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ISSN 2278-9529

Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

www.galaxyimrj.com

www.the-criterion.comThe Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

The Significance of "Fun and Games in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of

Virginia Woolf?
Paramvir Singh
Assistant Prof. in English
Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa College
Sarhali, Tarn Taran (Punjab)
Abstract:
Fun and games constitute the central issue of Edward Albees play Whos Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? They are significant both form the thematic and the structural point of view.
Through the games Albee attacks the illusions fostered by certain conventional American
attitudes and peels off the veneer revealing the essential problem of communication. The
play is a powerful indictment of American manners and mores.
Keywords: fun and games, communion, American society, manners and mores.
Fun and games constitute the central issue of Edward Albees play Whos Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? They are important both form the thematic and the structural point of view.
Through the games Albee attacks American societys most cherished assumptions that the
marriage bond is a source of communion, that the business failure is a weakling, that fertility
is a blessing1 In fact the play is a satiric indictment of American manners and mores and
the cultural assumptions that shape them. According to Albee the essential problem that is
covered over by manners and mores is the break-down of real communion between
individuals. The protagonist of The Zoo Story (1958) says: We neither love nor hurt
because we do not try to reach each other. George and Marthas difficulties arise from this
problem of lack of real contact. Basically like The Zoo Story, it (Whos Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?) is a play about making contact.2 But unlike the absurd playwrights, Albee in the
play does not insist on the ultimate meaninglessness of existence and of the struggle to
communicate. He does not decide whether man can communicate or whether communication
is worthwhile; through the games in the play, he does attack the manners and attitudes of
society that keep man from communication.3 Explicitly, Albee does not seem to offer any
systematic replacement for these attitudes. Nonetheless, he does invoke, implicitly, a
moral-norm -- Virginia Woolf demands that the spectator recognize that societal standards
can become defenses that the individual uses to avoid the pain of facing reality. The title is a
riddle whose answer enunciates this norm. The threat that is Virginia Woolf is the world of
fantasy that the attitudes of society can support.4
Four games are played in the course of the action. These games are : Humiliate the
Host, Get the Guests, Hump the Hostess, and Bringing up Baby. The Names are
given to the games by George who is the only one actively interested in playing any game
after the first has ended. The cultural attitudes and social assumptions that come under fire in
the play are: the success myth, the image of American manhood and womanhood, and the
institution of marriage itself. They are defined in the games that are played by the host,
hostess and the guests. In fact their relationships are qualified according to these assumptions.
In the first instance, Georges failure to advance in his profession has affected his marital
relationship with Martha. He is in the History department, but he is not the History
department. The fact that he cannot compete successfully in academia makes it clear that he

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could not succeed anywhere. He is a flop and Martha cannot respect him. Martha taunts him
for his failure and his intellectuality:
Martha.:(To Nick and Honey ) I mean, Hed be no good at trustees,
dinners, fund raising. He didnt have any personality you know what I
mean? Which was disappointing to Daddy as you can imagine. So, here I am,
stuck with this flop.
George. (turning around).. dont go on, Martha
Martha. This BOG in the History Department
George. Dont, Martha, dont.
Martha. he cant make anything out of himself, somebody without
the guts to make anybody proud of him.5
Being failed at his job George cannot come up to standard as husband. He does not meet the
minimum standards for a husband set by society. On the other hand Martha as counterpart to
George, is an unpleasant parody of the independent and aggressive American female. She is
vulgar and cultivates the appearance of fertility in spite her age. If she dominates her
husband, this is not the way she wanted it:
Martha. My arm has gotten tired whipping you.
George.(starts at her in disbelief). Youre mad.
Martha. For twenty-three years!
George. Youre deluded.. Martha, youre deluded.
Martha. ITS NOT WHAT IVE WANTED! (p.181)
According to Porter, the judgment of society sits lightly on such a woman because she is
only reacting to the abdication of responsibility by her husband.6 The guests Nick and
Honey function as contrast to George and Martha. Nick is the dominant male headed for
success, bright, young and somewhat aggressive. He is opportunistic and wants success at
every cost. He is weak, slim-hipped, infertile and no match for the figure Martha cuts. In fact
Nick and Martha represent two stereotypes in American culture. Through the games that are
played, their masks are stripped away and they are exposed fully.
In the play marriage is shown to be a matter of expediency. It is a highway to success
and an opportunity for sexual "fun and games." Martha married George because she was
attracted and because her father saw in him a successor to the presidential chair. She tells the
Guest : "I actually fell for him. And the match seemed .. practical, too. You know Daddy
was looking for someone to. . . take over when he was ready to retire." (p.166) Similarly
Nick married Honey because her father was rich and he wanted to avoid a scandal. In such
circumstances , marriage provides Nick and Martha an opportunity for adultery. This is a rule
in New Cartage as George remarks, "musical beds is the faculty sport around here"(p.155).
This activity is just not "fun and games" but it is also the way to promotion. Thus the
serious aspects of the marriage commitment are not fidelity and communion but
expediency and the games people play. The playwright accentuates the satirical contrast
between the accepted ideal and the George-Martha relationship by making the really serious
business of the play go on in the context of fun and games.7
Porter has pointed another American attitude that Albee draws on. It is that the
American public takes games very seriously, in general. This attitude is very significant,
because in a fragmented culture having no set values, the game creates a limited world with

