earticle

영어

This paper discusses the exclusive relationship between a mother and a son and the son’s mother fixation. Harold Pinter’s A Night Out seemingly appears to be a story of a widowed mother who is possessive of her impotent son trying to escape from her influence. The conflict between the mother and the son could be seen as the Pinter’s typical power game between male and female characters. Therefore, many critics focus on whether the power has moved to the son or not. However, I argue that we should go further into the background of the text. What lies underneath this mother-son relationship is negative effect of the male-dominated system which systematically locates women in the domestic sphere while men work for society and capitalist production. This perpetually generates sexual and familial division of labor and justifies women’s mothering and absence of the fathers at home. In this sense, the mother and the son turn out to be victims of the patriarchy and their exclusive relationship is the consequence of this women’s mothering causing the preoedipal mother-son relationship and the son’s difficulty to be separated from her to become an independent man. To support the idea that the play is not about the power but the gender problem, Nancy Chodorow’s concept will be used.