A Psychoanalytic Feminist Study Of Marsha Norman's Getting Out And 'Night, Mother

Marsha Norman is one of the most outstanding women playwrights in America. She produced in 1979 her debut Getting Out, which aroused enormous attention of the dramatic critics. Then in 1983, she won the Pulitzer Prize for'night, Mother, which further established her solid position in the American literary world.In Marsha Norman's plays, the reality is unfair and cruel to her heroines. This is best illustrated in Getting Out and'night, Mother. Arlie in Getting Out is a victim of family abuse. She is sexually molested by her father and ignored by her mother. The familial dysfunction drives her into rebellious psychology, and finally she embarks on the criminal road and is sentenced for eight years of imprisonment, but the life is still difficult after her getting out. The title itself is a great satire.'night, Mother describes the inner world of the women who suffer from frustration and distress in the personal communication. The play is confined to the smallest cast with only two characters, the mother and the daughter. Marsha Norman discusses a permanent topic—survival. She presents a modern American woman's mental world of a repressed personality just through the abundant dialogues between Jessie and her mother. Jessie resorts to suicide to claim back her long-lost autonomy.This thesis aims to make a study of the female identity in the two plays with the help of Nancy Chodorow's psychoanalytic feminist theories. Both Jessie's death and the final survival of Arlene are actually a kind of search for an independent identity. Chodorow's object-relations theory is especially useful in the discussion of the development and change of female psychology and the search for the self identity.In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the thesis is composed of three chapters.The introduction introduces the background of Marsha Norman and her two major works as well as the current research on her plays in domestic and overseas countries. It also introduces Chodorow's object-relations theory, foregrounding the relationship between mother and daughter from a psychoanalytic perspective. The first chapter focuses on Getting Out. Applying Chodorow's object-relations theory that the establishment of self identity is based on the split with mother, it analyzes the relationship between mother and daughter. The mother in the play can't assume the role of Object, neither can she accept new Arlene. So Arlene can't get nourishments from her whether in spirit or material aspects. The mother plays a negative role in the growth of the daughter and their relationship proves to be a failure.The second chapter dwells on the play'night, Mother. The protagonist Jessie can not get nourishments from her mother either. Although Jessie and her mother live under the same roof, they become"the closest strangers". Marsha Norman presents Jessie's repressed spiritual world and her choicelessness in her own life in the play.The third chapter centers on the different choices that Arlie and Jessie make when they are confronted with the powerlessness in their life. Arlene finds a surrogate-mother in Ruby. With the support from the female community, she gains the courage to start a new life. On the contrast, Jessie adopts an extreme way of suicide to claim back her autonomy. Suicide becomes an intended choice. In this sense, Jessie also manages to survive.The conclusion is the summary of the analysis. By employing Chodorow's object-relations theory, this thesis reaches the conclusion that Marsha Norman provides a penetrating insight into the relationship between mother and daughter in her plays and its impact on the daughter's identity formation. The two different choices of her women characters, both the renascence and the suicide, are actually strenuous search of women for their cohesive self and integrated identity.