(Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's playwrite, obtained in Google image search)
After reading Pinter’s The Homecoming, I was certain there was not a more dysfunctional family in literature. Ironically, I was proven wrong merely a few weeks later when I read Long Day’s Journey Into Night. This family not only does not get along, but the source doesn’t come from just one individual, it comes from all of them. None of them mind fighting dirty and are not afraid to say anything to the other no matter how hurtful.
As each character adds a whole new level of dysfunction to the family, the conflicts become worse and worse. Mary Tyrone is interesting the glue of the family, but it is extremely poor glue. Mary is fighting a morphine addiction in the beginning of the play and by the end with her finally drug induced babblings we have seen she has totally lost that battle.
(Image obtained through google image search of morphine)
Why she is addicted is fairly obvious as the play continues. She is married to an selfish alcoholic, who can’t even give her a permanent home besides the summer one they stay in every year it seems. Her oldest son, Jamie, is a unemployed budding alcoholic. Jamie also may or may not have killed their other son by ‘accidently’ exposing him the mumps. Edmund, her youngest, was a hard birth, and her husband’s cheap doctor selection, introduced her to the morphine. Edmund also seems to be dying of consumption slowly and painfully and she cannot deal with that, choosing the call it ‘a summer cold’ rather than what it really is.
Mary references her dislike and disappointment in Jamie frequently, especially in Act 2, Scene 2 when she admits her suspicions of Jamie killing her second son Eugene by going to play with him while he had mumps staying ‘he knew it could have killed the baby’ and that Jamie was jealous of the babies attention. She also blames herself because she had been away on business with her husband rather than with her children.
Mary also states she has been neglected by her husband with frequent references to the doctor he had gotten her after Edmunds birth being a quack, Also in Act 2, Scene 2, and throughout the play there are references to her husband’s inability to give her a permanent home and frequently leaving her alone while he went out to get drunk.
(obtained in Google Image Search of the play)
Though she is generally kind to Edmund, it is easy to see that she blames him for her addiction. Yet, because he is her baby, she cannot bear the thought of him sent to a sanitarium to get better, because she has been to one herself for her addiction. Also, admitting that he may die and her addiction and suffering through his birth was for nothing. This may finally push her over the edge of sanity.
Dealing with reality seems too painful for Mary. She is mistreated and neglected by her husband and cannot handle the fact that her children dislike her and their father greatly. Mary reverts often to references to memories and her childhood because those are times of happiness and innocence for her. Her childhood, especially her hopes as a young bride, remind her of happiness, before she was trapped in a patriarchy and at the fate of her husband’s mistreatments. Before she knew what he was really like. Mary even admits had she known how much he drank, she would not have married him has she known then what she does at the present in the play.
Yet, Mary is the reason the three male characters attempt to get along and attempt to work through their problems again and again. She holds them together and yet it is very obvious that her addiction and her inability to deal with reality or their family problems are slowly and painfully tearing them apart.
Interestingly, there is this reoccurring theme of fog in the play. Mary especially likes the fog because it can hide the world from you and you from the world. No one can find you in the fog. Therefore, not one can hurt you. Mary is afraid to be hurt anymore because it will only push forward her addiction, which she is deeply ashamed of. Sadly for her, the only hope she seems to have for her future is an accident overdose…
Mary’s is the character in Long Day’s Journey Into Night that seems call for the most sympathy, or at least the most wonder about her the state of her sanity; perhaps because she seems the most pathetic because she is a women or because much of her current state does not seem to be her fault. Or because of her current state the characters have chosen to not comment on any other fault of hers other than her addiction.
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