Edward Albee's Bloody Theatre

UFR Langues, Littératures et Civilisations Etrangères Département d'Etudes du Monde Anglophone Mémoire de Master 2 Etudes Anglophones Présenté par Ophélie de Seguins Sous la direction de Madame Blandine Pennec, Maître de Conférences Habilitée à Diriger des Recherches, et de Madame Emeline Jouve, Maître de Conférences. “We All Peel Labels”: Edward Albee's Critical Depiction of the American Society in The American Dream and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? A Linguistic and Theatrical Analysis Année universitaire 2019/2020 UFR Langues, Littératures et Civilisations Etrangères Département d'Etudes du Monde Anglophone Mémoire de Master 2 Etudes Anglophones Présenté par Ophélie de Seguins Sous la direction de Madame Blandine Pennec, Maître de Conférences Habilitée à Diriger des Recherches, et de Madame Emeline Jouve, Maître de Conférences. “We all Peel Labels”: Edward Albee's Critical Depiction of the American Society in The American Dream and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? A Linguistic and Theatrical Analysis Année universitaire 2019/2020 Illustrations de couverture : Affiche d'une représentation de The American Dream dirigée par Morgan Doman. URL :https://mc3bignews.wordpress.com/tag/the-american-dream/ ; Affiche d'une représentation de Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? au Seattle Repertory Theatre. URL: https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/behind-the-poster-whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf/ Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Blandine Pennec and Dr. Emeline Jouve for their precious help and guidance during this year. Their advice, recommendations and kind encouragements enabled me to enhance my skills, enrich my knowledge and write a dissertation on what was only a topic in September. I am also thankful to my parents who have not only supported me during this work, but also in every situation I have been confronted with. I am very grateful for their kindness, love and benevolence. A heartfelt thanks to Camille who has been by my side for eight years and whose inestimable friendship has accompanied me in difficult but also joyful times. I thank her for her precious advice, support, generosity and for our laughs. I would also like to thank Ariana who has become a precious friend over the years and with whom I shared many cheerful moments in Albi. Finally, many thanks to my Oxford friends, Branwen, CJ, Tara, Talia, Tom, Julia, Libby, Alex and Beth for their warm welcome in the city of dreaming spires. I will not forget my “Erasmus life” made of sleepy teas, formals, bops, walks in Port Meadow, “essay crises” and, first and foremost, smiles and laughs. A special thanks to CJ who helped me with translations and essays, who shared his best recipes with me and who became a cherished friend. 1/110 Table of Contents Acknowledgements..............................................................................................................................1 Table of Contents..................................................................................................................................2 Introduction..........................................................................................................................................3 I – Albee's World's a Stage: The Use of Comedy and Metatheatricality to Denounce the Meaninglessness of the American Society.........................................................................................12 A – Americans are Merely Vaudevillian Players.......................................................................13 1. Albee's Criticism of the American Way of Life.................................................13 2. Grotesque Plays, Vaudeville and Dark Humour: A Perfect Blend of Comedy..18 3. Characters as cliché-ridden stereotypes.............................................................24 B – Albee's Disruption of Theatrical Rules: The Well-Made Play and Metatheatricality.......30 1. Fake Drawing-Room Drama and the Not-So-Well-Made Play: Mocking the genres.....................................................................................................................31 2. Stories within the Play; Play within the Story....................................................36 II – Social Interactions in the Plays: Between Appeasement and Conflict........................................43 A – (Im)politeness: Disrupting Social Rules............................................................................45 1. On Face-Work in the Plays: Saving and Threatening One's Face......................47 2. Extreme Politeness.............................................................................................52 3. Impoliteness and Humour..................................................................................56 B – Pacification Towards a Consensus versus a Thirst for Power: Adjusting to the Other, Readjusting the Other....................................................................................................................59 1. Adjustment and Readjustment: Adaptating to the Other and Readjusting Social Norms.....................................................................................................................63 2. Readjustments: Destabilising the Other.............................................................66 3. Readjustments: Mastering Linguistic Knowledge.............................................69 III - “Violence! Violence!”: Edward Albee’s Bloody Theatre............................................................74 A – Tools used to Dominate and even Destroy the Other........................................................76 1. How to be Violent With Words..........................................................................78 2. Performing or not Performing Violence.............................................................86 B – Violence as a Means to Peel Labels and to Raise Consciousness.....................................90 1. Necessary Violence............................................................................................92 2. Is Violence Cathartic?........................................................................................95 Conclusion........................................................................................................................................102 Bibliography.....................................................................................................................................105 2/110 Introduction “Good writers define reality. Bad ones mereley restate it.” Edward Albee To define or to restate (a social) reality? That is the question one might ask about Edward Albee's work. Born in 1928, the playwright witnessed the rise and fall of civilisation during the 20 th century. After the Second World War and well into the 1950s, the United States of America was a society characterised by consumption and the American Dream, firmly rooted in the minds of millions of Americans. Even though Howard Schneiderman explains that “economic success is first” among the values of the American Dream, James Truslow Adams, in his preface to The Epic of America, defines the American Dream as “a better, richer and happier life” for all American citizens “of every rank” (xx). W. Lloyd Warner, for his part, describes the American Dream as a belief “that a man by applying himself, by using the talents he has, by acquiring the necessary skills, can rise from lower to higher status” (qtd. in Schneiderman xi). Thus, through hard work and individual effort, social achievement and fulfilment can be accomplished. In the midst of this American dream of economic success and social elevation, Edward Albee acted as a dissident, seeking to point at the flaws pervading the American society. The two plays under study, The American Dream (1961) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) attack fundamental American values. Both plays present a more or less nuclear American “family” constituted of one couple with at least a child. In the 1962 play, the main protagonists are named after George and Martha Washington, the first presidential couple of the USA. This reference is of particular interest because the bases of American values were partly set during the end of the 18th century, when George Washington became President of the newly formed United States of America, thirteen years after the Declaration of Independence of the USA. The very title of the play The American Dream speaks for itself. Like George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Mommy and Daddy are also the main protagonists and they live with Grandma. The characteristics of the characters are thus similar in both plays, these similitudes acting as a synecdoche of the mimetic desire pervading American society. Indeed, by writing about two families that are alike, Albee describes the general state of mind of American society in the 1960s: a wish for homogenisation in a consumer society. After the Industrial Revolution, economic production rose dramatically, a trend leading to an over- 3/110 production which itself led to mass consumption. Thorstein Veblen explains that shopping became a popular leisure activity and, added to the growing leisure time at the beginning of the 20th century, consumption became equated with the display of status: consumption is a “method of demonstrating the possession of wealth” and serves the “purpose of reputability”. Along with the notion of mass consumption is the concept of consumerism. According to Roger Swagler, “consumerism is a force from

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