Long Day's Journey Into Night

“MARY. A look of contemptuous hostility flashes across her face. Doctor Hardy! I wouldn’t believe a thing he said, if he swore on a stack of Bibles! I know what doctors are. They’re all alike. Anything, they don’t care what, to keep you coming to them.

She stops short, overcome by a fit of acute self-consciousness as she catches their eyes fixed on her. Her hands jerk nervously to her hair. She forces a smile. What is it? What are you looking at? Is it my hair—?”

Mary’s distrust of doctors relates to the mental health conditions that she has had in the past and that she continues to have. Her self-consciousness and deflection of her hair is symptomatic of her anxiety, and she is aware that her excitement seems like a potential danger to her husband and sons. She deflects to her hair, even when the topic is doctors, to avoid discussing her actual situation.

“JAMIE. Sneering jealously again. A hick town rag! Whatever bull they hand you, they tell me he’s a pretty bum reporter. If he weren’t your son—

Ashamed again. No, that’s not true! They’re glad to have him, but it’s the special stuff that gets him by. Some of the poems and parodies he’s written are damned good.

Grudgingly again. Not that they’d ever get him anywhere on the big time.

Hastily. But he’s certainly made a damned good start.

TYRONE. Yes. He’s made a start. You used to talk about wanting to become a newspaper man but you were never willing to start at the bottom. You expected—

JAMIE. Oh, for Christ’s sake, Papa! Can’t you lay off me!”

The family’s struggle can be encapsulated in Jamie’s wavering in this passage. He at once wants to put Edmund down to assuage his own feelings of failure and to praise Edmund as an example of the family’s success. There is an odd balance between wanting anyone in the family to succeed and wanting to be the most successful of the family members that keeps everyone from praising each other openly without an insult to follow. Tyrone, too, starts by citing Jamie’s former ambition but then quickly shifts to insulting Jamie for not following that ambition.

“MARY. Knows he is lying—vaguely. Oh. No, I wouldn’t say he was, either.

Changing the subject—forcing a smile. That Bridget! I thought I’d never get away. She told me all about her second cousin on the police force in St. Louis.

Then with nervous irritation. Well, if you’re going to work on the hedge why don’t you go?

Hastily. I mean, take advantage of the sunshine before the fog comes back.

Strangely, as if talking aloud to herself. Because I know it will.

Suddenly she is self-consciously aware that they are both staring fixedly at her—flurriedly, raising her hands. Or I should say, the rheumatism in my hands knows. It’s a better weather prophet than you are, James.

She stares at her hands with fascinated repulsion. Ugh! How ugly they are! Who’d ever believe they were once beautiful?

They stare at her with a growing dread.”

Unlike Jamie’s changes in tone, Mary’s reflect her anxiety and self-consciousness. She both wants to talk with her family and wants them to leave her alone because they make her nervous. She is aware that she is drawing attention to herself, and she only touches on Bridget’s story for a moment before switching to the weather, both innocuous topics, drawing her to her hands as a representation of her poor mental health.

“MARY. If there was only some place I could go to get away for a day, or even an afternoon, some woman friend I could talk to—not about anything serious, simply laugh and gossip and forget for a while—someone besides the servants—that stupid Cathleen!

EDMUND. Gets up worriedly and puts his arm around her. Stop it, Mama. You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing.

MARY. Your father goes out. He meets his friends in barrooms or at the Club. You and Jamie have the boys you know. You go out. But I am alone. I’ve always been alone.”

Though all four family members have issues to work through in the play, Mary is in a unique position as the only woman in the family. As she states, she has nowhere to go or anyone to meet to release the stress and tension of her home life. While the men in the family can go into town and drink in public places, as Edmund does with Shaughnessy, Mary has no such opportunity, leaving her either alone with her thoughts or running the household when she is away from her family. The fact that Edmund glosses over Mary’s complaint reinforces the idea that this issue is unique to Mary, and the men in the family do not understand why she is struggling.

“JAMIE. Hell, how would I know? I’m no Doc.

Abruptly. Where’s Mama?

EDMUND. Upstairs.

JAMIE. Looks at him sharply. When did she go up?

EDMUND. Oh, about the time I came down to the hedge, I guess. She said she was going to take a nap.

