A world in which masculinity is in crisis and men are the weaker sex is presented in both On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan and Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee. McEwan’s novel is set in the same year that Albee’s play was written, 1962 – as Philip Larkin archly notes in his famous poem ‘Annus Mirabilis', the year before sexual intercourse began – and this has profound effects on both stories. As Lionel Shriver points out, 1962 was a year chosen by McEwan “to precisely mark a ‘before’ picture of Britain” and by extension, the Western world – a world pre the sexual revolution. This momentous change, which “was not merely a revolution in sexual behavior per se…but was also a cultural revolution that was intertwined with many other significant social changes” meant a change in the way gender was perceived in society, meaning that traditional values of masculinity such as “aggression, hardness, physical power and emotional reticence” became less important; however this change had not been necessarily accepted when these works are set. McEwan and Albee choose to explore this world, in which there are tangible tensions between new and old forms of masculinity, through subtle means, such as role reversals in relationships in their works.
One of the principal ways in which both McEwan and Albee present a world in which masculinity is in crisis is by creating characters with traits that are typically seen as being ‘masculine’ and then going on to show how these traits cause problems. In On Chesil Beach, Edward certainly has many ‘masculine’ qualities; for example, “he had a taste for the occasional brawl outside a pub” accompanied by hobbies of beer drinking and playing football. This penchant for a fight (similar to Nick from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, who has a hobby of boxing), although seeming masculine and strong, actually results in Edward losing one of his friends, Harold Mather, who views a fight as “simply not cool” . What’s more, Edward’s masculine values come out at the end of the novel, when Florence offers him the chance to have an open marriage so that he could remain sexually satisfied whilst still loving her. However, Edward’s masculine pride is hurt by the mere suggestion that he could not fill the role of the husband that was prevailing at this time – be the head of a family, and produce children with his wife – which leads him to reject Florence’s offer as “it is an insult to me!”. This is a decision that he rues many years later, as he reflects that “he had never met anyone he loved as much”. In both of these instances, McEwan explores shifting concepts of masculinity during this volatile period of history; the character of Mather symbolises a new type of masculinity – intellectual, unaggressive and ‘trendy’ – and Florence’s proposal would not necessarily have been taken as being so offensive by a man with such ‘new’ masculine qualities.
Similarly, Edward Albee creates a typically masculine figure in Nick, the biology professor who is described as seeming like “the ideal man, [who] eventually reveals himself to have a hollow centre”. In order to create the impression that masculinity is in crisis, Albee first portrays Nick as almost ultra-masculine; he is intercollegiate state boxing champion, a quarterback in football, good looking, and as Martha puts it, “right at the…meat of things.” The clear connotations of the word ‘meat’ – muscle, strength, and most importantly sexual potency – enhance this depiction of a strong, traditional alpha-male. However, as the play progresses, it becomes clear that Adam’s assessment is correct; Nick is not as perfect as he originally looks. The first crack in the surface that appears is to do with his marriage to Honey; as George is pressing him for information during one of the many games that are played, it is revealed that Nick only married Honey because she was “all blown up”, or in other words had a hysterical pregnancy (a parallel with On Chesil Beach;
one of Edward’s friends is described as having been “dragged to the altar” when his girlfriend became pregnant). At the time, marrying your girlfriend if she fell pregnant would have been seen as the only viable ‘manly’ option; in America pre the Sexual Revolution, “remaining single … was considered undesirable, [but] being single and pregnant was totally unacceptable, especially for white women.”. As shown by this quotation, Nick has to play into the stereotype of a man taking on a patriarchal protection of the female. However, Nick soon after reveals to George that “there was [never] any particular passion… even at the beginning of our marriage.” Moreover, Nick’s image of perfect masculinity and strength is comprehensively shattered later on in the play after the game of ‘Hump the Hostess’, when Martha attempted to sleep with him; however, Martha is left disappointed by Nick’s lack of performance, exclaiming that he is “certainly a flop in some departments”. This is a remark to which Nick flinches, showing that his own sense of his masculinity is damaged by this failure. In this way, Albee is showing that masculinity is in crisis in a similar way to McEwan in On Chesil Beach; although Nick is supposedly a picture perfect man, the consequences of his decision forced by societal expectations of masculinity has only lead him into an unhappy marriage. What’s more, there is an element of sexual failure for both masculine figures in On Chesil Beach and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? despite outward appearances of virility. In Albee’s case, this could be a suggestion that heterosexual masculinity is in crisis, given that the playwright himself was gay; for McEwan, this is a means to show that traditional masculine traits do not automatically lead to sexual fulfilment and therefore that such traditional masculinity is in crisis.
