The Character of Mary Cavan Tyron in Eugene O’Neill’s

Long Days’ Journey into Night

This essay will focus on Eugene O’Neill’s semi-autobiographical play Long Day’s
Journey into Night, particularly on its female protagonist, Mary Tyrone. The following
paragraphs seek to analyze different aspects of her character.
The setting of Long Day’s Journey into Night takes place in Connecticut, at the seaside
summer house of the Tyrone family and as its name suggests, the story of the play takes place
in only one day, which turns out into a single disastrous day in the life of the Tyrone family.
The four main characters are the semi-autobiographical representations of Eugene O’Neill’s
own family. In this play, O’Neill depicts an early 20th century middle-class family – father
James, sons Jamie and Edmund, and Mary, the wife – struggling with various difficulties,
blaming each other, dealing with accusations and feeling resentments towards one another.
All the above-mentioned characters are mutually interrelated – they are carrying a part
of some other person of the family. In addition, none of them is or ever will be happy, they all
live in a false reality – a pseudo world which they created, being dishonest to each other, as
well as to themselves. They spend most of the time trying to correct the impressions they give
the family, which results in a great difference between what the reality is and what it seems to
be. They are also unable to move beyond the wrongs they have done to each other. Moreover,
they are constantly hiding their feelings and thoughts, be it by using alcohol, drugs,
exaggerative irony, or buying a ridiculously high amount of real estates.
The mother, Mary Tyrone, is significantly affected by several incidents – mentally, as
well as physically. Firstly, she is considerably marked by the existence of her sons. She
experiences a deep-seeded anger towards Jamie, for infecting her second, newly-born son
Eugene with measles, resulting to his death. She is also distressed by a subdued sadness
towards Edmund, for his physical weakness and ill health. Secondly, she is also highly
affected by her past, related to her and her husband’s marital discord. She feels indignation
towards him, for dragging her along his theatre tours and causing the loss of all her friends.
Lastly, she is indubitably deeply troubled by the usage of drugs, specifically morpheme. Her
drug abuse is indeed what I would identify as her hamartia.
The morality of Mary’s character changes during the play. Whereas the course of Act I
suggests hope for a brighter future and for a moment it seems that Mary has finally overcome
her drug addiction, by the time of Act II, she is already caught back in regression. But what
exactly is the cause of her addiction? It has already been implied, that a great source of her
suffering is her son, Edmund. In fact, it seems that Edmund is the one to get blamed most of
the time. His birth was for Mary obviously very painful, not only physically, but also
mentally. Moreover, Mary herself says that she felt physically much better, before Edmund
was born. She explicitly says: "I was so healthy before Edmund was born. You remember,
James. There wasn't a nerve in my body."1 She also blames herself for the death of her second
son. She believes that she could have stopped Jamie from infecting little Eugene, if she had
been there at that time. Furthermore, she feels guilty for giving birth to Edmund after
Eugene's death, as she express it: "I knew I'd proved by the way I'd left Eugene that I wasn't
worthy to have another baby, and that God would punish me if I did." 2 Additionally, the
physical pain at the birth of Edmund was probably a real torment for Mary, accompanied by
the fact that due to James' miserliness, she did not get a proper medical care. Trying to save
money, as always, James hired a cheap doctor, who did not take a very good care of Mary’s
health and prescribed her morphine, one of the most effective and at the same time addictive
painkillers of that day. This is also where Mary's morpheme addiction started.
Later in the play, there are several other reasons which cause Mary to start using
morphine again. Firstly, she has rheumatism, which causes her enormous pain. There are,
however, other painkillers that she could use against it, especially regarding Mary's past and
considering the addictive properties of morpheme. Moreover, with respect to Mary's recent
return out of the rehab and concerning the withdrawal being terribly excruciating, there arises
the tricky question, what matter was so tremendously abhorrent, that caused her risk
everything and turn to morphine again.
Besides the physical reasons, there are also various mental reasons behind Mary's
regression. The first reason is certainly Edmund's illness, that seems to be pushing her
towards the use of drugs. Edmund has consumption, the same disease, that caused Mary's
father death. Therefore, it is probable that she turned to morphine, to find comfort in it. Even
Edmund is aware of this threat, when he begs Mary: "I want you to promise me that even if it
should turn out to be something worse, you'll know I'll soon be all right again, anyway, and
you won't worry yourself sick, and you'll keep on taking care of yourself."3

1
Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 87.

