5. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

The couples in the play can be seen as representative of modern relationships based on deception and sterility, and the picture of the play presents of marriage is bleak. George and Martha face off in a “battle of the sexes” that is an age-old theme in plays, from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, to Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew, and to Noel Coward’s Private Lives. But unlike many such plays, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? shows characters who are out for blood. George and Martha hide their need for each other with ferocious assaults on one another. Their names suggest the “first couple,” George and Martha Washington, a grim joke that underscores the corruption of the American ideal. But their fierce battling may be seen as preferable to the shallowness that marks the relationship between Nick and Honey.

The family relationships referred to in the play are hollow and sad: Martha and her father, George and the parents he might have killed, Honey and her father, and George and Martha’s “child.”

Sterility is evidenced by the play’s use of imaginary and would-be children: George and Martha’s fictitious boy and the pregnancies that Honey has deviously avoided. As an ironic twist, Albee has peppered the play with allusions to “baby”: George and Martha use the term as a dubious endearment; they also use coy baby talk; Honey becomes a baby, curled on the bathroom floor in the fetal position as a sign of her inability to grow up.

Some readers, however, see the play’s depiction of George and Martha in a more optimistic light. They interpret the play as the story of one couple’s desperate attempt to salvage, rather than destroy, a relationship. After the evening’s emotional turmoil, notably the “death” of the child, George and Martha have cleared up some of the matters impeding the relationship, and they may be able to function better as a couple in the future.

^^^^^^^^^^WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?: MINOR THEMES