The most crucial method that Albee in particular utilises to portray a world in which masculinity is in crisis and men are the weaker sex is through creating reversals of traditional gender roles in the relationships in his works. McEwan also does this to a certain extent; for example in On Chesil Beach, Florence is shown to have some masculine qualities, particularly when she is in her music environment. She is described as “the undisputed leader” of her Ennismore Quartet, to the extent that some critics have even labelled her as “quite bossy”. What’s more, Florence is the one who begins the fateful move to the bed on her wedding night, playing the part of the initiator which could be seen as a traditionally male role; this is a part she also plays at the beginning of their relationship, as she speaks the first words at their first meeting at a gathering of the CND. These characteristics are reinforced by her rather ‘masculine’ appearance; she is described as having “a strong jaw”, and is “big-boned”. By doing this, McEwan is showing that although Edward is a typical masculine figure he is not necessarily the only strong presence in the relationship, potentially meaning that men are no longer the dominant sex.
In Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, the most prominent role reversal is in the case of Martha and George’s relationship. Martha dominates George for most of the play; she claims that “I wear the pants in this house because somebody’s got to” and that her arm has “gotten tired of whipping [George]”. This indicates her desire for George to “assert his strength” as a real man against her “many masculine qualities… [which] feed off of George’s emasculation.” This aforementioned emasculation is shown throughout the play in many forms; firstly in the revelation that George was not deemed suitable to succeed Martha’s father as president of the university. At the time this play was written, in 1962, only 37% of working aged women were in employment so it was not seen as viable for a woman to take over such as high profile role, meaning that Martha’s chosen husband would be the likely successor. Unfortunately George cannot fulfil this expectation, or as
Martha puts it, “he didn’t have it in him…[he] didn’t have much…push… he was… a FLOP!”. This sentence is an affront on two aspects of George’s life; evidently his career, but also his sexual ability – given that ‘flop’ implies an inability to get an erection – whilst the fact that George lacks “push” furthers the point that he is not necessarily able to play the role of a traditionally masculine figure either in work or in bed. This evidently truly hurts George and his fragile sense of his own masculinity because when he asks Martha to stop talking about it, the stage direction shows him to be ‘almost crying.’ Also on the subject of George’s career success, Martha expresses regret about the fact that he has never been head of the History Department and often reminds George of this; he tells Nick that “Martha tells me often, that I am in the History Department … as opposed to being the History Department … in the sense of running the History Department.” However, probably the most shocking case of George’s emasculation – or Martha’s dominance – for the audience to take in is when Martha tells her guests about a historic boxing match between her and George. During a taunting from his father in law over his reluctance to fight, Martha put on her boxing gloves and clocked George “right in the jaw” causing him to fall “flat … in a huckleberry bush”. In response to this anecdote being aired, George points a ‘short-barrelled shotgun’ at the back of Martha’s head and, whilst this particular gun only has a parasol in it, this is indicative of George’s masculinity being in crisis as a malfunctioning shotgun clearly symbolises his sexual impotency and the disclosure of this secret places George directly in contrast with the seemingly more masculine Nick, who was a boxing champion. This inversion of roles is not the only one to be found in Albee’s play; Nick is also shown to be deserving of some stereotypes often levelled at women – namely, that he was planning to sleep his way to the top of the Biology department, or as he puts it, “plough a few pertinent wives”, and also that “[his] marriage was only initiated because of Honey’s [hysterical] pregnancy coupled by her father’s wealth”. Furthermore, Nick goes from being a sex symbol at the beginning of the play, when he is “right at the meat of things”, to being simply a “houseboy” at the end, which symbolises a world in which classic values of masculinity are falling from their desirable pedestal, suggesting that masculinity is in crisis and that men are the weaker sex as Martha is the houseboy’s master.