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absolute rules and values, Therefore in the play only the game supplies a value-system that
is meaningful. The rules provide a context for an expression of the personality when they are
observed and, even more significantly , when they are broken. These people who cannot love
can constitute a play-world of vicious games in which they reach one another by hurting.8
The content of the games allows the partners who attack each other by revealing the
nature of their private lives. To quote John Gassner , "the battle attains sensational intensity
because the principals are not only sufficiently aroused but, as Albee declares in the
Columbia Records brochure, intelligent and sensitive enough to build proper weapons for
their war with each other. The struggle fluctuates, with dubious victory falling first to one
side then to the other until the antagonists are sufficiently self-revealed and purged to arrive
at a tentative reconciliation, and it is under the pretence of fun and games that the action
proceeds.9 In the game "Humiliate the Host," Martha is the aggressor against George in the
presence of the visitors. George's failure to achieve distinction in the History Department and
his unsuccessful attempt at novel-writing are the bases for this game. The second game "Get
the Guests" is directed against the visitors by the humiliated George who resents the
smugness of his guest and university colleague, the biologist Nick, on personal and general
grounds. Nicks opportunistic marriage to Honey and her hysterical pregnancy give George
the material for this game. The ingredients for the third game Hump the Hostess are
provided by Marthas attraction to Nick, her attachment to her successful father and her
desire for revenge in the face of Georges indifference to her infidelity. Nick, infuriated by
revelations of his own past by George, supposedly makes a cuckold of George in this game.
The foundation for the last game Bringing Up Baby is Marthas revelation to Nick and
Honey that she and George have a son. George in this game totally defeats Martha by killing
their fantasy son.
It is obvious that a strong antagonistic spirit permeates the game-world. In fact the
antagonistic spirit is established from the outset of the play. In the ordinary conversation
between the husband and wife there are small contests of knowledge and wit: what is the
name of the Bettie Dais movie? and of alcoholic capacity : Martha I gave you that prize
years ago... (p.151) Nick senses this antagonism and tries to remain aloof from it. When
Martha and Honey go upstairs, George and Nick confide in one another. But these
confidences involving the past turn out to be less trustworthy than the revelations of the
games. In fact each game is an excursion into the private world of the individual. The probe
is calculated. It hurts the antagonist while justifying the actions of the prober. The partygame creates a limited world with rules, conventions and a value-system. The rules are
subject to change without notice but the antagonist can evolve a new game in response to the
challenge.
In Humiliate the Host, the discussion moves from Georges academic failure which
is a public fact to his failure as a novelist. In this way, the games move into the area of the
private experiences of the past. Now George feels his identity at stake, He tries to stop the
game : "THE GAME IS OVER! (p.178) Martha refuses to stop and exposes George. This
breach of confidence infuriates George and he, in order to take revenge announces another
game Get the Guests, This is my game! You played yours you people. This is my
game.(p.179) In this game George reveals the reality of Nick and Honeys marriage with the
help of an allegory that he constructs using Nick's confidential statements. In this way he
humiliates Nick before Martha. Martha and Nick now collaborate for the third game
suggested earlier by George Hump the Hostess. George accepts the challenge. This game
degenerate from a test of wit and invention to, destructive action. While Martha and Nick

