The mother as the Other: A psychoanalytic and feminist reading of motherhood in Ibsen, O'Neill and Pinter (Eugene O'Neill, Harold Pinter, Henrik Ibsen)

On presenting “The Bodily Encounter with the Mother” at the Montreal conference on “Women and Madness” in May 1981, Luce Irigaray brought us to the realization that desire for the Mother and Mother's desire is “what is forbidden by the law of the father, of all fathers.” As an extreme representation of women, the Mother has always been “the Other” in the paternal-masculine imagination. Like other women, the Mother bears value only in that she can be exchanged. Her biological body as well as her social body carries weight in men's exchange for power. Her identity is decided by men and with reference to her relations with the other members of the family. At the same time, her own desires are neither recognized nor satisfied. Existing as a subordinate but indispensable part of man's life, the mother stands for male aspirations, satisfies man's needs for protection and spiritual support but sometimes becomes a scapegoat for man's misbehavior. However, the process of inferiorization and marginalization of the Mother is accompanied by her constant struggle to search for an identity of her own. Her defiance against patriarchy is particularly manifested in her effort either to control the son or to deny her maternal role.; This dissertation, by analyzing the many mother figures in the plays of Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill and Harold Pinter, aims at presenting how the Mother is marginalized as the second sex in the male discourse and how she attempts to defy male objectification and to assert her own identity in patriarchal society. Theories of psychoanalysis and feminism, those of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Simone de Beauvoir, Nancy Chodorow, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray in particular, are used as a theoretical framework for interpretation. My study shows that feminist theories are of great help in understanding motherhood as represented in the selected plays of these writers. These theories offer particular insight into the problem of female identity. The discussion of the plays in light of each other reveals the different perspectives undertaken by these playwrights in their treatment of motherhood. Whereas Ibsen presents the issue of female identity by portraying a group of women/mothers who pursue an individual self but are confined within the archetypal social roles, O'Neill portrays female characters who attempt to seek individuality in an inner psychological space, and Pinter presents heroines who struggle futilely to deconstruct male discourse and who try to find a space of freedom in the archetypal social roles with which patriarchy endows them. In the meanwhile, my study also shows some of the fundamental problems with feminist theories concerning their relationship with psychoanalysis, the establishment of a female discourse, and the mother-daughter bond.