SOURCE: Demastes, William W. “Jessie and Thelma Revisited: Marsha Norman's Conceptual Challenge in 'night, Mother.” Modern Drama 36, no. 1 (March 1993): 109-19.

In the following essay, Demastes explores how 'night, Mother addresses issues of universal relevance as well as issues specific to feminism.

MAY:

Mother, this is not enough. […] 

MOTHER:

Will you never have done … revolving it all? 

(Beckett's Footfalls)¹

It has been over a decade since Marsha Norman's play 'night, Mother was first produced (1981) and shortly after won the Pulitzer Prize (1983). During those years, feminist critics have both praised it and attacked it as a discourse on the condition of women in (post)modern society, disagreeing among themselves on whether to applaud the play's positive virtues of presenting female entrapment in a male-centered ideology or to condemn the play's defeatist resolution of suicide in the face of that entrapment. Beyond this character-based debate has arisen the equally heavily debated...