2
O'Neill, Long Day's Journey, 88.

3
O'Neill, Long Day's Journey, 48
 Another reason that contributed to Mary's regression, may be her loneliness. She
always complains about how lonely she feels and that she does not have any friends. She has
always lived a lonely life. After she married James, her isolation got very bad. They spent
their whole lives in cheap hotel rooms, on tours with James' theatre. She objects that "all her
old friends either pitied her or cut her dead."4 Even though she loves James, she often regrets
marrying him, because of the dreams she had to sacrifice for his acting career. It is obvious
that she would highly appreciate a friend, as she explains: "If there was only some place I
could go to get away for a day, or even an afternoon, some woman friend I could talk to - not
about anything serious, simply laugh and gossip and forget for a while -someone besides the
servants..."5 Hence, she may also have returned to morphine to diminish the feelings of
loneliness. On the other hand, it also seems that sometimes she actually enjoys the loneliness,
as she says that she loves the fog, because: “It hides you from the world and the world from
you.”6
Another problem is, that she still feels lonely even though she has her family around
her. On the contrary, the presence of her family may be exactly the reason, why she does not
feel well. Indeed, every time she has overcome her addiction, she always falls back to
regression, after spending more time with her family. She mentions that she is not very keen
on the fact, that everybody around her is too careful and considerate. She says: “It makes it so
much harder, living in this atmosphere of constant suspicion, knowing everyone is spying on
me, and none of you believe in me, or trust me.”7 Whether it is the case of exaggerated
considerations, or justified suspicions, it certainly isolates her even more.
In relation to her personality, Mary seems to be quite demure. She is very polite,
rejects any rude remarks and denies to acknowledge any reference to her addiction or to
Edmund's illness, in contrast to Jamie, who tends to be rather honest. As well as all the other
characters in this play, she is very hypocritical too. She is not able to admit her drug
addiction. She would always blame others for her problems and mask herself with drugs and
as she descends into her doped state, the young, shy girl in her comes forth, as O'Neill puts it:
“It is a marble mask of girlish innocence, the mouth caught in a shy smile.”8
4
O'Neill, Long Day's Journey, 86.

5
O'Neill, Long Day's Journey, 46.

6
O'Neill, Long Day's Journey, 98.

7
O'Neill, Long Day's Journey, 46.

8
O'Neill, Long Day's Journey, 170.
 O'Neill portrays the characterizations directly, giving the reader all the information he
needs to understand the characters. He puts a detail on their physical appearance, as well as
their actions and habits. He often uses physical description as a tool of getting to the
character’s psychology, as for example in the following excerpt, about Mary’s nervousness,
caused by the insecurity about her hands which are affected by rheumatism: “What strikes one
immediately is her extreme nervousness. They were once beautiful hands, with long, tapering
fingers, but rheumatism has knotted the joints and warped the fingers, so that now they have
an ugly crippled look. One avoids looking at them, the more so because one is conscious she
is sensitive about their appearance and humiliated by her inability to control the nervousness
which draws attention to them.”9
The horrendous struggles of Mary’s life, including the death of her second, newly-
born son, the impacts of Edmund’s birth and his illness, together with Mary’s loneliness and
the circumstances of her family life, all contributed to her return to drug abuse. The choice to
use morphine is, however, still only her own choice, although she always blames the others,
which seems to be her biggest weakness. She is so experienced in coming up with excuses,
that she never faces the fact that everything is only her own decision and no one is forcing her
to use the drug. Contrarily, her family loves her and is desperately trying to help her, which,
however, at the end of the play, does not seem to be possible any more.

9
O'Neill, Long Day's Journey, 12
BIBLIOGRAPHY
O'Neill, Eugene, Long Day's Journey into Night, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.