Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Rachel Blau Duplessis

Critical Essay by Rachel Blau Duplessis

SOURCE: "In the Bosom of the Family: Evasions in Edward Albee," in Recherches Anglaises et Américaines, No. V, Summer,, 1972, pp. 85-96.

In the following essay, Duplessis argues that in his plays Albee takes "questions of power, work, failure or success and privatiz[es them, making social issues appear exclusively as family issues, and solv[es] them as if they were family issues. "]

This is an essay about Edward Albee's family plays, taking Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) as the center of interest, but also treating A Delicate Balance (1966) and, to a lesser extent, The American Dream (1960).¹ Secondarily, it is an essay about the relation of a literary work to its historical context, taking these plays as a test case of a hypothesis about that relationship.

We are used to considering a literary work as a unity. In appreciating or analyzing art, we tend to harmonize it, smoothing...
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