Bonnin - Wit

In Margaret Edson’s play, “Wit” Vivian, a professor and scholar of 17th century poetry, is ill with stage four ovarian cancer. The play presents Vivian as a strong, determined and independent woman who employs her dominion of word play and metaphysical poetry as her only weapon to combat her reality( or the disease), which will ultimately kill her. However, as her condition worsens the audience observes Vivian’s gradual abandonment of the convoluted and her new preference for simplicity. Vivian’s doctor, Jason, serves as an interesting parallel to Vivian’s character, as they are very similar, and through his treatment of her she is capable of learning some important life lessons.

As Nancy Franklin clearly states it, in the play “Bearing is playing games with words, but words will not save her, as she herself knows” (Franklin). She is a scholar and a powerful one at that, with countless honors and recognitions in her name, but in this case her wit and intellect are no match for cancer. Ironically, Jason, one of her doctors, was once one of her students and admired her for being a hard teacher. Franklin views the juxtaposition of these two characters as an “open-and-shut irony,” seeing as Jason is very much like Vivian in terms of his interest in research and total lack thereof in patients. Jason reminds Vivian of the way she used to treat her students and makes her regret it: “So. The young doctor, like the senior scholar, prefers research to humanity. At the same time the senior scholar, in her pathetic state as simpering victim, wishes the young doctor would take more interest in personal contact. Now I suppose we shall see, through a series of flashbacks, how the senior scholar ruthlessly denied her simpering students the touch of human kindness she now seeks” (Edson, 58-59). However, Franklin also views this parallel as a flaw in the play, seeing as Jason’s similarity to her and the fact that he was her student is all a little too predictable and neat. Still, I believe that it was necessary for Vivian to see herself through the eyes of one of her “victims,” so that she could finally grow as a human in the “eight-month course of cancer treatment” (Edson, 31) that he was now conducting. Her lesson, as she saw it, would be to learn to suffer, but she was also learning about the importance of kindness.

Towards the end of the play the audience sees Vivian unwrap herself from her scholarly armor and seek out basic human interaction. She needs simplicity at this late stage in her disease. She needs peace: “Now is a time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness” (Edson, 69). These are things she never gave her students, not even when they were experiencing the loss of a family member, and like her, Jason would be withholding. However, Vivian has Susie by her side, a loving, care-giving nurse, who “embodies the milk condensed form of human kindness” (Franklin), who helps her retain her dignity and her newfound humanity as she passes on to the other side.