In The Zoo Story, Albee showed us the results of lack of communication and inability to the love. In The American Dream and The Sand Box, we saw the emptiness of a family’s life the destruction of Mommy’s love. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the struggle for dominance in a barren marriage became a major theme. The themes of A Delicate Balance mature some earlier situations and characters and are not void of conflicts, illusions, and false perception, or rather, the reality of the “American Dream.” The arrival of a couple claiming Agnes and Tobias as their “best friends in the whole world”(57 ), brings the family members to a crisis as they each have to fight to preserve the comfortable balance of their lives.
The characters in A Delicate Balance are quite developed from the earlier “Mommy” and “Daddy” seen in Albee’s The American Dream and The Sandbox. In this play based on the emptiness, loss and limits of love, Agnes and Tobias are at the center. Agnes especially. In fact, all the characters are described in reference to Agnes, for example Tobias is “her husband, a few years older” (Albee, “The Players”). Agnes, the major point of reference opens the first scene contemplating insanity, making the equilibrium of this family clearly threatened. And Tobias expresses his faith in her with “There is no saner woman on earth” (13).
Act I of the play takes place Friday night, sets forth some insight to the characters, and presents the conflicts. Agnes opens the play wondering about the fate of her mind. She does not find the thought of insanity unpleasant but she does realize that Tobias is dependent on her and therefor she “could never do it – go adrift” (13). According to John MacNicholas, the core of the play is concerned with loss (16). The loss of Agnes would essentially be the loss of Tobias.
We can see that Agnes’ and Tobias’ perceptions of Claire differ and that what appears to Agnes as an addiction is willful according to Claire. Tobias sides with Claire and Agnes threatens to lose her mind. Claire holds the secret of Tobias’ infidelity above his head to exert power while she ironically tests Tobias’ commitment to his friend Harry before Edna and Harry arrive. Tobias could have external reason for his consistent tolerance of Claire. Ruby Cohn suggests, “Claire may be the nameless upended girl whom Tobias and Harry seduced” (42). That Summer of infidelity according to Claire is the only thing Tobias and Harry really have in common. When asked if he would give the shirt off his back, Tobias supposes he would. He imagines so but the actual act of sacrifices proves his love for them incomplete. The love in this family is distorted by greed and emptiness underneath but appears to be sincere. As John MacNicholas puts it, “surfaces are ordered and neat; the undercurrents are unaprecieved , or at least unacknowledged – hence dangerous” (16).
Tobias tells a cat story that is comparable to Jerry’s dog story in The Zoo Story. The unexplainable turning from friend to foe of the cat confuses Tobias and so instead of living a life of being ignored and disliked by the cat, Tobias has the cat put to sleep. He eliminates the problem. “As Tobias kills the cat, he will effectively kill his friends, Harry and Edna, when he denies them a home” (Cohn 39). The way Tobias acts is self defense, ” The death of the cat maintains Tobias’ delicate emotional balance in spite of his bad conscience” and when Edna and Harry are made to be gone, it is the same act of self preservation (Cohn 38). Claire wishes Tobias to eliminate her problem, Agnes but in that case for Tobias ” ‘Love’ is not the problem”(Albee 46). So, Claire will just have another drink and maintain her sanity.
Once Julia has arrived, the pressure is put on Agnes and Tobias to remove the couple from the house and especially from Julia’s room. Julia’s concern is more of a territorial one. She is overwhelmed with self pity and she wants what is hers, what she has always had. “Part of Julia’s role in the play is to mirror in an intense fashion her parents’ habit of avoiding the consequences of decisions they have made” (MacNicholas 16). Julia has married four times and has always returned home. She protects the things she knows are rightfully hers like a place in her parents’ home. Julia also shows an unusual fondness of Claire. As they seem to share a bond unavailable between Julia and her mother, Julia refers to Agnes as “combination . . . pope, and . . . nanny” (89). Her mother does not listen while Claire is very interested in her troubles. Tobias, we learn, has not been much of a father to Julia. He does not share great communication with his daughter either.
Julia’s lack of training in effective communication becomes apparent in the play. Once the confrontation with Edna and Harry begins in ACT II, Julia is reduced to the simple exclamation “They Want!” (106). When to verbal attempt to correct things fails, Julia goes for her father’s gun, and for the traits inherited from her father. Like the cat to whom Tobias pleaded, Edna and Harry would have been eliminated. Julia’s ability to control expires and she tearfully explodes, “getthemoutofheregetthemoutofhere . . . ” (119).
