Long Day's Journey Into Night Suffering

We can see here that, even without considering her own addiction or Edmund's illness, Mary's life in the house is intolerable. She has no one to talk to other than Cathleen, and she feels stifled and lonely. Her life consists entirely of waiting for the other Tyrones to come home and dealing with the servants. This boredom surely contributes to her drug habit.

Here, Mary points to the main reason she suffers. We're clued in, for the first time really, that what upsets her most may not be crumbling family ties, Edmund's health, or her lack of social life. Rather, she is haunted by something in her past, including but not limited to: the death of Eugene and the losses of her religious life, innocence, reputation, sense of home, and/or virginity.

A revealing comment from James here. The sentiment is fair enough, but check out the order of operations – first, he explains that he would come up if he thought it might help, but then he adds that he's not a jailor and doesn't want Mary to feel imprisoned. The message here is conflicted, and it's obvious he would stop her if he thought he could do so permanently. More importantly, as Mary herself points out, he fails to recognize that this house is a prison for Mary. She sits around lonely all day, and even if he isn't actively in charge of her imprisonment, he is the one who originally locked her up.

Unlike Cathleen, Bridget's never able to defend herself in person, on stage. Why feature Cathleen but not Bridget? Also, notice that Bridget, like Mary, has rheumatism. In Bridget's case, it seems normal that a fit of rheumatism would make her really upset. Why, then, doesn't anybody feel bad for Mary with her rheumatism? Nobody other than Mary ever mentions that the damp weather is exacerbating Mary's illness. It's easier to criticize Mary's lack of will power in returning to her morphine than it is to talk about possible causes.

Note the similarity here between this passage and Mary's comments about not feeling at home at their summer house. We get the feeling Mary might not do so well in any social environment that isn't a convent. It seems like she has real trouble making friends, even with people who are nice to her. Might her lonely suffering be as much her fault as James's?

It's interesting to note that Mary doesn't take for granted that she and her husband are monogamous. It's almost as if she has expected him to cheat on her, and commends him greatly for resisting the temptation.

Well, that's the question – has she been a bad wife? It's clear James had some major flaws, but it also seems true that Mary is a bit spoiled. Her resentment throughout the play sometimes smacks of privilege, that she deserves better than she gets, and that others ought to be responsible for keeping her content.

On one level, this speech is just Edmund's finest description of how he sees reality as worthless. But note also that Edmund makes his case by use of mythology and literature (parodying Shakespeare). In other words, the only way to describe life's horrors is indirectly, through literary allusion. In a sense, then, this passage is a justification of the work as a whole – the only way for us to gaze at the horror of real life is elliptically, through the fictionalized portrayal of the Tyrone family.

This passage gives us an angle on Jamie's suffering that we really didn't have before. In addition to finding out that Jamie acknowledges an addiction he wants to beat, we also discover that he was really counting on his mother to be a role model, and she let him down. Jamie admits that he hadn't completely forsaken his family and the idea that his mother could be an inspiration to him. Now, though, it seems like all hope is lost.

This passage isn't particularly tricky, but it complements quote nine well. In Act IV, the character we really learn the most about is Jamie, and here we see that literally everything in his life is teetering on the edge of destruction.

As we saw in quote nine, Jamie cares much more about his mother than the first three acts suggest, and here we realize, finally, that Edmund really is Jamie's only friend. He doesn't know anyone else and has no resources outside the family. He certainly can't go to James for support. The play's sympathy with Jamie seems a bit delayed, but, when it comes, it's intense.