The play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is set on a small university campus in New England. This setting serves as a suitable backdrop to portray the personal frustrations, emotional conflicts, and failures of its characters. Both the play and its film adaptation are structured into three acts titled “Fun and Games,” “Walpurgisnacht,” and “The Exorcism.”
Edward Albee opens the play in a typically American style. He deliberately names the main characters George and Martha, after the first American President George Washington and his wife Martha, to emphasize the "American-ness" of the story. George is a history professor, and Martha is the daughter of the college president. Their marriage is dysfunctional and bitter. The play begins late at night after they return from a faculty party. Martha, without George’s consent, invites a young couple, Nick and Honey, over for drinks. This small detail hints at the power imbalance and tension in George and Martha's relationship.
Act I: “Fun and Games”
In the first act, George and Martha begin to insult and mock each other openly in front of their guests. Their verbal attacks are relentless, cruel, and personal. George mocks Martha’s drinking and age, while Martha accuses George of being a failure, particularly pointing out his stalled career. She taunts him for not receiving a promotion in the history department, despite her father’s influence as the college president.
Martha’s constant humiliation of George escalates as she recalls having once punched him in front of her father. She also flirts with Nick, adding to George’s public humiliation. In a dramatic moment, George appears with a gun and shoots at Martha but the gun is a toy, and instead of a bullet, it releases a parasol, adding a grotesque comic effect to the tension.
Meanwhile, Honey becomes increasingly uncomfortable. She drinks excessively and eventually runs to the bathroom to vomit, distressed by the ongoing verbal warfare.
Act II: “Walpurgisnacht” (The Night of Witches)
The second act reveals deeper layers of the characters' lives. George and Nick talk outside. Nick confesses that his marriage to Honey was based on a misunderstanding: he believed she was pregnant, but it turned out to be a hysterical pregnancy a psychological condition where symptoms of pregnancy are imagined. He implies that this illusion forced him into the marriage.
George then tells a disturbing story from his youth about a boy who accidentally killed his parents. This story appears to have autobiographical overtones and foreshadows a later revelation. Back inside, the tensions rise further. Martha dances seductively with Nick in front of everyone, further degrading George. She also brings up George’s failed attempt to publish a novel which, interestingly, recounts a story similar to the one George just shared.
Martha takes pride in the fact that her father prevented the publication of the novel by burning the manuscript, asserting control over George’s intellectual life. Enraged, George tries to strangle Martha in front of their guests. What follows is another psychological “game” called “Get the Guests.” During the game, George exposes Honey’s hysterical pregnancy, causing her to once again flee to the bathroom to vomit.
As tensions rise, Martha and Nick go upstairs together, implying that they are going to sleep together. George, seething with silent fury, throws his book down in rage.
Act III: “The Exorcism”
The final act opens with Martha sitting alone in the living room. George soon enters, carrying a bunch of snapdragons symbolic flowers often associated with deception and strength in adversity. A bizarre argument ensues between the two about whether the moon is upstairs or downstairs, a metaphor for their emotional and psychological disorientation.
Nick also arrives, and it is revealed that his sexual encounter with Martha may not have happened due to his excessive drinking. Martha turns on Nick, mocking and emasculating him. To defuse the mounting tension, George announces a final game: “Bringing Up Baby.” He prompts Martha to speak about their "son" a child whom both seem to cherish.
Together, George and Martha narrate a detailed story of their son's life. However, George suddenly announces that a telegram arrived while Martha and Nick were upstairs. According to the message, their son died in a car accident earlier that day after swerving to avoid a porcupine. Martha is horrified and screams that George has no right to “kill” their son. It becomes clear to Nick and Honey — and to the audience — that this son never existed. He was an imagined child, a fictional creation that George and Martha had invented to cope with the emotional emptiness and meaninglessness of their lives.
George “kills” the fictional son because Martha broke a critical rule: she mentioned the boy to outsiders. This reveals the fragile, imaginary world they built to survive their failed marriage and hollow existence. In the end, even this illusion is destroyed.
Significance of the Title: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The title is a playful variation of the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” from Walt Disney’s 1933 cartoon The Three Little Pigs.Edward Albee replaces “Big Bad Wolf” with “Virginia Woolf,” the famous modernist British writer known for her deeply introspective, psychologically complex, and often experimental works. In the play, the title appears as a mock nursery rhyme, first sung by Martha at the end of Act I and finally repeated in the devastating last scene.
