'Night, Mother and Dysfunctional Relationships

I’d like to make a few comments on the play ‘Night, Mother.

I first began to notice that the relationship between Jessie and Mama was strangely unhealthy when the following exchange occurred:
Mama: “You don’t have to take care of me, Jessie.”
Jessie: “I know that. You’ve just been letting me do it so I’ll have something to do, haven’t you?”
Mama: “I don’t do it as well as you. I just meant if it tires you out or makes you feel used…” (1316)
We have, once again, an example of what appears to be a symbiotic relationship between mother and daughter up until this point. However, when I put Mainardi’s tools to work here, there is the key phrase of “I don’t do it as well as you” put into play, making Mama the parasite. She, much like Mainardi’s fictional husband-type, has been sucking away at Jessie’s hard work, and Jessie knows exactly what is happening. In her own way, Jessie is cutting Mama off from the niceties that she (Mama) has become accustomed to. Jessie is not asking Mama to take on some of the workload, but she’s merely telling Mama that Jessie just isn’t going to do it anymore, what with her being dead and all, and Mama goes into shock. We see that Mama is two-natured, for lack of a better term. She is the nurturing mother toward an epileptic daughter, but had to be the father figure to Jessie when her father was gone. This example shows how Mama is more male-centric.
However, Mama, being the mother that she is, also reveals that she does have some motherly tendencies during the following exchanges:
Mama: “All right! I wanted you to have a husband.”
Jessie: “And I couldn’t get one on my own, of course.”
Mama: “How were you going to get a husband never opening your mouth to a living soul?. . . I married you off to the wrong man. . . Cecil might be ready to try it again, honey, that happens sometimes. Go downtown. Find him. Talk to him. He didn’t know what he had in you” (1321).
Here, Mama is, for all intents and purposes of her world, doing her job as a mother. She wanted Jessie to live a normal life with a husband and a baby, which she eventually got with Cecil and Ricky, respectively. In a desperate attempt to understand why Jessie would want to kill herself, Mama makes a mistake in thinking that the whole ordeal of Jessie’s suicide is about a man. What I find ironic, however, is that because Mama has more masculine attributes in this relationship, Jessie does, in fact, have a problem with the “man” in her life. Mama is all she has and Jessie knows that this is not enough for her. So, is this a feminist play or a play about a dysfunctional relationship? In my opinion, it’s both. Jessie is a liberated woman by the end of the play, and we know that the relationship is dysfunctional- at least, according to societal norms- due to the fact that Jessie is taking care of her mother, and then abruptly ends her life, thus stopping the care for her mother. I find that the play has another level of “cool things to notice and pick up on” when one reads it thinking of Mama as gender-neutral (I say gender-neutral because of my arguments that Mama has both male and female attributes). Having never read this play before, I find myself wanting to add ‘Night, Mother to my feminist literary canon, and- while probably not holding it on a pedestal- making it a good reference point in the future.

Let's Get Real, Here

Foreward: I am currently taking a class called "Women and Theatre," and, coincidentally, we have to post blogs on our school's forum once a week. I figured I might as well share what my thoughts are with you who happen to a) be women and b) like theatre and c) appreciate both. Here was my post from this last week:

