Representation of Gender and Marriage In Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf  Play

Representation of Gender and Marriage In Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf  Play

Introduction

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee, who has created a world inhabited by individuals dealing with difficulties in understanding and asserting their identity within a social sphere of change and crisis. The play is a critique of humans and their society and brings to light psychosocial, sexual, philosophical, and political problems that lay at the heart of human existence. The play stands as an opponent of the idea of a perfect American family and the expectations of the society as the play attacks the false optimism and narrow-minded confidence of contemporary society. Edward takes a heavy-handed approach to the display of this contrast, making examples from each character and their expectations for the people around them. The play shows convincing families that are not perfect and possibly ruined, using the two characters, Martha and George, who are married. This paper will try to look at how the play brings out themes of sexuality, marriage, and gender, through the way the play’s characters interact with each other, specifically Martha and George and how the play depicts heterosexism which will be discussed by analyzing Nick and Honey’s relationship, and finally, whether it advances alternative models of intimacy by looking at the overall representation of intimacy by the play.

The play Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf was written in 1962 during the post-war era when there was unrest from the Vietnam Protest Movement. This period could be defined as the best time for rebellion against the present way of thinking. The play criticizes the idealized American dream and declares this as an illusion. The anger identified in the play reflects the writer’s rebellion against a culture that is rapidly being affected by shifting the industrial, social, and historical climate of America.

The play opens with the old couple, George and Martha, verbally attacking each other, and this fight gets more intense and violent as the play advance, which helps to advance the paly’s aspect of sexuality and gender. Throughout the play, the two are in constant fights even after they invite a young couple, Nick and Honey. The interaction reveals George and Martha’s troublesome marriage and their personal problems, which, in some instances, can be traced to their childhood and, in other instances, to the position the society has ascribed to them in relation to their genders. One striking characteristic of Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf is the game in which the four superficially mimic the opposite gender roles. According to Shams & Pourgiv (2013), “Martha’s obsessions with her father and her imaginary son, Honey’s fear of pregnancy, George’s story of the boy who had accidentally killed his parents, and Martha’s relationship with Nick are all of great significance.” The internal and external struggles of the characters revolve around the issue of gender and their formation as gendered subjects in a heteronormative patriarchal society. Martha can be considered as one of the strongest female characters, noting that her strength is diminished and undermined in the course of the play since she is meritoriously punished for surpassing the bounds of what the society considers appropriate behavior for women. Therefore, even though Martha is given an archetypal masculine attitude and strength, she is deceived by these strengths, and trapped between proper male and female behavior as per the societal guidelines. The fact that Martha does not have a child can be seen as a failure to meet society’s gender expectations. This is because, at the time of the production of the play, motherhood was the only area in which women were allowed to create a life of their own.

The play advances the issue of gender and gender role using Martha and George, through their constant fights and verbal exchange with each other, while in the presence of Nick and Honey. As the four characters play the game of power, where Martha and George are a team, Martha constantly shouts orders to George and humiliates him and keeps telling him that he does not know anything. Her disrespectful nature leaves one to wonder whether she is imitating the socially recognized role of a man, or whether she is performing her gender reality as established by the disclosures of the time when the play was made. Similar questions can be asked about the other characters as one may wonder whether George is actually a meek man as he seems in the play, or whether Nick and Honey are the ideal man and woman. Martha’s aggressive and abusive nature towards George seems to poke fun at the idea that females are supposed to be nice and sweet so that men can listen to them. Martha and George’s involvement in verbal games and what seems like role-playing suggests that as the two play femininity or masculinity, they are also making fun of the female and male roles established by society. They are implying that human beings are constantly involved in games that play gender, suggesting that gender is not an attribute but a practice. They show that there is no fixed gender role, and as a result, the characters are performing gender.

Apart from challenging gender roles, the Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf play challenges heterosexism in which the relationship between Nick and Honey portrays heterosexuality as a melancholy structure of identity-based on a socially imposed rejection of homosexual desire. In the play, the femininity of Honey seems to be associated with the sole identification with her mother through assimilation, and as a result, her repudiation of homosexual desire, which has resulted in her being a melancholic subject who behaves like a heterosexual. Society’s exaggeration of straight identity is suggestive of repudiating homosexual desire in a heterosexual melancholy culture where repudiated desires return as hyperbolic identifications (Salih, 2002). Both Honey and Nick exhibit an embroidered straight identity as they are portrayed as too masculine and too feminine. Yet, Honey fails to take the most significant feminine role of motherhood. On the other hand, Nick disappoints Martha in terms of sexuality and masculinity: another confirmation that the characters vary within a wide gamut of sexual identity and gender performativity.

Finally, the play advances alternative models of intimacy, by contrasting the type relationship observed between Martha and George, and between Nick and Honey. In the play, Martha and George’s relationship is clearly violent, and there is no intimacy between the two. They are in constant verbal and even physical fights as they are not even afraid of being violent among other people. However, being as old as they are, they are still together. Somehow, the fact that they cannot bear a child keeps them together. On the other hand, Nick and Honey represent the perfect couple as they do not fight with each other, and despite not having a child, they show affection for each other. They have a different kind of intimacy that is different from that of George and Martha.

Conclusion

As seen in this report, the play, Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf, depicts gender roles and sexuality through the two couples mentioned. The two couples present a gender that is not intrinsic to the audience, and their gender is performative. The character traits of certain characters, for instance, Martha and George, are crucial in playing the gender they represent. There are instances when Martha behaves or shows the behavioral characteristics of a man, which limits gender roles. This, and the behavior of the other characters that challenge their identity, are suggestive of the conception of gender as a cultural phenomenon, which is not intrinsic to humans and can be reinverted, reproduced, recreated, and even subverted.

References

Salih, Sara (2002), Judith Butler. London: Routledge

Shams, P., & Pourgiv, F. (2013). Gender trouble in who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf. J. Res. Gender Stud., 3, 85.