Virginia Woolf Essay PDF

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Fragile Stereotypes in Gendered Americana: An Analysis of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Thesis: The idea of masculinity can be represented by the transient fear of femininity and the idea of gender roles that question American culture. ...

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Dawson Lehmann English 2550-A Dr. Nick Morwood 22 October 2017

Fragile Stereotypes in Gendered Americana: An Analysis of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? As an “all-American” play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a hypocritical assessment of modern Americana where masculinity and femininity are fragile concepts. Who’s Afraid can be considered cannon because of its apparent absurdity; however, as the husband and wife characters George and Martha begin to reveal their lives to Nick and Honey, their guests, the visualization of American cultural pressures begins to take form. With the goal of obtaining a “typical”, white, heteronormative life that is deemed attractive to them, Martha and George’s marriage is based upon these cultural pressures. The idea of masculinity can be represented by the transient fear of femininity and the idea of gender roles that question American culture. George’s masculinity and Martha’s strength of femininity creates an archetype of American culture, one that Nick aspires to become, and Who’s Afraid can question sexuality, marriage, and masculinity by using George and Martha as living examples of hypocrisy.

The topic of masculinity and femininity is a wide topic of discussion within any means, but Who’s Afraid challenges pre-emptive stereotypes of what it means to be “masculine” or “feminine” by combining those topics with the absurdity of its characters. As seen in the 1966 film, there is a fragile way in which someone identifies themselves. For example, heteronormativity is used frequently when talking about the set of rules that heterosexual men “must follow”; however, it can also be thought of as a way in which “Who’s Afraid shows

heterosexual masculinity as constituted through a particular form of triangulation… [George and Nick] compete to see which is the better man…” (Eby). This definition of heteronormativity is important because it answers why the two men in the film, George and Nick, are constantly competing for Martha and competing to be the better professor at their university1. The definitions of masculinity and femininity can also be addressed in this way by addressing their stereotypical definitions. The definition of “masculinity” is commonly thought to be: the displaying of traits that represent the socially constructed representation of what it means to be a man in society, whereas “femininity” is the opposite; a representation of what it means to a woman in society. For example, in children’s books, “males and females [are shown] in blatantly stereotypical ways: for instance, males as adventurers and leaders, and females as helpers and followers” (Mikkola). Masculinity and femininity also directly relate to the idea of American culture, and more specifically, American cultural myth, a definition of cultural myth that is based on the heroic idea of cowboy culture: “The legendary cowboy … the cultural myth, symbolizing everything that Americans believed was most desirable in the national spirit… Daring, noble, ethical, romantic… He personifies our national self-image” (Morris). The masculine identity of archetypal culture described by Morris is the basis of what American literature has come to describe as societal pressure. Cultural myth, masculinity, femininity, and heteronormativity are all terms that define where the idea of rugged masculinity came from and they identify the problems associated with under-representation, a key characteristic of George and the competitive nature associated with him.

Throughout Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, George is first shown as a tired husband who tries to deflect his wife’s emotional abuse through passive aggressiveness, as seen when he says

1 George is an associate history professor, while Nick is a biology professor

that Martha goes around braying to the people at parties set up by his father (Albee 7). However, Martha and George’s marriage is based upon Martha’s wealth. She is the daughter of the president of the university and in the fifties and sixties, it would have been preferable for Martha to marry someone who was just as successful—in that case, George would have been her preferable partner. However, George never progresses further than an associate professor. They maintain their wealth because of Martha’s wealth and George’s mediocre income, but it creates feelings of servitude and contempt for her father from George. He questions why they must have guests over, as directed by her father, and Martha replies it is because “Daddy said we should be nice to them” (Albee 10). Martha laughs off George’s concerns and never treats him like an equal; she demonstrates her contempt for him in multiple scenarios, treating him like an accessory to their high-class marriage. Without fully recognizing George’s mental stability, Martha pushes George into becoming his own worst enemy as Nick and Honey arrive. Like their marriage, the stability of George is dependent on deeper issues that arise as the play progresses.

American literature has primarily focused on issues that have plagued society for generations. This is a generalized assumption, but it is an accurate one as well because, for example, the idea of American cultural myths and “masculinity” are common societal issues that question normality within culture. As seen in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, cultural myths are shown as an idealized sense of being in American culture. One of the main characters, Jewel, represents the stereotypical qualities deemed as masculine by his family and culture: he is quiet, brooding, tall, and very strong. However, when his “father”2 Anse sells his horse to buy a team of horses without consulting Jewel, he displays his emotional turmoil by leaving the family behind at Armstid’s farm: “Anse’s boy taken that horse and cleared out last night, probably half way to

2 Anse is not actually Jewel’s father. Jewel’s mother Addie had an affair.

Texas by now” (Faulkner 193). For Jewel, he is shown to be emotionally attached to the horse because of its symbolic “push back” against Anse’s reign of patriarchy over the family—Jewel bought the horse by working at nights at a farm, without Anse’s knowledge. This event is still symbolic of a cultural myth, even if it is less dramatic as some stories3: the archetypal character fights against a common enemy for his personal vengeance and for “the greater good”. Jewel is a literary representation of a cultural myth where “as a species, we are obviously more than just masculine and a culture that defines itself by a strictly limited set of human attributes pays a psychological price for suppressing the others” (Morris). In this sense, Jewel’s masculinity allows for readers of American literature to acknowledge the struggle of manhood, whether that be as a teenager oppressed by an overruling father or an unsuccessful history professor in Who’s Afraid.