As a studier of people, I particularly enjoy observing how we dress in accordance with what we perceive to be proper for our gender. These observances bring me to one question: Do clothes really make the [wo]man?
In regards to the article by Judith Lorber and her discussion on “doing gender,” I have to wonder if the way we dress falls into this action. Are women subtly re-doing their gender if they should dress more masculine? Are women more “manly” if we wear big tee-shirts and cargo shorts, or do we still hold onto our femininity by fixing our hair just so? When I see women wearing clothes that would typically be considered to be “men’s clothes,” I just happen to think that the woman in question must be awfully comfortable. There doesn’t appear to be anything masculine about her from first glance, and perhaps what she is wearing was the first outfit that happened to be clean that morning.
Why are women who wear men’s (read: comfortable) clothes considered to not be doing right by their gender? I don’t think that women lose any of their femininity by not conforming to these social constraints that women should always be presentable. I think it’s too much to live up to, these norms set forth by our mothers and grandmothers before us. “Dress nicely,” “Don’t slouch,” “Always look your best,” are guidelines that I, at least, was subjected to in my early youth, and frankly, it doesn’t make any sense to me. Okay, maybe the slouching part is reasonable, but the rest of it baffles me. How do I act differently than feminine if I’m not in a skirt and a blouse? I am still doing my gender by existing as a woman. It is not the way I dress that defines who I am as a woman. What should it matter anyway? We’ve been taught since adolescence that “it’s what on the inside that counts.” Shouldn’t that be enough to help us understand and accept what is feminine? I think it’s enough.
So, no, I don’t think that clothes make the woman. We are women by how we are as people. Society should not have the audacity to dictate what classifies as “feminine” by the typical and glamourized images of a well-dressed woman. Take the following for example: I like to watch the red carpet coverage before award shows. Due to an increase in celebrity image, many of the television stations have their “red carpet fashion coverage LIVE” before the award ceremony, and a multitude of hosts interview the nominees and ask them what they’re wearing. What the interviewees are unaware of until the re-airing begins is what the show hosts are saying back at the studio regarding many of the females are wearing. They’re judging what is feminine versus what isn’t, and typically, to me, the more “feminine” and “clean-lined” ensembles look the least comfortable. The hosts use the converses “masculine,” and “frumpy,” to describe the outfits that aren’t as flattering to the feminine shape. I find this strange. There somehow seems to be an understood connection between the words “comfortable” and “masculine,” whereas “comfortable” and “feminine” don’t seem to match up often enough. Why must there be a difference? On the superficial levels of gender distinction, I say let’s start, not blurring the lines per se, but by incorporating more of the similar structures from each gender, and help us all be more comfortable with ourselves.
Some days a woman just wants to be comfortable, and if that means baggy tee-shirts, three-day-old jeans, and no make-up, so be it.

Cheers,
Patsy

Keep it locked up.

I believe all men should be careful with their hearts when around Radford women.

This statement is true, proven, and fact until I find someone or something to disprove it or change it.

That being said, I have one thing to gripe about today: why can't I have any male friends? My next thought is that, while I have many friends of the opposite sex, over 75% of them want to be more, and I just don't. From what I understand, I've always been the "best friend" type, or the girl any guy can go to just to chat with, but in recent observations, things have changed, and I'm pretty sure I'm not so comfortable with that. The last two years I've been the notoriously single girl, and that was just fine with me, but apparently, its not okay with all "my boys."

I don't relationship very well. Truth be told, I usually screw it up with my laissez-faire attitude, because I don't need a relationship and I don't need a man to make me happy. Now the issue to address is to go and make that statement known. Bon soir.

CWS Mayhem

Ok, so my tigers are in Game 2 of thefinals of the CWS, and we're currently getting out behinds handed to us by Texas. I am so not okay with this. curreny 5-2 in favor of the longhorns. dammit!

we're onto our 3rd pitcher, Nolan Cain, who isn't doing a horrible job. In fact all of our pitchers are pitching absolutely great, but its because of that that UTexas is hitting so well. Our non-starting pitchers aren't used to throwing away a few balls in order to prevent offensive scoring.

One of the highlights of the game has to be that Coach Les Miles has been Tweeting the ENTIRE game! Even after his ESPN interview was he on his crackberry tweeting away like that was his job. Myself, I'm not on Twitter, and I don't plan to be, but come on, Coach! Give your boys some love.

Oh Darlin.

Who would have thought that a simple visit from a family member could make someone so happy? I did. When my father drove into my town on Friday night, I immediately knew when he got off the interstate! It's almost disturbing how in touch with each other we are. I've never been so happy as when he called me Saturday morning to ask me to pick him up for breakfast. That man, I'm telling you, has my heart.

