Martha's Madness

Emily Dickinson once wrote “Much madness is divinest/Sense-To a discerning Eye.” Often in literature, a character’s madness or foolish action plays an important role. Such is the case with the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? written in 1962, by Edward Albee. The author develops and revisits the inner conflict of Martha, the protagonist, which results from the struggle between her and society throughout the plot to highlight the theme of struggle between reality and illusion. Martha’s madness is used by Albee to reveal characteristics of American society in the 50s and 60s that reveal the seemingly mad behavior as reasonable.
Martha’s actions throughout the play can be seen as her attempt to act like a typical American female during 50s and 60s. During this time period, women were expected to have a child and to be good wives. However, Martha doesn’t have children. If a woman didn’t have children, she was ultimately a failure. She says, “I disgust me. I pass my life in crummy, totally pointless infidelities...” Martha thinks herself that she is a failure due to lack of reproduction. Martha created the story of a son because she truly wants a child. She also creates the story because she wants to fit into society. She wants to become a woman that society expects. Because she does not want to society to view her as an inadequate woman, she is tremendously irrational about her illusional son. Martha and George start to create a story of their son with precise details from Martha’s delivery, son’s physical appearance to his experiences at school and summer camp, with some contradictory details. Martha explains that her son is a balance between George’s weakness and her “necessary greater strength.” When George finally ann...

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...llusion and faced the reality. George sings, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and Martha responds, “I am.” What George meant was “Who’s afraid of facing the reality?” Martha reveals that she is afraid of facing reality. Martha then become more fearful, because now she knows that she has to protect her own reality. Therefore, in order to understand and face reality, one must experience fear and madness.
The significance of Martha’s madness to the play is that it reveals the various themes present in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Martha stands as a specific example that every person is afraid of escaping from their illusion and wants to fit into society, which is an essential theme of the play. Like Martha, one can continually live a life with fear and madness; however, one day, one must live a life with clarity in order to live a life without illusions.