so, finally, they get their courage up... but
that’s all baby. (Act 3)Nick is not an unfaithful husband who attempts,
albeit without consummation, to cheat on his young
wife. Rather, he is a reminder that there are not bet-
ter husbands than George or better marriages than
George and Martha’s. All husbands described in the
play are unfaithful; the implication is that all mar-
riages are built on infidelity, lies, and betrayal. For
Albee, family, specifically marriage, is a destructive
institution with violence at its core.
Ben Fisler
viOlence in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?, violence is a
constant, culminating in the murder of the fictional
child. George’s murder of the child is an act of the
most deadly violence, but contradictorily it becomes
a kind of ritual sacrifice. Faced with the constant
barrage of insults, humiliations, and occasional
physical attacks, killing the imaginary child seems
the only way to save George and Martha from the
never-ending cruelties of marriage. As the sun rises,
his death is left behind in the night, and the couple
look to the obvious symbol of a new world about to
dawn.
From the moment they arrive home, Martha
is calling George a cluck and their home a dump,
while George is correcting her grammar as part of
his own passive/aggressive strategy. Martha accuses
George of never getting involved in the parties,
while George mocks her behavior at the party as
“braying.” They continue in the presence of Nick
and Honey. George refers to an abstract painting as
“a pictorial representation of the order of Martha’s
mind”; Martha mocks him with the story of her
besting him in a “boxing match.”
Both spouses drag the guests into their abuses.
Martha becomes increasingly aggressive in her flir-
tations with Nick to threaten George, while George
attacks Nick’s profession on the basis of obscure fan-
tasies of eugenics. When Martha and Nick’s liaison
is imminent, George chooses to ignore her, claiming
that it is four o’clock and time for him to read. This
makes Martha even more furious. As she prepares to
join Nick, she threatens to make George “sorry that
[he] made [her] want to marry [him]” and “sorry
that [he] ever let [himself ] down” (Act 2).
To ensure that the viewers do not think that
violence is unique to George and Martha’s relation-
ship, Albee gives Nick and Honey their moments of
abuse as well. Nick claims to be ignorant of how his
words could be hurtful, but he is unrelenting in call-
ing George “sir” (which George takes as a comment
on his age) and tells him he does not know much
about science. Nick seems aware from the beginning
that he is being pulled into their games: “Do you
want me to say it’s funny, so you can contradict me
and say it’s sad... [Y ]ou can play that damn little
game any way you want to, you know[?]” (Act 2).
However, he continues to play the games even as
he repudiates them. Honey is as close to being the
victim in this tragedy as any of the four characters,
being collateral damage at the end of the first two
acts (she vomits and collapses in the bathroom). Yet
even she has her cruel streaks. She explodes with
delight during the acts of violence at the end of
the second act, even though they include George’s
attempted strangulation of Martha. Perhaps her
worst moment in the play occurs when she decides
to verify George’s murder of the imaginary son,
attesting to the arrival of the telegram and even to
George’s ludicrous claim that he ate the message.
Violence is a constant in the play, but it is not the
sickening behavior of an emotionally unstable, alco-
holic wife or a passive/aggressive, crypto-misogynist
husband. Albee does not allow the attentive viewer
to merely dismiss George and Martha as a dysfunc-
tional couple. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?, all
couples are victims and purveyors of the violence at
the heart of marriage. This violence makes meaning-
ful connections or a nurturing family unit impos-
sible. The violence produces the alienation that we
see revealed throughout the play.
Ben FislerALCOTT, LOUISA MAY Little
Women (1868–1869)
Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women,
was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1832
and died in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1888. Little
Women is semiautobiographical in nature, basedLittle Women 137