Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf: Act 2 Summary & Analysis

Nick rejoins George, and Nick explains that his wife is frail and shouldn’t drink, and then tells George that Martha is in the kitchen making coffee. He reiterates that he doesn’t like to get involved in other people’s affairs. George mimics him, and then asks if Nick thinks he enjoys Martha’s ridiculing. Nick remarks that he doesn’t see why George has to subject other people to it as well.

George asks Nick about his wife’s sickness, which Nick describes as occurring fairly frequently. This leads Nick to reveal that he married Honey because of a hysterical pregnancy: he thought she was pregnant, but she turned out not to be. The two husbands laugh together.

George tells a story from his adolescence: when he was in prep school, during Prohibition, he and his friends would go into New York to listen to jazz and drink booze. One night, he says, one of the boys in the group who had accidentally killed his mother with a shotgun some years before, ordered “bergin and water.” After some time, everyone in the gin mill had heard of the boy’s mistaken order and began ordering “bergin” for themselves. At Nick’s prying, George tells what happened to the boy: the next summer, while driving with his learner’s permit and his father next to him, he swerved to avoid a porcupine and hit a tree, and ended up killing his father. He was put into an asylum.

George and Nick continue to chat—Nick asks if George has any daughters, and George responds that he only has the one son, whom he calls a “beanbag.” He tells Nick that he would like to set him straight about something his wife said. Martha interrupts and announces that she and Honey are drinking coffee. George and Martha go back and forth, calling each other by different French insults.

George begins in again on Nick’s marriage, and guesses that, in addition to the hysterical pregnancy, Honey has money. Nick lets on that George’s guess is correct, but adds that he and Honey grew up together. He admits that there was never any particular passion between them. The men refill their glasses, and George asks again about Honey’s money, explaining that he is interested “by the pragmatic accommodation by which you wave-of-the-future boys are going to take over.” George reciprocates by telling Nick that Martha’s money comes from Martha’s father’s very rich second wife.

George explains his interest in Nick by identifying him as a threat. Nick plays along and jokingly describes his sneaky plans for taking over the college. George informs Nick that the best way to gain power is through the faculty wives. Nick infers that he better mount Martha, then, and he and George exchange surprise at the apparent seriousness of the suggestion.

Martha returns, with a very drunken Honey in tow. Martha tells George to apologize to Honey for making her throw up, but Honey interjects that she often gets sick, though the doctors say there’s nothing wrong with her. Martha begins to tell Nick and Honey that their son also used to throw up all the time, whenever he saw George. George retorts that the real reason their son got sick was because Martha would drunkenly “fiddle at him.” They continue, increasingly aggressively, to dispute the causes of their son’s sickness.

Martha mentions another embarrassing disappointment of George’s—that he tried to publish a book, but was prevented by Martha’s father. Honey requests some music for dancing, and George puts on Beethoven’s seventh symphony. Honey gets up and dances by herself, and Martha criticizes the choice of music. George calls Honey “angel tits” and ask if she’ll dance with him. Nick takes offense at this epithet. When a jazzy slow tune begins to play, Martha grabs Nick and begins dancing with him. They dance closely, and then further apart, but still undulating as though they were pressed together.

Martha discloses more of George’s embarrassing history: he wrote a novel, but when her father read the novel he was very shocked to find that it was all about a naughty boy child who killed his mother and father. Martha’s father forbade him from publishing the book. George demands that Martha to stop. When she continues, he rips the record off of the phonograph. She still continues. She reveals that George, after Martha’s father’s threat, threw the book into the fireplace.

George yells at Martha that he will kill her and grabs her by the throat. Nick intervenes, and throws George onto the floor. George asks what other games they cam play now that they’ve exhausted “Humiliate the Host,” and proposes “Hump the Hostess.” Nick appears frightened. Finally George decides they should play a round of “Get the Guests.” George begins to describe what he claims is his second book. The narrative that he recounts is the very story that Nick told him about his marriage to Honey. He begins by describing Nick’s present situation, and then leading into a flashback to “How They Got Married.” When Nick recognizes the story, he tries to keep George from continuing.

By the end of the story, when George is describing how “the Mouse” (his name for Honey) got all puffed up, Honey stands up and declares that she doesn’t like what’s going on. She becomes hysterical as George describes how the Mouse’s “puff went away,” and then turns to her husband and yells at him, “You told them!” Distraught, she grabs at her belly. George abruptly declares, “And that’s how you play Get the Guests.” Honey announces that she’s going to be sick and runs out of the room. Nick promises that he’ll make George regret what he’s done as he leaves to care for his wife.

Martha congratulates George for his performance, judging it to be the most life he’s shown in a while, but then calls him a bastard. George reminds Martha that she had behaved rather viciously herself. She retorts that he can stand it but their guests shouldn’t have to. George warns Martha that she’ll wish she had never mentioned their son. Martha criticizes George for talking as though he were writing one of his “stupid papers”. George calls her “spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded.”

Nick reenters, leaving his wife on the bathroom floor, and apologizes for Honey’s behavior. George leaves with a bucket to get ice for Honey. When George has gone, Martha asks Nick for a cigarette, calls him lover, and slips her hand between his legs. She asks him for a kiss, and Nick reasons that his wife won’t know the difference. In the middle of their kissing, George enters and watches for a moment before leaving, unnoticed. Nick puts his hand inside of Martha’s dress, but Martha tells him to take it easy.

George sings “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and then returns with the ice bucket and says some unintelligible remark to Nick, which Nick brushes off. George offers drinks to Nick and Martha and says that he saw Honey lying on the bathroom floor sucking her thumb, curled up “like a fetus.”

George says that he’s going to go read a book, because he always reads around four o’clock. Martha corrects him that he always reads at four pm, not am, but he absorbs himself nonetheless in his book. She tells George that she and Nick will just amuse themselves. George distractedly endorses her plan. When she tells her husband that she is necking with one of the guests, George tells her “good” and encourages her to go right on. Martha looks upset; she tries to challenge George, but he remains unfazed. George encourages Nick to throw Martha over his shoulder.

Martha calls George a motherfucker, and after kissing Nick, instructs him to wait for her in the kitchen. When Nick has exited, Martha addresses George, threatening to take Nick upstairs. George, now upset, responds, “SO WHAT, MARTHA?” She tells her husband that she’ll make him sorry he made her want to marry him, and then leaves to join Nick. George reads aloud a quote about the fall of the west, “burdened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events.” From offstage, Martha’s laughter and the crashing of dishes can be heard. George throws his book at the chimes and mutters aloud, “You’re going to regret this, Martha.”