George in Who’s Afraid has seemingly conquered the “All-American” goal—he has a job, a wife, and is well off financially. However, just like Jewel in As I Lay Dying, the toxic ideology of “being a man” has caused his introverted mentality to become a burden, significantly altering the dynamic between himself, Martha, and Nick and Honey when he starts to release his psychological damage onto them by playing “games” that humiliate the other people. Before he starts to harass Nick and Honey; however, the George and Martha are shown to exhibit a sense of gender reversal: George is the emasculated husband who is overrun by his loud, heterosexually confident wife and his masculinity is threatened by her strong femininity. The gender reversal allows for an opposite perspective on an abusive relationship, where typically it is the man that is emotionally abusive to the wife, and it this way, Martha is shown to be a constant source of emotional abuse. In the scene before Nick and Honey arrive, Martha sings the reoccurring song

3 For example, John Wayne in the 1972 western “The Cowboys”

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and tries to prove that her “joke” was funny to George. When he does not reciprocate a reaction to her joke, she turns against him: “You make me puke! … I like your anger. I think that’s what I like most about you … You’re such a simp!” (Albee 14). This is just one of many examples in the play where Martha displays her powerful emotional abuse over George. Like Jewel in As I Lay Dying, George takes his anger and becomes more passive aggressive, even going as far as pretending to shoot Martha with a fake gun that both shocks and brings the other three characters into hysterics. While both shocking and ironic, these situations reveal the fragility of George’s masculinity and emotional stability when threatened: he reacts passive aggressively, creating an outlet for his anger without fully dismantling the wooden, emotionless nature of male heteronormativity.

As George’s other male counterpart, Nick is representative of what George used to be: young and eager for a successful life. Nick’s entire life is based on progressing towards his American dream: a wife, a child, and a successful career. However, Nick’s life is based on a lie, just like George’s. Nick married Honey only because of her “false alarm” pregnancy and he wanted her family’s money, as seen on page 108 when he is telling George that his father-in-law “had a lot of money [when he died]” (Albee). Nick’s marriage to Honey is reminiscent of George and Martha’s relationship: he married her for her money, just as Martha and George married each other. Without moral boundaries, Nick is free to attempt to sleep with Martha so she can further his biology career and make him more successful. Throughout the first half of the play, Nick and Martha are constantly flirting, as seen when Martha puts on her “Sunday dress” that shows off her body to seduce Nick. Her sexuality breaks down the constrictions of their marriages and further proves Nick’s masculinity in need of a strong, feminine sexual partner. In Adrienne Rich’s poem Diving into the Wreck, sex is just that: sex. The ability to break away from sexual

normality is further exemplified when the experience of “going down” is an entire poetic euphemism about a woman’s sexual experience and the place in which sexuality resides4 in humans. For Martha and Nick, their sexual behaviors are constrained by marriage, but in Who’s Afraid, the idea of normativity is abstract: the behavior of its characters are just as absurd as the masculine social roles that dominate the two male characters. For George and Nick, masculinity is based off their competition and their masculine preconceptions of identity is rigid; thereby furthering their competition to be “the best man” in careers, life, and relationships.

Masculine characters are constantly seen in literature as heartless individuals who base themselves on the power of their privilege; however, characters imbedded into canon literature prove otherwise. Take for example, George and Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. As the two primary male characters, they are shown to have absurd lives that contradict reality with their wives, but through that absurdity, they reveal the important roles of masculinity by displaying their competition within manhood, their fragile relationships with their wives, sexuality, and the rarity of their male emotions that are not socially accepted. Another example is Jewel, from As I Lay Dying. Jewel is a classic American archetype of masculinity that has the pressures of patriarchy pushed against him by his step-father Anse, compelling George to display his emotions through passive aggressiveness, like George and Nick. American culture has constantly based itself off the ideals of masculinity and femininity, and George, Nick, and Jewel show the ways in which the toxic nature of masculinity affects human emotion and the relationships between men and women.

4 In the poem, sexuality is signified by a ship wreck in the ocean.

Works Cited Albee, Edward. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?. New York: New American Library, 1983. Print. Eby, Clare Virginia. "Fun and Games with George and Nick: Competitive Masculinity inWhos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Modern Drama50.4 (2007): 601-19. EBSCOhost. Web. 30 Oct. 2017.

Mikkola, Mari. “Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 12 May 2008, plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/feminism-gender. Morris, Robert B. "American cultural myth and the orphan archetype." European Journal of American Culture 35.2 (2016): 127-45. EBSCOhost. Web. 30 Oct. 2017....