martha virginia woolf fleeing the big bad wolf
Excerpt by Thesis:
Martha/Virginia Woolf
Fleeing the Big Bad Wolf:
Martha’s Fear of Female Power in Having Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Edward Albee’s enjoy Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf exposes the underbelly of the dysfunctional matrimony that has reached the point of viciousness. George and Martha, the two primary characters, happen to be crippled with disappointment, both with themselves and with each other. Martha especially has come to a point of utter despair, though attempting to masquerades as being a boozy swagger. As the play actually reaches its orgasm, we find that Martha’s lose hope is in fact dread – fear of falling short of traditional femininity, fear of being trapped simply by traditional beauty, and dread most of all of the sad fact that skins beneath the veneer of her womanhood.
This kind of fear can be hinted at in the extremely title of the play. The title comes from a faiytale told for a faculty party at the college or university where George teaches and where Martha’s father is the president. Do not hear the entirety with the joke, but we do hear Martha singing “Who’s afraid of Va Woolf” and remarking how clever joke it was: “I thought it was a screama real scream” (Albee 12). Although joke is probably not familiar to readers at this point, the audience inside the theatre if the play was initially produced in 62 would have recognized it as being a play on words depending on the Disney song from the 1930s, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf. ” We all don’t get the context when the joke was first said, nevertheless considering that that occurred at an academic party, one could imagine that the situation involved a few commentary on the threatening character of Virginia Woolf.
Why would Va Woolf end up being associated with the Big Bad Wolf, even humorously? To answer that, one need to take into consideration not simply Woolf their self but as well the societal surroundings in which the play is defined. In 1962, when the enjoy was first staged, American culture was on the cusp in the Sexual Trend. Women had experienced fresh personal and professional opportunities while the males were aside fighting during World War II, and through the decades that implemented they commenced questioning the regular role of ladies as housewives and moms.
Virginia Woolf was an earlier figurehead for this movement, although she drowned herself 20 years before the innovation reached their stride. Although she performed marry, your woman never acquired children, the girl prospered professionally, and she famously tested the limits of her libido by participating in relationships with other women (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The female characters in her works of fiction stubbornly ignored stereotypes, and sometimes struggled with all the confining anticipations of the male-dominated world surrounding them. All of this dished up to make her a powerful tone for the liberated female of the sixties, even if through the grave.
This may not have arranged well with the traditional academics in the small New Great britain college city where George and Martha play out their tragedy. The college’s president, Martha’s daddy, was seemingly the traditional form
- Category: persons
- Words: 559
- Pages: 2
- Project Type: Essay