The Curse of Thanatos: A Freudian Approach to Marsha Norman’s ‘Night, Mother

Abstract

Marsha Norman (1947- ) is a well-known American playwright who burdens a heavy task to explore the disturbed psyche of women in the American society. Many of those female figures suffer from the fragile troubled psychology due to social imperfections as divorce, abandonment, unemployment, and lack of communication. These acts will be converted into traumas stored in the unconscious mind as reminiscences, which will indirectly lead to self-destructiveness. Freud attributes the emergence of death instinct to frustration, anger, and depression. This paper will focus on the concept of death from a Freudian perspective; in order to highlight the suicide’s motives dominated the main character of Norman’s ‘Night, Mother. It also demonstrates how Jessie strives to gain her subjectivity and liberty to end her life by committing suicide. Norman has attempted to investigate in this play what threatens and destroys the social and ethical texture of the American family. Keywords: Thanatos, Death, Norman, Freud, Suicide, Jessie.