Analysis Of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf

In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, playwright Edward Albee depicts the alcohol-fueled night of comedy and struggle of middle-aged couple George and Martha and younger couple Nick and Honey. In his examination of these two couples, Albee explores the various roles children play in the American household. In one of her writings, psychologist Anne Malavé argues that there are many reasons to produce children, ranging from the basic production of an heir to the redoing of one’s own childhood. In Albee’s assessment of the two couples, it becomes clear that each has their own reasons, and even that there are differing reasons between husband and wife. This evaluation of reproduction paints a dark picture of the importance of and reasons for reproduction in American society. Nick and Honey appear to be the prototypical American couple: young, attractive, and successful, the pair represents everything the American family of the 1960’s should be. Nick is a well built, attractive, and quickly rising college professor, with his loving wife Honey as the perfect submissive complement.

Nick and Honey keep a seemingly perfect house, but their inability to have children and their conflicting opinions on the topic as a whole demonstrate the deep divide between societal expectations and human expectations, while George and Martha’s creation of an imaginary child shows the societal pressure to raise a child and the comfort that it brings. In Albee’s eyes, many factors besides love can bring a child to bear, and the pressures which society creates to bear children can cause individuals to buckle. This pressure, as well as the other relationship problems found in the marriages of Nick and Honey and George and Martha, clearly demonstrate the failures of the American