Nightwood

The threads of motherhood, motherlessness, the desire to mother, the desire to be mothered, and the desire to undo motherhood recur throughout the novel. This is apparent immediately, from the moment Felix is birthed and then swiftly orphaned in the opening scene. Formed in part by the loss of his mother, and thus a connection to his past, Felix is looking for a mother in Robin, and wants her to mother a son for him as a way of connecting his past and his future.

Robin, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to undo her transition to motherhood. Ironically, Robin plays at motherhood in her both her relationship with Nora and Jenny with the aid of a doll, a stand-in for the child they cannot have together. She sometimes acts like a child who needs mothering, as Nora describes her “playing with her toys, trains, animals and cars to wind up, and dolls and marbles and soldiers” (156).

The doctor and Nora are similar in that their desire to be mothers is unachievable. Nora is referred to by the doctor as someone who "should have had a thousand children" (107). The doctor, in turn, wishes that he could be some man’s wife and “toss up a child for him every nine months" (98).

Guido’s slow development and fragile personality serve as an example of the effects of maternal abandonment, and the negative ripple effects of forcing a woman into the role of mother against her will. In the case of Sylvia, the reader encounters another child who for unknown reasons is motherless and living with Jenny, a friend of the child’s aunt. Sylvia’s infatuation with Robin may be a distorted manifestation of her desire for a mother figure.

The overarching theme of motherhood is bound up with either loss, disappointment, abandonment, denial, repulsion, or unfulfilled dreams. No matter each character’s particular connection to the ideas of mother and motherhood, it is a complicated and unhappy one. 

As evident in its title, much of the novel is set at night and fixates on the night as a site of base desires, illicit activity, animalistic tendencies, and a space where one’s true self surfaces, for better or worse. Several chapter titles directly reference the night, including “Night Watch” and “Watchman, What of the Night?.” The chapter “La Somnambule,” translating to “The Sleepwalker,” is an allusion to a famous 1827 opera about a sleepwalker (a nod to many of the character’s interest in opera) and also symbolizes Robin’s proclivity for heading off into the night alone. On a deeper level, it points to Robin’s social disconnection and inability to take responsibility for her actions, leading her to move through life as if she were sleepwalking.

The negative influence of the night is so strong that it leads Nora to consider its role in Robin’s betrayal, almost finding the night’s dark pull stronger than Robin’s own free will. It would be easy to categorize Nightwood’s use of day and night as binary, and employing day versus night as equating to good versus evil; however, O’Connor breaks down the notion that this dichotomy is universal during a lengthy, philosophical, stream of consciousness speech after Nora asks him to tell her everything he knows about the night. He notes that the night is typically the time when one’s subconscious can roam freely, and especially crucial to his argument is his insistence that various cultures perceive of night and day differently. He believes that Americans cleanly divide night and day because they are fearful of the improprieties and potentially-immoral behavior that might occur if they allow their night consciousness to blend into the day. Alternatively, the French mentality signifies a blending of night and day and seems to afford a kind of continual night, embracing the sensuality and “filthiness” that such a thing might elicit (91).