JAMIE. You didn’t tell me—

EDMUND. Defensively. Why should I? What about it? She was tired out. She didn’t get much sleep last night.”

In this passage, Jamie deflects from one sensitive subject to the next. Much as they cannot discuss Mary’s illness in front of her, Jamie remembers that he cannot discuss Edmund’s illness with Edmund. However, Edmund is not able to confront his mother’s illness either, so he becomes defensive when Jamie points out Edmund’s negligence. Everyone seems to understand that Mary taking a nap is a bad sign for her mental health, but Edmund is trying to ignore it.

“MARY. Oh, I’d forgotten you’ve been working on the front hedge. That accounts for your sinking into the dumps, doesn’t it?

JAMIE. If you want to think so, Mama.

MARY. Keeping her tone. Well, that’s the effect it always has, isn’t it? What a big baby you are! Isn’t he, Edmund?

EDMUND. He’s certainly a fool to care what anyone thinks.

MARY. Strangely. Yes, the only way is to make yourself not care.”

Jamie’s response to his mother is one of the ways in which Jamie shows his desire to confront his mother about her mental health. Though working in the front exposes Jamie to the neighbors, which is what Mary and Edmund think has upset Jamie at this moment, he is concerned with Mary’s well-being. Rather than acknowledge her son’s concern, Mary deflects into insulting Jamie for his self-consciousness before becoming “strange” as she reflects on her own perspective. She tries to restrain herself for her family, to avoid their judgment, but here she considers making herself not care about her family’s feelings, putting herself first.

“MARY. More upset, grabs Edmund’s arm—excitedly. Stop this at once, do you hear me? How dare you use such language before me!

Abruptly her tone and manner change to the strange detachment she has shown before. It’s wrong to blame your brother. He can’t help being what the past has made him. Any more than your father can. Or you. Or I.”

Mary is beginning to snap as she lashes out at Edmund for effectively defending her against Jamie’s insinuations that she is unwell. First, she is upset about Edmund’s language, but then she shifts into her detached state, in which she repeats the common theme of how people cannot be changed. However, this time, she does not only say that Jamie cannot be changed but that he is not at fault for his defects. In addition, she groups the entire family under that statement, as though their family’s struggles are inevitable, which, for her, they might be.

“MARY. Oh, I’m so sick and tired of pretending this is a home! You won’t help me! You won’t put yourself out the least bit! You don’t know how to act in a home! You don’t really want one! You never have wanted one—never since the day we were married! You should have remained a bachelor and lived in second-rate hotels and entertained your friends in barrooms!

She adds strangely, as if she were now talking aloud to herself rather than to Tyrone. Then nothing would ever have happened.”

Again, Mary is lashing out at each of the family members, but her rant against Tyrone is particularly revealing in that she highlights the root of the issues in the family, as she sees them. Her accusation is that Tyrone has never been a sufficient husband and father, which is why the sons and herself have such resentment toward him and toward each other. Her final statement that “nothing would ever have happened” indicates a desire to undo the entirety of the family, including never having her children.

“MARY. More excitedly. Oh, we all realize why you like him, James! Because he’s cheap! But please don’t try to tell me! I know all about Doctor Hardy. Heaven knows I ought to after all these years. He’s an ignorant fool! There should be a law to keep men like him from practicing. He hasn’t the slightest idea—When you’re in agony and half insane, he sits and holds your hand and delivers sermons on will power!

Her face is drawn in an expression of intense suffering by the memory. For the moment she loses all caution. With bitter hatred. He deliberately humiliates you! He makes you beg and plead! He treats you like a criminal! He understands nothing! And yet it was exactly the same type of cheap quack who first gave you the medicine—and you never knew what it was until too late!”

Though the conversation is about Edmund’s sickness, Mary is thrown into her fury about being prescribed morphine after Edmund’s birth. In part, she is talking about both Tyrone, Hardy, and another doctor who initially gave her morphine, as she feels that all three men have humiliated her by both fighting against, supporting, and criticizing her addiction. Mary is battling with herself to maintain her composure, but here she lets out her frustration with her situation, accurately laying the blame on her initial doctor.

“TYRONE. Yes, and the sooner the better, Hardy said, for him and everyone around him. He claims that in six months to a year Edmund will be cured, if he obeys orders.