The only man a girl can ever trust is her daddy.

Cheers,
Ennui

Life steps

I've always wanted a tattoo. I just didn't know what to get. After much deliberation, I've decided to get one on my side-- a kind of rib piece. I want a Calla Lilly with a text-based stem. The stem will say my favorite quote: "The unexamined life is not worth living." It's by Socrates, and its a quote that I've striven to stick by my entire life. I've tried to always examine myself from every angle and to examine life as it hits me from each view. This is, perhaps, why I'm so overly analytical and why others think of me as "deep." Really, its because I'm constantly trying to figure out what makes man, and woman, kind tick. Why go through life not knowing what makes the world go round, or what kind of chemicals make up powdered lemonade? In examining my life, I've found out a lot about myself over the years, though I'm barely twenty. This is why I've decided to wait until my 21st birthday to ink myself. Mainly, because that's a big year to hit, but secondly because its the close of the hugest chapter of my life. I will have graduated from college by that time, and will hopefully have a career set in place. I'm not saying that I'm planning on having someone draw on me in permanent ink every 21 years (though that is a thought), I'm just saying that to achieve something as magnificent as one's 21st birthday is a huge step. Taking the step to get a tattoo is also significant. Hello, it's forever! So, here is a picture of the calla lilly that I want to get. Nice, huh? Though, the stem will be text coming out of the green-- maybe even green text. Calla Lillies mean "magnificent beauty," and what is more of a magnificent beauty than the examined life?

I Speculate Sometimes...

I've got a theory.
When two people spend an extraordinary amount of time together, inevitably they begin to have a certain type of connection. Obviously, I'm not talking about a romantic relationship or connection of the same sort. What I'm trying to say is that any two people in the world can have such a connection of alikeness that they don't even notice it anymore when they dress alike, say the same thing, think the same thing. Because of this connection, they also being to feel the same things at about the same time, or with a minor delay, so that whatever happens to one person will inevitably happen to the other in some way, shape, or form. Let me give you two examples to back this up:

1. My two managers at work have been working together for upwards of 7 years. Every time that I show up to work, I always see them together. Now, granted, a logical person would reason that they are merely doing their managerial duties of making sure that the store isn't taken for everything inside, but I hold differently. They dress the same, oftentimes say the same thing at the same time, and have very similar personalities. There was even a day when they were both not at the store because both of their wives were ill, and they had to take care of them. Proof: bonded people have similar things happen to them at or around the same time.

2. Personal example: my best friend and I have known each other going on 2 years. We tell each other everything about our lives, have met each other's families, and take the same classes. Its not that we spend every waking moment together, absolutely not, we have our own lives. However, the time we do spend together is chock-full of information and companionship. That being said, she and I have been known to dress exactly the same on the same day, and we've even had an instance involving other people happen around the same time.
During Hurricane Gustav, she went off to Pensacola and met a guy, hung out with him the whole week, and began to develop something there. I, on a similar level, stayed in town and was with my friend the whole week, basically doing the same thing as my friend. Proof: due to our similar nature as friends and our situations, we both ended up in relationships of sorts after a horrific even such as Gustav.

Now, I'm not saying that this happens to every set of friends or coworkers who happen to be good friends. "Good friends" is a term that varies depending on the level of trust between the two people involved. Also, this is not a "puppet master" kind of theory. Sharing something as complex as a friendship or a working relationship develops this trust-bond which connects you to the other person in a way that not many people understand. I, for one, am still perplexed every time my friend and I dress the same without even planning it, or without even seeing each other for days beforehand. Maybe its kind of like the twin theory. The one that claims that a set of twins, triplets, etc., can feel what the other is feeling, though they may be miles apart. My theory may not involve DNA, but it certainly lies along the same lines and plane that the twin theory holds. Who's to say it isn't true?