Lacanian Psychoanalytical Theories in Marsha Norman’s ‘Night, Mother

Alieyh Alsadat Jafari ,Shahram Kiaei

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.3p.138

Abstract

Marsha Norman’s ‘Night, Mother (1983), is a great American play with psychological basis and it is considered as a feminist play. The present paper investigates it in the light of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theories which serve as a methodology in psychoanalytic criticism. Lacan knows the human psyche formed by the three interacting ‘orders’ of the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real. He argues that the roles of ‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘Object petit a’, ‘Jouissance’, ‘the Name-of-the-Father’, ‘Big Other’ and ‘others’ are also significant in affecting one’s psyche. The characters of ‘Night, Mother are Lacanian ‘subjects’ whose lives have been embodiments of Lacan’s psychoanalytical theories, especially Jessie whose disorders, behaviors, reactions to the ‘others’, frustration, committing suicide, and death indicate that many familial, social and mental issues have affected her psyche, and they are crystalized by psychoanalytical theories of Lacan in this paper.

Highlights

This paper tends to apply Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theories to Marsha Norman’s ‘Night, Mother (1983)
Marsha Norman’s ‘Night, Mother (1983), is a great American play with psychological basis and it is considered as a feminist play
The present paper investigates it in the light of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theories which serve as a methodology in psychoanalytic criticism

Summary

Introduction

This paper tends to apply Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theories to Marsha Norman’s ‘Night, Mother (1983). In spite of being a psychological and famous play, Marsha Norman’s ‘Night, Mother has not much been the subject of psychoanalytic criticism, and most of the researches done on it are dealt with ‘Feminism’. They scrutinize feministic subjects and questions of women’s identity, or they deal with the concepts of ‘disability’ and ‘depression’. A dissertation written in 1994 with the topic of “De-tangling the web: Mother-daughter relationships in the plays of Marsha Norman, Lillian Hellman, Tina Howe, and Ntozake Shange” by Karen Foster investigates Norman’s ‘night, Mother through the eyes of Lacan, Freud, and other great psychoanalysts, and its Lacanian reading deals with Lacan’s ‘Imaginary’ and ‘Symbolic’ orders. ‘Night, Mother has been performed in the theatres of many countries and studied in drama and literature classes, so reading it through psychoanalytic criticism in the light of psychoanalytical theories of Jacques Lacan would expand the knowledge of drama and literature students who read or perform it

Lacan’s psychoanalysis

Conclusion