Truth In Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf

As Martha accuses George of the inability to judge, “Truth or illusion, George; you don’t know the difference,” the audience at this point has also lost the ability to recognize the difference between truth and illusion. For in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the distinction between these contradicting terms is not always easily identified. As readers begin the play, they enter into a distorted, dramatized world of the lives of characters Martha, George, Nick and Honey. Always badgering and bickering at each other, George and Martha are as far from the 1950s perfect and idealistic couple as you can get. George is a professor of history who has turned to alcohol to deal with his ferocious wife Martha, whose appetite for administering

We do know, however, that Nick and Honey were childhood sweethearts, and that she supposedly became pregnant, leading to their marriage. The contrast of truth and illusion is evident because we can never be sure if her pregnancy was a hysterical pregnancy, or a real pregnancy that she aborted. Is her claim of hysterical pregnancy an illusion to cover up the fact of how terribly afraid she is have children due to the pain involved in childbirth? Or is Honey really telling the truth of her inability to have children? From the beginning of the play, she is described as mousy, petite, and slim-hipped, which adds possible evidence to her inability to conceive children. However, this makes the reader question if Honey’s petite figure really has anything to do with her ability to conceive, or if it’s just another excuse to help cover up the possible, shocking truth. George, on the other hand, is stuck on the fact that she really aborted her pregnancy and continues to have these abortions, because of how she earlier discussed her extreme fear of pregnancy and birth. We can see that maybe the reason Honey can’t, or decides not to have children is because she herself is still a child. She is seen as childlike in almost all scenes, and Nick often treats her as one as well, by constantly trying to protect her from certain languages and sexual references. Honey also emphasizes her childlikeness by always being obtuse to the reality of the situation around her. It’s obvious she stood outside the main action from the beginning of the play, as she participated in her own private world of Brandy, peeling labels, and dancing on her