SOURCE: Hart, Lynda. “Doing Time: Hunger for Power in Marsha Norman's Plays.” Southern Quarterly 25, no. 3 (spring 1987): 67-79.

In the following essay, Hart discusses the central theme of women's quest for freedom, control, and autonomy in Getting Out and 'night, Mother.

Marsha Norman became a celebrity in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, even before she received the Pulitzer Prize for 'night, Mother (1983), the play that raised national expectations for this new woman's voice in the American theatre. Norman responded to the public acclaim with a metaphor that powerfully conveys the playwright's feeling of imprisonment: “I'm in a holding cell in an ancient Greek dungeon and the next morning, these priests are going to cut open the heart of a pigeon. What they find in this pigeon's heart will determine whether I'm crowned, whether I'm executed, or whether I can just walk back into the crowd unnoticed” (Mootz). In this...