Finally, McEwan and Albee both use parents as a vessel to present a world in which masculinity is in crisis and men are the weaker sex through the portrayal of these parents. As Christopher Tayler points out, “both characters’ parents are vivid presences” in On Chesil Beach, and this is particularly true of Geoffrey Ponting, Florence’s father. Throughout the novel, Ponting is depicted as ultra-masculine and very aggressive too; a successful businessman, he has the image of a typical alpha-male. This aspect of his character is most profoundly shown during a tennis match between him and his future son-in-law Edward, which echoes a similar squash match in one of McEwan’s other novels Saturday. The narrator describes Ponting’s “fury” whenever Edward managed to win a single point, stating that any unforced errors on his part “brought him to near screaming [pitch]”. The narrator then goes on to note that Ponting “did not just want to win, or win easily; he needed every last point”. The fact that Ponting is made so extremely competitive by McEwan suggests that Ponting’s own masculinity is in fact exceedingly fragile, or he would not be so concerned about such minuscule points lost to another man. This sense of fragile masculinity is also increased by Geoffrey’s appearance; according to the narrator, he “resembled a giant foetus” which is in direct contradiction to his overtly masculine personality. Another, slightly more sinister facet of such hyper-masculinity is the allusions to sexual abuse of Florence by Geoffrey as a child, which run throughout the novel. As she is lying on the marital bed, Florence has an unprompted flashback to her childhood; "Here came the past, anyway, the indistinct past. It was the smell of the sea that summoned it. She was twelve years old, lying still like this, waiting, shivering in the narrow bunk with polished mahogany sides … It was late in the evening, and her father was moving about the dim cramped cabin, undressing, like Edward now”. The subconscious nature of this memory suggests something that Florence wants to forget, but can’t;
nor “will [she ever] be able to enunciate it”. This intimation of abuse could stem from McEwan’s own family life; he has described his father – an army officer – as “quite terrifying” and has said that there were instances of domestic abuse in his household. Incest is also a theme that McEwan has explored in previous works, such as in the relationship between brother and sister Jack and Julie in The Cement Garden. Geoffrey Ponting’s potential sexual abuse of his own daughter also presents a world in which masculinity is in crisis, as no true man would ever sink to such abhorrent depths.
There is a similarly overly-masculine figure depicted in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Martha’s father. He originally appears as a classic alpha male; president of the University, Martha idolises the man who she calls ‘daddy’, proudly announcing that he is “quite a guy” and “a strong man”. Martha also often uses her father as a model for what George should be like but fails to live up to. However, as the play progresses it is revealed that this idolised man is not the man he was first made out to be. George describes him as having “tiny red eyes…like a white mouse” and this image of a diminutive, malicious figure is compounded by the statement from George that “[Martha’s father] doesn’t really give a damn whether she lives or dies, [he] couldn't care less what happens to his only daughter”. This image presents a world where masculinity is in crisis as a true man loves and cares for his children rather than spurning them. A perfect example of such a man would be Edward’s father Lionel in On Chesil Beach; although he is forced into playing the role of both mother and father given his wife’s brain damage, he is shown to truly care for his children, and is said to often read them bedtime stories which could be seen as a traditionally feminine role.
Florence’s mother, Violet, is also used by McEwan to demonstrate that in 1962, women were no longer weaker than men. She is an “academic with many opinions” who lectures at Oxford University and is part of a thriving intellectual milieu, being friends with Iris Murdoch and other preeminent figures; what’s more, she is described as giving a lecture at a girls’ college about “the benefits of an Oxford education.” These features portray a strong woman who, although lacking in the capacity to fulfil the traditional nurturing role of a mother, is certainly not subservient to her outwardly strong but inwardly fragile husband.
Therefore in both McEwan and Albee’s works, masculinity is shown to be in crisis through a number of means, such as illustrating the flaws and problems encountered by alpha-male figures. However, these works do not provide a blanket criticism of all forms of masculinity; they are instead exploring fluctuating concepts of gender roles, and showing that society’s previously accepted form of masculinity – strong, virile, aggressive – is being countered by newer forms brought about by the Sexual Revolution. Another side effect of this monumental change is that men are shown to no longer be in an assumed position of dominance, in some occasions being weaker than their female counterparts, as evidenced by Albee’s figure of George.