Fun and Games with George and Nick: Competitive Masculinity in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Abstract

This essay focuses on the relationship between George and Nick, who represent two competing but interdependent models of heterosexual masculinity. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? stages, in addition to its famous battle between the sexes, an equally urgent battle within masculinity. The verbal combat between George and Nick illustrates not only Albee’s understanding of gender as discursively constructed but also that the legendary marriage delineated in Who’s Afraid depends both structurally and psychologically on the competition between the two men. Albee presents postwar heterosexual masculinity as fundamentally competitive, a gender identity that must be proven as well as performed. The play suggests that, if competitive masculinity produces a victor, it also demands a loser. As it takes one man to prove another’s masculinity, an attentive and ultimately vanquished male audience is necessary to complete the performance. Moreover, Who’s Afraid shows heterosexual masculinity as constituted through a particular form of triangulation: George and Nick compete to see which is the better man and fitter mate for Martha.