Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)
Studies - Réka Cristian: Edward Albee's Castings
game of the spouses with Jack's "I'm leaving you". This sentence will later develop into a spontaneous research into their common past, that is, into a double-edged talk. "Talk" is the word with which Gillian defines her sentences when she says that she is "talking as not to scream". With very efficient verbal devices, Gillian and Jack repeat the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? game of love-hate that Martha defines as "sad, sad, sad". Gillian paraphrases Martha when she further echoes the melancholic dictum about their marriage: "sad husband, sad wife, sad day, sad life" 6 0. While in their matrimonial games the "rhetoric is beyond" Jack, both attempt to "de-Siamese" themselves into separate entities in different ways. Jack repeats his wish many times, but Gillian, as most of the women characters of Albee, holds the final punchline about the nature of the human bonds and individuation in marriage: Gillian: ...marriage does not make two people one, it makes two people two —a good marriage, a useful marriage- makes individuals! That when two people chose to be together though they're strong enough to be alone, then you have a good marriage. Has ours been a good marriage? Are we two? Clearly we've not become each other, we've become ourselves —I guess we have, and maybe for the first time. With any luck we've not compensated, we've complemented. 6 1 In the process of duality, Gillian is writing a diary she calls The Book of Days', which is "more of a journal", a record of their encounters during marriage. In its functional aspect this diary is similar to the book of George in Virginia Woolf, which is the story of the fictional boy, which was then George. In metonymical terms, the two books are substitutes for love/child/son. As she says, it is "a record of our touching". Gillian recognizes that her life with Jack is a chain of "successes and failures" and that they had "good times and bad". Jack is sometimes "Mrs. Stud himself' while other times "ya don't have it in ya" (emphasis mine). This deictic it is similar to the one that is uttered in The American Dream , can be compared to the euphemized Teddy in A Delicate Balance or the son in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?and the "this" that "happened" in The Zoo Story. In the process of individuation and complementation which turns Gillian 6 0 Edward Albee Marriage Play (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1995), 9. 6 1 Ibid., 39-40. 160