He sighs—gloomily and resentfully. I never thought a child of mine—It doesn’t come from my side of the family. There wasn’t one of us that didn’t have lungs as strong as an ox.

JAMIE. Who gives a damn about that part of it!”

Even when discussing Edmund’s illness, Tyrone seems inclined to blame Mary, referencing that Mary’s father died of tuberculosis and claiming that no one on Tyrone’s side of the family caught the illness. Rather than focusing on the situation at hand, Tyrone, like the other family members, shifts to blaming someone for the problem. Jamie, though, stands up for his mother, showing that he is more focused on moving forward as a family than on placing blame.

“TYRONE. With bitter sadness. It’s you who are leaving us, Mary.

MARY. I? That’s a silly thing to say, James. How could I leave? There is nowhere I could go. Who would I go to see? I have no friends.”

Tyrone is referring to Mary’s morphine addiction here, but he does not realize that Mary’s response is also an answer to his concern. Mary notes that she has nowhere to go, which both refers to taking the car out for a drive and to her life with Tyrone. She has nowhere to go except deeper into her addiction, and, rather than helping her, the men of the family are content to place blame, as Tyrone does in this passage.

“MARY. I blame only myself. I swore after Eugene died I would never have another baby. I was to blame for his death. If I hadn’t left him with my mother to join you on the road, because you wrote telling me you missed me and were so lonely, Jamie would never have been allowed, when he still had measles, to go in the baby’s room.

Her face hardening. I’ve always believed Jamie did it on purpose. He was jealous of the baby. He hated him.

As Tyrone starts to protest. Oh, I know Jamie was only seven, but he was never stupid. He’d been warned it might kill the baby. He knew. I’ve never been able to forgive him for that.”

Though Mary begins this passage by taking responsibility for Eugene’s death, their second child, she points to her mother, Tyrone, and Jamie as potentially at fault as well. Tyrone begged Mary to keep him company, echoing Mary’s pleading with Tyrone in this scene, as well as her mother for failing to keep Jamie away from the baby. Most poignantly, Mary notes that Jamie knew he might get Eugene sick, which explains why Mary seems to prefer Edmund to Jamie.

“MARY. Indifferently. No, by the time he comes home he’ll be too drunk to tell the difference. He has such a good excuse, he believes, to drown his sorrows.

CATHLEEN. Philosophically. Well, it’s a good man’s failing. I wouldn’t give a trauneen for a teetotaler. They’ve no high spirits.

Then, stupidly puzzled. Good excuse? You mean Master Edmund, Ma’am? I can tell the Master is worried about him.”

Tyrone’s addiction to alcohol is compared directly to Mary’s morphine addiction here, as the “good excuse” Mary hints at is her morphine addiction. Cathleen stating that she would rather be with someone with an alcohol addiction than someone who abstains from alcohol entirely highlights the difference between the public perception of each drug. Though any drug misuse is detrimental, addiction to alcohol is seen as normal or even valuable, in Cathleen’s view, while Mary’s addiction is only seen as shameful or criminal. The irony is that Tyrone’s excuse for feeding his own addiction is his shame over Mary’s.

“MARY. With stubborn blankness. What are you talking about? What drugstore? What prescription?

Then hastily, as Cathleen stares in stupid amazement. Oh, of course, I’d forgotten. The medicine for the rheumatism in my hands. What did the man say?

Then with indifference. Not that it matters, as long as he filled the prescription.”

It is difficult to tell if Mary is legitimately forgetting her affliction in these moments, as she sometimes feigns ignorance, but, in others like this passage, it seems that she has forgotten the afternoon excursion. Her rheumatism in her hands is the excuse she uses now to acquire morphine, and Cathleen seems to believe that this is the case, while the family does not. In the end, Mary values the morphine more than she values her reputation in town, as shown in her disregard for the drugstore attendant’s comments.

“MARY. I fell in love right then. So did he, he told me afterwards. I forgot all about becoming a nun or a concert pianist. All I wanted was to be his wife.

She pauses, staring before her with unnaturally bright, dreamy eyes, and a rapt, tender, girlish smile. Thirty-six years ago, but I can see it as clearly as if it were tonight! We’ve loved each other ever since. And in all those thirty-six years, there has never been a breath of scandal about him. I mean, with any other woman. Never since he met me. That has made me very happy, Cathleen. It has made me forgive so many other things.”

