’night, Mother (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Marsha Williams
- First Published: 1983
- Type of Work: Drama
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: A Saturday night in the present
- Setting: A comfortable house in the country
- Principal Characters: Jessie Cates, Thelma Cates (Mama), Dawson Cates, Cecil, Ricky, Agnes Fletcher
- Genres: Domestic realism, Drama, Psychological drama, Domestic tragedy
- Subjects: 1970’s, United States or Americans, Memory, Mothers, Parents and children, Suicide, Communication, Alienation, 1980’s, Honesty, Pain, Death or dying, Depression, mental, Truthfulness and falsehood, Loneliness, Life and death, Happiness, Epilepsy
- Locales: United States
Form and Content
The entire drama of ’night, Mother is a conversation between mother and daughter which begins about 8:15 on a Saturday evening. There is no intermission. Clocks are visible onstage in the kitchen and the living room and run throughout the play; Jessie, her mother, and the audience are clearly aware of the time passing moment by moment, and during one tense moment Jessie winds the small clock on the table. The house is relatively new and is on a country road. Jessie spends the evening preparing for her suicide and attempting to explain her reason for...
[The entire page is 2625 words long]
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