Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf And the Patterns of History"
Holtan offers evidence that Albee's play, while a riveting character study, is also tin allegory for the history of America, beginning with George Washington and the American Revolution.
Near the end of the second act of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? George, the professor of history, is left alone onstage while Martha, his wife, and Nick are playing the preliminary rounds of "hump the hostess" in the kitchen. Attempting to control his hurt and anger he reads aloud from a book he has taken from the shelf, "And the West, encumbered by crippling alliances and burdened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events must—eventually—fall." George is clearly encumbered with a crippling alliance—his marriage to Martha—and does...
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