Long Day's Journey Into Night

The opening act introduces the family members, Mary, Tyrone, Jamie, and Edmund, and it is immediately clear that the family members all hold resentment toward each other for varying reasons. Tyrone resents Mary’s criticisms of him, Jamie’s failures, and Edmund’s willingness to imitate Jamie. Jamie resents his father and brother’s successes, as well as his parents’ preference for Edmund. Mary resents that Tyrone forced them to live in this town, as well as her husband and sons’ inability to coexist peacefully. Mary has the added resentment of the other family members’ suspicions regarding her mental health. Edmund, though, seems to only resent how his family members target one another. Edmund keeps the peace in most situations, but this only serves to exacerbate the deflective tendencies of the whole family. Jamie frequently shrugs his shoulders, asserting that nothing can be changed by talking about it, which reflects the theme of Deflection and the Challenge of Confronting Problems. Of all the family members, Jamie is the only one who outright refuses to engage in arguments, shrugging and asking to “forget about it” or “I’m a fool to argue” (21), noting, “You can’t change the leopard’s spots” (21), which means that a person’s core personality cannot be changed. Jamie opens opportunities to discuss issues further, though these are often rebuffed. He notes to Tyrone that he is critical when talking to himself, but Tyrone only uses this to insult Jamie further. Likewise, when Jamie tries to talk with his mother about their issues, she ignores him, leaving Jamie to shrug his shoulders and walk away.

A common point of contention, so far, is Mary’s mental health. Mary has only been back in the house for two months at the time of the play, and it is implied that she has been in and out of mental hospitals since Edmund’s birth. While Tyrone blames Edmund for Mary’s problems, Jamie blames his father’s frugality, noting that a better doctor would not have allowed Mary to get sick. Mary echoes this claim in her blanket criticism of doctors as untrustworthy. Both Jamie and Edmund comment that Mary went into the spare room the previous night, which is an indicator that she may be returning to the frame of mind that has required hospitalization in the past.

Edmund’s illness is linked to Mary’s mental health condition as a common point between them, as Edmund is more like Mary than Tyrone, but also because Edmund’s sickness triggers Mary’s anxiety. Both she and Edmund are described as “nervous,” which may indicate that the mental health issue they share is anxiety, or a combination of anxiety and depression, since Mary’s initial mental health condition seems to have been postpartum depression, a condition that some women develop after giving birth in which they experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. In Mary’s case, she may have developed postpartum psychosis, involving paranoia and sleep problems, both of which are seen in her nighttime wandering and insistence that the men are spying on her. This form of mental health condition is elaborated in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which was published only a few decades prior to 1912, the year in which this play takes place. It is possible that, like the protagonist of The Yellow Wallpaper, Mary experienced postpartum psychosis, which was not properly treated, leading to the lasting consequences seen in the play.

The men in the play seem to be consumed by the concept of success, as embodied in Tyrone’s acting career, as well as Edmund’s forays into writing. Jamie, however, is not as successful as his father and brother, leading him to lash out at their successes and emphasizing The Importance of Love and Support. For example, Jamie quotes Shakespeare in making fun of his father’s snoring, prompting Tyrone to respond, “If it takes my snoring to make you remember Shakespeare instead of the dope sheet on the ponies, I hope I’ll keep on with it” (11). At first, this response seems to be an insult traded for an insult, in which Jamie makes fun of Tyrone’s snoring, and Tyrone escalates by making fun of Jamie’s gambling, which is not comparable. However, the issue of success is embedded within the response, as Jamie claims that Tyrone forced him to become an actor, and now, Jamie is not as dedicated to the craft as Tyrone was during his career as an actor. When Tyrone notes that Jamie focuses more on gambling than acting, he is jabbing both at Jamie’s vices and at his work ethic, which Tyrone sees as the cause of Jamie’s failure.