Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe is far and away one of the most personal plays that I have ever been to. This play seemed to hit on all aspects of life in the 60's, materialism, plastic appearances and an abundance of alcohol to help bring about the true nature of the characters. The most amazing thing about Albee's play was the fact that it seemed to describe human nature to a tee. The differences between 1962 and 2001 are huge, we have basically created new lifestyles for ourselves, but this play proves once again that human nature never becomes outdated. Albee hits on several aspects of the way we project ourselves as couples in social situations, George and Martha probably seemed like a perfectly happy couple on the outside to all the other faculty members who attended the party but once they were in private their image is projected in a whole new light. In a time when divorce was not nearly as prevalent as it is today this was probably a fairly common scene for the middle class of the time. Couples stayed together because that is what society condoned, breakups in marriage were scorned and high position families and couples stayed together for the sake of their careers no matter what kind of difficulties they
Albee made this point very clear in his placing Nick and Martha in a sexual relationship, because once again George lost a little bit of his power and Nick gained some by sleeping with a powerful wife and possibly doing something that George had obviously failed at. "The way to control a man is through the belly of his wife" this line is very powerful and meaningful to the overall theme of the play. Another aspect of the song that was very evident was the fact that Virginia Woolfe is such a complex author who deals a lot with emotion and the human experience which were all things that these people were not able to cope with in their own day to day life. The couple felt that they had failed in many ways, one of which was the fact that they were not able to have children, children in this era were very important in society. The line stated above suggests that women hold a certain power over men by using children, Nick and Honey illustrated this point very well by revealing the fact that even though they had known each other a very long time they didn't get married until Honey had gotten pregnant. One of the major points made in this play was the fact that George just was not living up to Martha's expectations he wasn't the head of the History department even though he had been there for a very long time, this failure was present throughout the entire play suggesting that it was a major issue with the couple that was causing many problems. Martha seemed to be a woman who was driven towards success, her father was one of the greatest men in her life because he was extremely successful, she wanted to live up to her father's standards and have his approval and since she was a woman the only way that could be done was to achieve success through a husband. The 60's were the "Leave it to Beaver" times when the perfect family was classified by their own success and the behaviour of their children, June and Ward Cleaver were idolized as what every couple should be. This play was immensely powerful and could probably be used for marriage counseling, it has a value that allows us as the audience to sit back and look at a time of inequality for women and the struggles that men had to face in order to be considered good husbands and providers. Edward Albee hit on so many aspects of human nature that the audience cannot help but to be responsive in one way or another to his words, we all have these problems but hopefully not to the same degree that he has illustrated. One that was particularly evident was the fact that all these people still seemed in one way or another to rely on their parents and since they had no children they sung this slightly more adult version of a popular and well known children's song, this suggested that all these people were nothing more than just big children they solved their problems in a self serving and biased manner and acted out towards each other in a way suggesting that they didn't know how to deal with their own emotions and problems in an educated manner. Martha's obsession with George's career seemed to disappoint her more than it did George, she brought up the fact that he was a failure and constantly reminded him that he would never go anywhere. After a while of this little chanting song I began to notice something else about it, the characters only started to sing this song in moments when they were horribly uncomfortable or wanted to sort of get out of the situation that they were in at the time. This lack of success on George's part was also evident from the way he treated the young and upcoming Biology professor Nick, his apparent contempt seemed to stem from the fact that Nick had a better shot at becoming what George never could be.
Common topics in this essay:
Virginia Woolfe,
George Martha,
Bad Wolf,
George Martha's,
Edward Albee,
Nick Honey,
Nick Martha,
Leave Beaver,
Ward Cleaver,
virginia woolfe,
who's afraid,
human nature,
Who's Afraid,
who's afraid virginia,
couples stayed,
throughout entire,
little bit,
children's song,
wasn't able,
george martha,
perfect family,
afraid virginia woolfe,
|
Acceptance Essays
