play “Get the Guests.”
Cruelly twisting Nick and Honey’s personal pains,
he transforms their story into a tale of a “scientist
and his mouse.” He turns the story into an exposure
of those lies, calling her “money baggage amongst
other things” and then revealing the lie that built
their marriage initially: “The Mouse got all puffed
up one day... and she said... look at me... and so
they were married... and then the puff went away... like magic... poof.” While it is George who
exposes the lies at the heart of their marriage, it is
the institution of marriage that created them.
The unsuccessful infidelity referred to by George
as a game of “hump the hostess” begins as an expan-
sion of Albee’s efforts to expose the betrayals in Nick
and Honey’s marriage and then expands to indict
all marriages at the university. After Nick fails to
“perform,” Martha begins a long speech complain-
ing about:
Boozed-up... impotent lunk-heads...
[who] roll their beautiful, beautiful eyes...
and... bounce... over to old Martha...
[and then] back to the soda fountain again
where they fuel up some more, while Martha-
poo sits there with her dress up over her head... suffocating... waiting for the lunk-heads;
136 Albee, Edward