The final line of this passage appears to overwrite the message Mary conveys in the beginning. Though she is wrapped in nostalgia for a moment, she knows that she has not had the happy marriage that she wanted when she first met Tyrone. The fact that he has not committed adultery is used to “forgive” him for “other things,” but Mary has not forgotten or forgiven those other transgressions. Crucially, when Mary says that she “forgot” about becoming a nun or pianist, it is in the past tense, implying that she remembers those desires now, even if she forgot about them when she first got married, indicating that she regrets choosing marriage over those options.

“MARY. It’s such a pity. Poor Jamie! It’s hard to understand—

Abruptly a change comes over her. Her face hardens and she stares at her husband with accusing hostility. No, it isn’t at all. You brought him up to be a boozer. Since he first opened his eyes, he’s seen you drinking. Always a bottle on the bureau in the cheap hotel rooms! And if he had a nightmare when he was little, or a stomach-ache, your remedy was to give him a tea-spoonful of whiskey to quiet him.”

In discussing Jamie’s failures, Mary breaks into this passage, in which she blames Tyrone for Jamie’s addiction to alcohol. Edmund confirms Mary’s story, and this passage indicates that Tyrone has been addicted to alcohol for a long time, influencing both sons, who also seem dependent on alcohol. Though the sons and Tyrone seem to want to blame the family’s struggles on Mary’s addiction to morphine, Mary sees how her addiction is not significantly different from the addiction to alcohol that Tyrone has taught the children.

“MARY. As though he hadn’t spoken. I had waited in that ugly hotel room hour after hour. I kept making excuses for you. I told myself it must be some business connected with the theater. I knew so little about the theater. Then I became terrified. I imagined all sorts of horrible accidents. I got on my knees and prayed that nothing had happened to you—and then they brought you up and left you outside the door.

She gives a little, sad sigh. I didn’t know how often that was to happen in the years to come, how many times I was to wait in ugly hotel rooms. I became quite used to it.”

The incident Mary recalls here stands in contrast to the instance of her withdrawals that Tyrone brought up earlier, in which Mary ran outside in her nightdress and may have attempted to die by her own hand. Though Mary had that outburst, Tyrone regularly becomes so intoxicated that he cannot manage his way home. Though Mary connects these incidents to the theater, she mentioned earlier that, even at their summer home, Tyrone spends most nights at the Club drinking with his friends, which implies that he still periodically drinks too much. Again, this indicates an imbalance between the different addictions in the play, as Tyrone’s addiction has clearly harmed his family, yet only Mary’s addiction is seen as the cause of the family’s problems.

“MARY: Vaguely. I must go upstairs. I haven’t taken enough.

She pauses—then longingly. I hope, sometime, without meaning it, I will take an overdose. I could never do it deliberately. The Blessed Virgin would never forgive me, then.”

Mary’s suicidal ideation seems connected to her perception of her faith, which contradicts Tyrone’s earlier statements regarding Mary’s lack of faith. Mary does not think that her addiction is a sin, but she understands that suicide would be considered a sin in the Catholic faith. So, though Tyrone says that Mary does not have enough faith to overcome addiction, she does have enough faith to prevent her own death. However, she does wish that she would overdose by accident, which points to the depths of her despair at this point in the play.

“TYRONE. I’m glad you’ve come, lad. I’ve been damned lonely.

Then resentfully. You’re a fine one to run away and leave me to sit alone here all night when you know—

With sharp irritation. I told you to turn out that light! We’re not giving a ball. There’s no reason to have the house ablaze with electricity at this time of night, burning up money!”

Tyrone repeats Mary’s complaint of loneliness in this passage, as he welcomes Edmund home after a night of drinking. His changes in mood reflect the pattern of the family members throughout the play, as he begins with a warm welcome, followed by an insult, but, thinking about Mary’s condition, he shifts his focus to something he can reference in the moment: the lights. In this passage, Tyrone’s frugality is less of a character flaw than a matter of control. Tyrone cannot control his children or his wife, but he can control the household finances as the breadwinner.