Virginia Woolf’s writing is associated with psychological depth, introspective truth, and emotional rawness things that George and Martha (and perhaps all humans) are afraid to face. At the end of the play, Martha’s final reply — “I am, George, I am” — is an admission that: She is afraid of confronting reality.
The title Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is not simply a joke or a pun it is a symbolic and philosophical question. It challenges both the characters and the audience to ask:
· Who is brave enough to strip away illusions?
· Who dares to live without lies, roles, and invented identities?
· Who is not afraid to confront emotional and existential truth, just as Virginia Woolf confronted hers?
Martha’s Final Answer: “I am, George. I am.”
This is the most powerful moment in the play:
· Martha admits her fear of reality.
· It is an act of emotional surrender, human vulnerability, and perhaps the beginning of truth in their broken relationship.
Character Analysis
George
George is a middle-aged history professor at a small New England college. Though intelligent and articulate, he is emotionally repressed, professionally stagnant, and deeply insecure. Despite being married to the daughter of the college president, George has failed to rise in his academic career, a fact that Martha never lets him forget. His frustrations are compounded by a sense of emasculation and failure, both as a husband and as a scholar.
George’s weapon is language — he uses wit, irony, sarcasm, and cruelty as tools to defend himself. Throughout the play, he appears passive-aggressive and bitter, but underneath his cynicism lies a profound emotional pain. His retreat into illusion, including the fabrication of an imaginary son, reveals his inability to confront reality. However, in the final act, he attempts to regain control by "killing" the imaginary child, suggesting a desire to end the illusions and possibly redeem the relationship through truth.
Martha
Martha, the daughter of the university president, is loud, abrasive, and emotionally volatile. She constantly humiliates George, flirts with Nick, and uses vulgarity and confrontation as shields for her vulnerability. Her father’s high status at the university has given her a sense of entitlement, but she feels trapped in a meaningless life and an unfulfilling marriage.
Martha is desperate for emotional and sexual validation. Her flirtation with Nick and her constant attacks on George are attempts to assert her power, but they also reveal her deep loneliness. The imaginary son is perhaps her only source of emotional comfort — an idealized version of the life she never had.
Nick
Nick is a young biology professor, newly arrived at the college. Ambitious, confident, and physically attractive, he represents a younger generation with careerist goals and a pragmatic outlook on life. Initially polite and somewhat passive, Nick is gradually drawn into the psychological warfare between George and Martha.
His relationship with Honey is based on falsehood (a mistaken pregnancy), and his willingness to seduce Martha reveals moral ambiguity and opportunism. Though he begins as a symbol of strength and potential, he ultimately proves to be just as flawed as George — impotent, disillusioned, and emotionally weak. Albee subtly critiques the superficiality of modern ambition through Nick’s character.
Honey
Honey is Nick’s naive and childlike wife. Shy, submissive, and emotionally fragile, she spends most of the play drinking excessively and retreating from conflict. Her character serves as a foil to the others — she is not a combatant but a witness to the psychological games around her.
Her hysterical pregnancy a false belief that she was pregnant symbolizes her denial and repression. Honey is emotionally immature and unable to confront difficult truths. Her presence helps reveal the dysfunction in her marriage to Nick and underscores the theme of illusion versus reality.
Themes
Illusion vs. Reality
This is the central theme of the play. George and Martha construct a fantasy world to cope with the failures of their lives and marriage their imaginary son being the most powerful symbol of this illusion. The play forces the characters, and the audience, to confront the uncomfortable truth that illusions can only offer temporary comfort.
The Failure of the American Dream
Albee critiques the hollowness of the American Dream, particularly the belief that success, family, and stability are universally attainable. George and Martha despite their academic and social advantages are deeply unfulfilled. Their lives reflect emotional, personal, and professional disappointment.
Marital Conflict and Psychological Violence
The play explores the emotional warfare between spouses. George and Martha’s marriage is built on sarcasm, resentment, and mutual degradation. Yet their cruelty masks a deep dependency. Albee suggests that even toxic relationships can have a twisted intimacy.
Interpretation: Their “games” are both a form of emotional survival and a desperate call for recognition and love.
Power, Gender, and Emasculation
Gender roles are sharply critiqued in the play. Martha, traditionally expected to be submissive, is domineering and aggressive. George, traditionally expected to be powerful, is emasculated. Nick represents a new generation of masculinity ambitious but morally compromised.
Insight: The play subverts gender expectations to explore the fragility of male identity and the cost of dominance.
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