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indulge in sexual game upstairs , George sits in the corner reading a book. In fact, George
assumes the intellectuals pose of unconcern so that Martha cannot claim a victory. But
inside of him, he is all in rage. In his conversation with Honey on child-bearing, he discovers
the ultimate weapon with which to get Martha : the murder of their imaginary son. The
final game will be Bringing Up Baby.
From the beginning of the play, George has warned Martha not to talk about the kid :
Just dont start in on the bit about the kid, thats all.(p.152) But Martha does start in
quite early in the play and breaks the secret pact. George will kill the child. The child has
become very dear to Martha and as Anne Paulucci writes, Marthas fictional son is the child
of her will, the symbol of potency and virility, the imaginative embodiment of all the
masculine roles idealized and idolized. He is a perfect lover, the perfect son and husband, the
successful bread winner the creation of all her hopes.10 George then delivers the decisive
blow; their son is dead. Martha is utterly shattered and defenceless:
Martha. Youre not going to get away with this.
George. (with disgust) YOU KNOW THE RULES, MARTHA! FOR
CHRISTS SAKE, YOU KNOW THE RULES!
Martha . NO!
---------------------------George. I can kill him, Martha, if I want to.
Martha. HE IS OUR CHILD!
--------------------------George. AND I HAVE KILLED HIM ! (p.200)
Martha has broken the rules by talking about the son in public. Therefore, George has
exercised his right to kill him.
The games are very significant as they provide an ironic comment on the masculine and
feminine stereotypes discussed above. They also satirize the relative values that American
society places on them. The masks of Martha and Nick who are Earth-mother and the virile
and practical scientist respectively are destroyed. When Nick whose image is that of a
sexually dominant and ambitious male, fails to satisfy Martha in Hump the Hostess he is
forced to accept the role of a house-boy by Martha which was Georges role in the first act :
Get over there and answer the door.(p.152). Similarly Marthas image as the Earth-mother
who teems with fertility and sex appeal is destroyed in Bringing Up Baby. These idols of
American culture are shown to be frail and collapsible.
According to Harold Clurman , At first it [the play] seems to be a play about marital
relations, as it proceeds one realizes that it aims to encompass much more. The author wants
to tell-all, to say everything.11 All the games demonstrate that social conventions cannot be
defenses against life-experience and that we cannot expect salvation from without. Porter has
suggested that social satire that the dramatist injects through the games is heightened by the
use of ritual details. He points out that the title of the second act Walpurgisnacht suggests
an indirect context that parallels the Witches' Sabbath in Goethes Faust. Just as in the
Witches Sabbath , the couples drink, chat, and kiss; Martha and Nick dance as a prelude to
the game of Hump the Hostess. George remarks on the nature of dance: It's a familiar
dance . . . Its a very old ritual as old as they come.(p.177) Similarly another significant
ritual addition is George's use of the Roman Catholic funeral service as accompaniment to
the news of death of their son. The ritual dimension guarantees the objectivity of this game

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and its far-reaching effect. What is destroyed here is not only a social stereotype but a
conviction about procreation that reaches into the marrow of the human situation.12
A child is no guarantee of martial communion and "Bringing Up Baby" questions the
nature of the union between husband and wife. It attacks the convention that the child is a real
bond of union between husband and wife. Though the final game is the cruelest, yet it is the
most important from thematic point of view. It brings about the exorcism which is the
motive behind the writing of the play. The game kills the fantasy of a son with which George
and Martha have been comforting themselves. The death of the fantasy-son means the end of
an illusion. Martha is now afraid of Virginia Woolf, of that private world of fantasy built
into a public face according to what society expects and demands. Without masks, husband
and wife can begin to create a new life, may be, out of a mutual isolation and a mutual
need.13 George and Martha, after the games are over seem to be reconciled. The communion
becomes a possibility because Martha accepts their sterility. George tries to show her that it is
better for the family to be just us than hide in illusion. With their experience they also help
the younger couple gain something towards mutual contact. In fact, Nothing happens in the
play but reality is changed completely in the gradual discovery and recognition [through fun
and games] of what is inside us all.14 According to C.W.E. Bigsby, The process of the play
is a slow and relentless stripping of illusion, a steady move towards the moment when their myth
will collapse without benefit of their fantasies or the protective articulateness which has been
their main defence.15
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the fun and games form the
substance of the play. Through the games, Albee attacks the illusions fostered by certain
conventional American attitudes already discussed above. The play is a powerful indictment
of American manners and mores. Albee peels off the veneer like the label on Honeys brandy
bottle and the essential problem of communication is revealed. He is successful in striking at
the radical illusion that is the hope of salvation from some agent outside the individual.
Works Cited:
1. Thomas E. Porter, Myth and Modern American Drama (Ludhiana: Kalyani
Publishers,1971), p.226.
2. Ronald Hayman, Edward Albee. World Dramatists (New York: Fredrick Ungar
Publishing Co. 1973), p.64.
3. Thomas E. Porter, Myth and Modern American Drama, p.226.
4. Thomas E. Porter, p.227.
5. Edward Albee, Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Best American Plays, fifth series,
ed. John Gassner (New York: Crown Publishers,1963), p.167 (all subsequent
quotations are from this text are indicated by page numbers wherever they occur.)
6. Porter, p.229.
7. Ibid., p.230.
8. Ibid., p.231.
9. John Gassner, Preface to Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Best American Plays,
fifth series, ed. John Gassner (New York: Crown Publishers,1963), p.145.
10. Anne Paulucci, From Tension to Tonic: The Plays of Edward Albee (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois, Uni Press,1972), p.56.
11. Harold Clurman, Whos Afraid..? Edward Albee: A Collection of Critical Essays,
Ed. C.W.E. Bigsby (Engle-wood Cliffs: Prentice Hall,1974), p.76.
12. Porter, p. 237.

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13. Ibid., p.242.

14. Anne Paulucci, p.46.
15. C.W.E.Bigsby, A Critical Introduction to 20th Century American Drama (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1985), p.266.

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