Extract from Chapter Seven. “Epilepsy in music and the theatre” Marsha Norman's "Night Mother"
The Pulitzer Prize-winning play Night Mother by the American playwright and novelist Marsha Norman (1947– ) opened on Broadway in 1983 and remains her best-known work. The play is set in the living room and kitchen of Thelma Gates and her daughter Jessie. In her introduction to the characters, Norman describes Jessie as ‘in her late thirties or early forties, pale and vaguely unsteady physically’ and comments that ‘it is only in the last year that she has gained control of her mind and body, she is determined to hold on to that control.’ The two women have lived together for some time, and have developed a shorthand way of communicating, as Jessie talks only a little. The play begins with Jessie asking her mother for her father’s old service revolver so that she can end her stultifying and empty life. Jessie sees no future for herself, and because of her epilepsy she only ventures out for her hospital appointments. She is divorced from her husband, and her (absent) son has become a petty thief and drug addict. Her mother responds to the request for the revolver by telling Jessie that ‘It must be time for your medication.’ She also demeans Jessie by questioning her competence even to successfully shoot herself: ‘You will miss. You’ll end up a vegetable.’
Thelma then tries to save the situation by telling Jessie the truth about her epilepsy, which was not the result of a riding accident, as Jessie had been led to believe, but had been inherited from her beloved father. As the play progresses we learn the extent of the destructive effect that epilepsy has had on Jessie’s life, added to which she is now being told that her father is to blame. She has been unable to find work, her friends and neighbours are avoiding her, her brother has deserted her, and her facial features have been coarsened by the drug (Dilantin) that she has been taking. When Thelma tells Jessie, in relation to the brother’s desertion, that ‘Your fits made him sick and you know it’, Jessie corrects her by saying ‘Say seizures, not fits. Seizures.’
Graphic images of Jessie’s seizures are provided as her mother describes her ‘crumple in a heap like a puppet’ like ‘someone cut the strings all at once’ and ‘gagging, sucking air in and out – your mouth bites down and I have to get your tongue out of the way fast’ and ‘then the jerks slow down and you wet yourself.’ In the end Jessie quietly closes and locks her bedroom door, and a shot is heard.
This remarkable play, with its candid portrayal of the tragic aspects of epilepsy, stands alongside the book and film Electricity as a realistic account of the feelings of guilt, worthlessness, social isolation, and despair that are experienced by many people with the condition. It is a story that needs to be told over and over again, but there is a positive message, as has been pointed out by Frank Rich, the theatre critic of the New York Times, in his review of the play: ‘Night Mother – say no to hope? It’s easy to feel that way after reeling from this play’s crushing blow. But there can be hope if there is understanding, and it is Marsha Norman’s profound achievement that she brings both understanding and dignity to a forgotten and tragic American life.’[1]
[1] Rich F (1983) Theater: suicide talk in “Night Mother.” New York Times, 1 April. www.nytimes.com/1983/04/01/theater/theater-suicide-talk-in-night-mother.html
Sacred Lives is available at
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All proceeds go to the William Quarrier Scottish Epilepsy Centre https://quarriers.org.uk/epilepsy
Further information on the book and author is available at https://www.sacredlives.co.uk/