In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)

When Catherine cannot produce enough milk to feed her baby, her husband treats the issue as an unemotional medical problem that is easily solved by hiring a wet nurse. Catherine, however, sees the problem as a personal failure in her abilities as a mother. Catherine feels obligated to be a good mother as an essential part of her gender identity. She ascribes emotional significance to breastfeeding and believes that the act of feeding her baby is how the child learns to love her as a mother. While the only real requirement for a wet nurse is a healthy milk supply, Catherine has reservations about allowing a stranger to feed her baby because she believes that the child absorbs her morality while breastfeeding. Twice in the play, Dr. Givings says that Catherine’s milk supply isn’t adequate, a phrase that Catherine internalizes and then throws back at her husband when he refuses to kiss her and bring her to orgasm at the same time.

Mr. Daldry offers Elizabeth’s services as a wet nurse without consulting her, and Elizabeth’s reluctant acquiescence to feed Catherine’s baby demonstrates that even after the Civil War and emancipation, a black woman’s body is not her own. Elizabeth endures the invasiveness of a medical exam and then the raw pain of giving away her dead son’s milk to another child. To Elizabeth, motherhood transcends the lessons she learned her entire life about religion and faith, which she rejects when her son dies. Leo falls in love with Elizabeth and paints her as the Virgin Mary, centralizing her femininity on the impossible combination of chastity and motherhood. Leo shapes his perception of Elizabeth on an illusion that ignores the existence of her husband and two children and sees her as doe-eyed and innocent. As he explains to Catherine, Leo believes that the ideal woman is unfinished and “on the verge of knowing herself” (79). These are condescending descriptions that imply that Leo wants the power of teaching a woman who she is.

At the end of the play, Elizabeth explains to Catherine that her husband saw the painting, and although he loved it, he asked her to quit the job as a wet nurse. Elizabeth admits that she hadn’t wanted to take the job because she, like Catherine, sees breastfeeding as intimate and meaningful. Elizabeth’s husband, who never appears in the play, doesn’t share this understanding since he permits his wife to be a wet nurse but draws the line at the intimacy of the painting. To Elizabeth, milk equals life, and giving Lotty the milk that was meant to sustain her son is taking life away from him, despite the fact that he is already dead. When Elizabeth does bond with Lotty, Catherine is desperately envious of Elizabeth for being adequate as a woman where she feels inadequate, both in her ability to breastfeed and in attracting Leo’s interest. As her milk dries up completely, Catherine feels insufficient as a woman and therefore reluctant to have a second child. In a similar way, Sabrina’s inability to have a child makes her feel so deficient as a woman that she becomes weak and nervous and requires medical treatment.