Gender Roles in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In the novel, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, by Edward Albee, George and Martha go against traditional gender roles displaying the truth behind a ‘perfect’ relationship. Martha emasculates George showing her dominance and authority over him in her game of power. Typically in the 1960s, men are perceived as being in control of the relationship while women keep the house clean, but not with Martha and George. Martha exposes how unrealistic and useless gender roles really are. The pressure to conform to stereotypical gender roles can be damaging to relationships between two people.

Right away we see Martha’s power over George. Martha's excessive drinking is off-putting to George because he sees her as less feminine. George and Martha start arguing about how he acts at parties and she complains that he never does anything and just sits around. Getting worked up Martha requests that George makes her a drink; “‘Make me a drink.’ ‘What?’ ‘I said, make me a drink.’” (8). Martha telling George to serve her is the opposite of stereotypical relationships because the woman traditionally waits on the man. She uses her dominance against George demonstrating how assuming specific gender roles has a negative effect on relationships. Another time we see how the pressure to fit stereotypical gender roles harms George and Martha's relationship is when their guests arrive. As the doorbell rings Martha says; “Go answer the door”, George replies “You answer it” (19). George is quick to respond as he is unsettled by the fact that Martha talks back, undermining him. Women would traditionally answer the door because they took care of the house while the men went to work, so George answering the door for their guests was discomfiting him. This instant started a fight between the two putting a strain on an already stressful relationship. 

A separate example of how the pressure to conform to stereotypical gender roles harms relationships is when Martha steps up and ridicules George. Martha continues to embarrass George and holds her power by exposing his lack of accomplishments. Martha holding more power mortifies George, getting him angry, and drives him further away from his wife. Martha explains how she and her dad were expecting a lot more out of George. She married him so one day he could take over the History department from her dad. As Martha explained to their guests, she said; “Until he started to watch for a couple of years and started to think maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all … that maybe Georgie boy didn’t have the stuff … that he didn’t have it in him!” (92). During this story, we learn George did not reach the expectations set by Martha and her father. Listening to Martha, George is furious, because he told her to stop telling that story. He is also embarrassed because it reveals to their guests Martha's control making him seem like even less of a man. This causes Martha and George to fight again, deepening their loss of love for one another. Martha illustrates that George has given up and is not as strong and masculine as other men. Martha says to George; “I’m loud, and I’m vulgar, and I wear the pants in this house because somebody’s got to, but I am not a monster” (173). Martha is expressing that George is not assertive enough to be in charge. She claims that since she is louder and more vulgar that she is more of a man than he will ever be. She is upset that she has to do more to hold their relationship together and that it should be him. George thinks Martha is mean to him but she is just stating how someone has to step up and take control and it is obviously not him. She is constantly humiliating him for having no use. These examples of Martha having control show the damage of gender roles because traditional gender roles set an unfair precedent against the two causing a divide when one does not fit into these specific roles. 

Martha holds George’s past against him, Martha was not only tougher than George mentally, but she was also physically tougher. Martha was sharing with the guests a time when she knocked out George. This humiliated George but she continued; “I got into a pair of gloves myself … I let go sort of a roundhouse right … and George wheeled around real quick, and he caught it right in the jaw … Pow! … and he stumbled back a few steps, and then, CRASH,  he landed … flat … in a huckleberry bush!” (61). In a way to keep the power in the relationship, Martha constantly degrades George by pointing out his shortcomings and using them as a way to keep him subservient to her. Telling the guests more stories hurt their relationship because as she exposed George's weakness she showed her strength, emasculating George and embarrassing him. Martha continues to make George uncomfortable showing her power. George wrote a personal story and shared it with Martha's father hoping to get it published. Martha’s father was sickened by how bad it was and said to never share his story. “He came home and he threw the book in the fireplace and burned it!” (152). Martha continued to talk about George’s story after he said not to, debilitating him. This instance portrays the struggles to conform to gender-specific roles because George is under Martha's control and does not want to be seen like that.

Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee, Illustrates the damaging effects of traditional and stereotypical gender roles on relationships. Martha goes against those typical gender roles by playing a power game revealing their unhealthy relationship. Albee related this novel back to his experience because being gay was hard for him. There are no set gender roles in some relationships and being seen as different can be challenging. Albee's novel demonstrates that it is not fitting the stereotypical gender roles that harm relationships, but how they want to be viewed and expected to act by others.