Once again we find the sterility in this house hold to be familiar of other plays. Like the “Bumble” killed in The American Dream, the son of Agnes and Tobias, Teddy, has died. Unlike Martha and George, Agnes and Tobias are very realistic about this loss. But it has caused another loss, Tobias has left the bed of Agnes. He feared having to relive that tragic scene if another child was conceived so eliminated the possibilities. This regular absence is altered at the arrival of the unwelcome guests. For the night all the other bedrooms are full, Tobias goes to Agnes’ room. The mother and father of this scenario have failed in parenting much like those of the earlier plays. The death of the son and Julia’s failure to reproduce will eventually terminate this family’s existence. And there will then be “nothing.”
The basis for existence in this family has been set. The mother wants to be a man and runs the show. The father has been a failure at fathering. The daughter has failed at both marriage and producing grandchildren. The sister who is a drunk sees everything very clearly and is less affected by this whole ordeal than anyone: she never losses her sleeping place or faces any major alterations. The visiting couple who are Julia’s Godparents have no real family of their own and are “like” Agnes and Tobias. They all have their place.
Ruby Cohn applies a quotation from the Butler of Tiny Alice to describe the delicate balance: It “is walking on the edge of abyss, but is balancing” (36). Edna and Harry lost their security and their place so the attempt to recreate it at the home of their very best friends. The visiting couple take on the roles of Julia’s parents which fires Julia’s contempt. “Rather being like Agnes and Tobias, Edna and Harry are the same as Agnes and Tobias – minus a family” (Cohn 40).
The plague that the couple brings with them is the “failure of love, which is death” (Cohn 40). Harry represents his deficiencies just by his learning of the French language. Harry is missing the vital component: he has the words but not the accent, the part that gives life to a language. Meanwhile, before the discovery their being “alone,” Edna is doing her needlepoint, or as John MacNicholas describes it “knit[ing] the myriad of strands” (16). She is constantly reproducing but not changing. The couple is lacking in vitality, Harry has been having shortness of breath, they are alone, and they are going to die. “They were frightened because there was nothing” (Cohn 40).
Tobias learns that his love for Edna and Harry has limits. He knows in Act III that they would not have taken him and his wife in. Tobias is “horrified at the admission of bankruptcy of forty years of conventionalized friendship” (MacNicholas 16). From the changes made in the sleeping arrangements, namely Agnes and Tobias, the abrupt arrival could be helpful to that area of the marriage. Agnes uses this incompleteness to exercise her power over Tobias to arouse emotions that frustrate Tobias to the point of taking over the crisis of the unwelcome house guests.
These two families exercise the emptiness found in the “American Dream.” Edna and Harry live in the same suburban community with Agnes and Tobias. They are both a part of what is called “the club” (48 ), are well educated, and well off financially. Agnes and Tobias have a family, Edna and Harry do not. There is unsatisfying love in Agnes’ family. And no one is appreciated. The love demonstrated is tainted by greed, self pity, and limited “by want – lack and wish” (Cohn 41). The truth is spoken by Claire when she says to Tobias, “you love Agnes and Agnes loves Julia and Julia loves me and I love you” (46). Love is present, kind of, but it is not sufficiently whole. The responsibility of maintaining the family is taken by Agnes. “I shall . . .keep this family in shape. I shall maintain it; hold it” (88).
Change is persistently combated but can not be totally prevented. Maybe that is why Agnes wouldn’t mind “going adrift.” The acknowledgment of death by Harry and Edna brings them to the mercy of there friends. They are not accepted because the love in the household does not allow room for this unpredicted crisis. The play sets forth the major themes of loss, and the “souring side of love” with in it’s limits (Cohn 38). Truth is stained, concealed, and hidden. Connecting the characters is nothing more than blood and in Agnes’ own words ” Such . . . silent . . . sad, disgusted . . . love” (143).
As the morning begins, we are reminded by the sunrise at the end of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Somehow, we know that Agnes’ family will survive. They have been shaken up but will recompose now that the threat is gone. Those conflicts and deficiencies may be forgotten as Agnes suggests but they will not go away.
Albee, Edward. A Delicate Balance. New York: Pocket Books, 1966.
Cohn, Ruby. Edward Albee. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1969.
MacNicholas, John. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1978.
Reference:
- Albee, Edward. A Delicate Balance. New York: Pocket Books, 1966. Cohn, Ruby. Edward Albee. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1969. MacNicholas, John. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1978.
