Jessie and Thelma Revisited: Marsha Norman's Conceptual Challenge in 'night, Mother

Jessie and Thelma Revisited: Marsha Norman's Conceptual Challenge in 'night, Mother WILLIAM W. DEMASTES [MAY:] Mother, this is not enough. [...] [MOTHER:) Will you never have done ... revolving it all? (Beckett's Footfalls)1 It has been over a decade since Marsha Norman's play '/light, Mother was first produced (1981) and shortly after won the Pulitzer Prize (1983). During those years, feminist critics have both praised it and attacked it as a discourse on the condition of women in (post)modem society, disagreeing among themselves on whether to applaud the play's positive virtues of presenting female entrapment in a male-centered ideology or to condemn the play's defeatist resolution of suicide in the face of that entrapment. Beyond this character-based debate has arisen the equally heavily debated, more general criticism that female/feminist playwrights who utilize the realist format are implicitly permitting the feminist message to be subordinated to a restrictively dominating, male-constructed mode of presentation. While s~me critics· challenge this position and defend Norman against the charge, others have virtually dismissed her precisely because of her format choices. Critics outside the feminist dialectic similarly have both lauded the play and · condemned it, on a point that in several ways relates to the above. The central issue here involves the concept of universality. Stanley Kauffmann, for example, observed in his 1983 article/review "More Trick than Tragedy": If the hoopla about Marsha Nonnan's new play were credible, the current state of American drama would be better than it is.... Because the play has only two characters , is in onc long act. and ends with a death, some commentators have called it classical and have invoked Aristotle. I envy their rapture; the play itself keeps me from sharing it.2 Invoking Aristotelian criteria in an effort to accord the play universal status, Modem Drama, 36 (t993) 109 lID WILLIAM W. DEMASTES critics seem forever to seek safe, secure traditions in their efforts to "understand " new works of art. Though Kauffmann mayor may not have a valid justification for disliking the play, he is certainly justified here in questioning other critics' invocations of Aristotle. The play 's formal allegiance to Aristotelian principles, even regular assertions of the play's cathaflic results, appear little more than well-intentioned, though misdirected, Procrustean efforts to find a "place" for 'night, Mother in the American dramatic canon. Indeed, in all of 'the above cases, the question of canonicity seems to be central. Does'night, Mother rise to a universal level sufficiently to grant it canon status? Which canon? Should the play qualify to enter into a new and growing feminist canon, especially given the concern that it betrays feminism by presenting defeated women and by using an ideologically repressive form of expression :" realism? What is this universality we are seeking? Is it gender-specific, and if so, are mother-daughter relationships less "universal" (less consequential, somehow) than the father-son relationships that dominate the canon? Jill 00lan3 has traced the efforts of the male-dominated American theatre industry to find reason to include the play in ils canon. She accurately illustrales that in that effort the industry has found ways 10 see the playas essentially unthreatening to it or ils ideology. It has found ways to disarm any pOlential feminisl message and as a resull has granled Marsha Norman "token" status by allowing her to be considered a good bUI - by its standards - not a great playwright. Dolan's cataloguing and analysis of myriad male reviews of the play impressively support her case, demonslrating how Norman has been neutralized, made safe to enter the male-dominaled canon. In fact, the play's vulnerability to co-oplion by the dominant power struclUre is a primary reason Dolan rejects the playas possibly feminist, concluding that "Norman's play can be considered for canonical membership because Norman is still writing for male spectators under the guise of universality" (39). Jeanie Forte4 has cryslallized the more general concern that any play that adopls a realist format, such as Norman's has, cannot be genuinely feminist, observing that "classic realism, always a reinscription of the dominanl order, could not be useful for ferninisIs inlerested...