ROUNDABOUT BLOG

But some day, dear, I will find it again—some day when you're all well, and I see you healthy and happy and successful, and I don't have to feel guilty any more—some day when the Blessed Virgin Mary forgives me and gives me back the faith in Her love and pity I used to have in my convent days, and I can pray to Her again when She sees no one in the world can believe in me even for a moment any more, then She will believe in me, and with Her help it will be so easy. I will hear myself scream with agony, and at the same time I will laugh because I will be so sure of myself.—Mary Tyrone

Jessica Lange as Mary Tyrone in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT.
(Photo by Joan Marcus)

Eugene O’Neill used the character of Mary Cavan Tyrone to work through the ideologies and choices that shaped the life of his own mother, Mary Ellen “Ella” Quinlan O’Neill. The two--woman and character--share a devout Catholic upbringing, marriage to a traveling actor, and an addiction to morphine. While O’Neill made changes to the details of his mother’s life to serve the play, it’s clear that the soul of Mary Tyrone’s journey is rooted in Ella O’Neill’s life experience.

O’Neill describes Mary Tyrone in the summer of 1912 just as his mother was then: 54 years old, medium height, with a striking face. “Her nose is long and straight, her mouth wide with full, sensitive lips….Her dark brown eyes appear black. They are unusually large and beautiful, with black browns and long curling lashes.”

Ella O’Neill was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on August 13, 1857. Like Mary Tyrone, whose voice has “a touch of Irish lilt in it,” both of Ella’s parents were Irish Catholic immigrants. She was raised in St. Brigid’s Parish on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. Her father’s success in business--an achievement for an immigrant in an era of anti-Catholic, anti-Irish sentiment--allowed him to send Ella to private schools, first to Ursuline Academy near her parents’ home. The school was run by Ursuline nuns, an order that focuses almost exclusively on the education of girls and places a high value on individual spiritual and academic development and “the primacy of Hope...learning to trust in the Providence of God and the promise of a better tomorrow.” There, young Ella would have attended mass, confession, novenas, benedictions, and adoration in the convent chapel, passing hours staring at a painting of the Virgin Mary and the Christ child that hung in the sanctuary. She learned the difference between mortal and venial sins and developed a strong awareness of her own transgressions.

From Ursuline Academy, Ella was sent to the Convent of St. Mary in Notre Dame, Indiana. It was here that Ella, under the tutelage of Mother Elizabeth, developed as a pianist, exactly as Mary Tyrone describes. O’Neill even retains Mother Elizabeth’s name. School was, for both Ella and Mary, a happy time when faith and life were integrated and their creative talents nurtured.

It’s at this point that Ella’s biography diverges from Mary Tyrone’s backstory. In 1874, just prior to her graduation, Ella’s father died of tuberculosis aggravated by alcoholism, a habit he took up after his diagnosis. He left the family quite well off, and young Ella persuaded her mother to accompany her to New York to continue her music studies. It was there that she was re-introduced to James O’Neill, an actor and casual friend of her father’s that she first met as a teenager in Cleveland. At the time of their marriage in 1877, Ella was twenty years old and had lived through her father’s traumatic death. She was not the girl described in the play: a giddy, spoiled convent girl with a father who buys her everything she wants. But like Ella, Mary’s father died of tuberculosis.

Gabriel Byrne and Jessica Lange in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

After marriage, Ella’s story converges with Mary’s. Both struggled with life as the wife of a traveling actor. Mary describes “one-night stands, cheap hotels, dirty trains, bearing children, never having a home.” In an era when middle and upper class women were defined by their ability to create a pleasant home for their family, Mary feels that she’s failed at her most important duty.

Ella gave birth to her first son, James, in 1878 and a second son five years later, just as Mary Tyrone does in the play. (In the play, the Tyrone sons are, in birth order, James, Eugene, and Edmund; in reality, Ella O’Neill’s sons were James, Edmund, and Eugene.) When her sons were seven and two, Ella left them in the care of her mother and joined her husband on the road. While she was away, Jamie, the eldest, contracted measles, and, despite being warned not to, snuck into his brother Edmund’s room. Edmund caught measles and died before Ella could reach him.

Mary Tyrone relates the same story, making it clear that she blames the baby’s death on Jamie. “I’ve always believed Jamie did it on purpose. He was jealous of the baby.” While a viewer might interpret Mary’s bitterness as a byproduct of grief, she was likely raised to regard seven as “the age of reason,” the age at which a child is developed enough to understand and receive the sacraments of confession and Holy Communion. He was old enough to be held spiritually responsible for his actions. At the same time, she feels deep guilt for having left her child. She feels that she’s committed a mortal sin and would have been raised to believe that she’s no longer in a state of grace, deprived of her inner connection to God.

Six years later, despite vowing not to have more children, Ella gave birth to her third son, Eugene. The birth was difficult, and she was given morphine for the resulting pain. This wasn’t unusual at the time. Doctors had limited options for treating pain, and the prevailing belief that women were more delicate, and more sensitive to nervous upset, lead to widespread prescription of opiates for all gynecological ailments. In 1879 the president of the American Gynecological Society recommended that physicians teach women suffering menstrual pain to become “opiumeaters.” Opiate-based over-the-counter remedies (including “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup,” used to calm fussy infants) were legal and widely available. There was nothing illegal or furtive about acquiring opiates during the early years of Ella’s addiction. Opiate addiction was seen sympathetically, as an unfortunate disease of upper and middle class women.

By 1912, the year the play takes place, there had been a shift in public perception of opiate use. Doctors became aware of the hazards of the drug. More importantly, sensationalized newspaper coverage of white slavery in Chinese opium dens and poor, minority criminal addicts lead to a legislative push to restrict and criminalize narcotic use. It was at this point in time that many women addicts, including Ella and her fictional counterpart, finally sought treatment. Though in the play we leave Mary Tyrone on that same August day in 1912, her final monologue foreshadows Ella’s own recovery from addiction. In 1914, Ella again entered treatment, possibly with the assistance of nuns, and successfully overcame her habit. She died of cancer in 1922.

Long Day's Journey into Night is now playing at The American Airlines Theatre. For tickets and more information, visit our website.