Long Day's Journey Into Night Guilt and Blame Quotes Page 1

Mary's argument here is that Edmund can't be blamed for being suspicious of Mary, since the past cannot be forgotten. See the quotes on "Fate and Free Will" for more on the past's influence on the present.

Once again, under the influence of morphine, Mary abandons the blame game, recognizing that getting mad at Jamie logically leads to her blaming herself for poor decisions she made in her past (such as, perhaps, marrying James or having Edmund). That's why she says "you lose your true self": she attributes the blame of her past actions to a self that wasn't essentially her, a self that came about due to bad circumstances.

This is an interesting line – yes, Mary's doing her classic "my life changed when I married James and now it's way worse" shtick, but check out how she's positioning James relative to her father. We see here the makings of another important theme for Mary: James is expected to do the double duty of husband and father for Mary. When Mary married James, he became a stand-in, a replacement for her dead father. This pressure on James is intense, and he (perhaps reasonably) fails to live up to her demands.