“EDMUND. Yes. It’s pretty horrible to see her the way she must be now.

With bitter misery. The hardest thing to take is the blank wall she builds around her. Or it’s more like a bank of fog in which she hides and loses herself. Deliberately, that’s the hell of it! You know something in her does it deliberately—to get beyond our reach, to be rid of us, to forget we’re alive! It’s as if, in spite of loving us, she hated us!”

Edmund figures out the core of each family member’s addiction in this passage, as he realizes that, though they all love each other, they consume alcohol or morphine to escape and protect themselves from confronting the resentment they have built up over the years. Edmund refers to Mary here, but his words can be taken to refer to each other family member as well. Critically, Edmund uses the symbolic fog here, which recalls Mary’s and Edmund’s love of fog to pretend the world does not exist around them.

“EDMUND. I’ve tried to make allowances. Christ, you have to make allowances in this damned family or go nuts! I have tried to make allowances for myself when I remember all the rotten stuff I’ve pulled! I’ve tried to feel like Mama that you can’t help being what you are where money is concerned. But God Almighty, this last stunt of yours is too much! It makes me want to puke! Not because of the rotten way you’re treating me. To hell with that! I’ve treated you rottenly, in my way, more than once. But to think when it’s a question of your son having consumption, you can show yourself up before the whole town as such a stinking old tightwad! Don’t you know Hardy will talk and the whole damned town will know! Jesus, Papa, haven’t you any pride or shame?”

Edmund reframes the discussion in this passage by acknowledging both that Tyrone has done something bad to him and that he has done bad things to Tyrone in the past. Instead of focusing on their family struggle as an interpersonal issue, Edmund encourages Tyrone to look at their family from the outside, noting how Tyrone’s actions are not just harmful to Edmund but to the reputation the family has in town. Tyrone may be able to control his family with finances, but he cannot stop men like Hardy and the men at his club from judging his behavior without understanding Tyrone’s feelings. Though Tyrone may be able to rationalize his decisions to himself, Edmund notes that no one else will see anything other than a cruel parent.

“JAMIE. Huskily. It’s all right. Glad you did. My dirty tongue. Like to cut it out.

He hides his face in his hands—dully. I suppose it’s because I feel so damned sunk. Because this time Mama had me fooled. I really believed she had it licked. She thinks I always believe the worst, but this time I believed the best.

His voice flutters. I suppose I can’t forgive her—yet. It meant so much. I’d begun to hope, if she’d beaten the game, I could, too.

He begins to sob, and the horrible part of his weeping is that it appears sober, not the maudlin tears of drunkenness.”

Jamie unveils his defense mechanism here, noting how his cynicism acts as a form of protection. By always thinking the worst about a situation, he is never disappointed when things do not work out for the best. However, with Mary, Jamie was optimistic that she had overcome her addiction, and he is now feeling “sunk” lower than he has in the past. This time, he is feeling an unprepared disappointment, whereas, in the past, he has always expected the worst to avoid disappointment.

“JAMIE. Kid! You listen! Did it on purpose to make a bum of you. Or part of me did. A big part. That part that’s been dead so long. That hates life. My putting you wise so you’d learn from my mistakes. Believed that myself at times, but it’s a fake. Made my mistakes look good. Made getting drunk romantic. Made whores fascinating vampires instead of poor, stupid, diseased slobs they really are. Made fun of work as sucker’s fame. Never wanted you succeed and make me look even worse by comparison. Wanted you to fail. Always jealous of you. Mama’s baby, Papa’s pet!

He stares at Edmund with increasing enmity. And it was your being born that started Mama on dope. I know that’s not your fault, but all the same, God damn you, I can’t help hating your guts—!”

Despite his drunken speech, indicated by missing and misplaced words, Jamie is honest with Edmund here, hitting a point that the other family members have not. Jamie is venting his true feelings and introspections to Edmund in this passage, revealing that his protective big brother performance is undermined by Jamie’s jealousy of Edmund’s success and the love Edmund receives from their parents. Again, as Tyrone did, Jamie blames Edmund for Mary’s addiction, but he acknowledges in the moment that it is not a fair judgment. Likewise, though Jamie admits to sabotaging Edmund’s life, he is also showing how much he loves his brother by confessing to him and warning him of this pattern.