Nightwood

Costumes play an essential role in highlighting how characters in the novel disguise themselves, and how the line between costumed identity and authentic identity is often blurred. The circus performers Felix befriends are clear examples of how costumes first donned as part of a theatrical act can over time be absorbed as an inextricable part of their character. Frau Mann, a trapeze artist, “seemed to have a skin that was the pattern of her costume [...] the stuff of the tights was no longer a covering, it was herself” (16).

In the case of Jenny, dressing in outdated clothing so that she looks as if she is wearing a costume is one of the ways she attempts to cope with anxiety. During a gathering at her house, where her jealousy and insecurity regarding her relationship with Robin is growing, Robin predicts that Jenny will “dress up in something old” (78). Proving that Robin has witnessed this deep-seeded habit of playing dress-up before, Jenny emerges wearing a “ridiculous” outfit comprised of an old-fashioned hoop skirt, a bonnet, and a long Spanish shawl (79).

For O’Connor, what society views as a costume and what he understands to be a costume are inverted. Identifying in modern terms as transgender, but restricted by the social laws of time, the doctor feels most comfortable at home in bed, where he has the privacy to dress in a woman’s nightgown and wig. At first impression, the reader might interpret a nightgown to be a costume, but because it is in alignment with the doctor’s authentic sense of self, the men’s attire he wears during the day is the actual costume in this case.

Lions, and in particular lionesses, may only appear in quick references in the novel but they serve as beacons signaling the presence of feminine anima and sexuality. During the scene at the American circus, a caged lioness gets too close to Robin. Even though there are bars between them, Robin finds the animal’s presence upsetting. This lioness is the catalyst for the fast-moving love affair between Robin and Nora and signifies the frightening arousal of their passions.

In a moment of drunken emotional vulnerability when O’Connor cannot seem to “see or hear anything but his own heart,” he announces to the other patrons in a bar that he is “an old worn out lioness” (172). Earlier on, in an emotional visit to a church confessional, he refers to “a roaring lion” that “goes forth, seeking his own fury!” (141). In this instance, the lion representing his uncontrollable life force is male, highlighting the mutable nature of his gender.

In both examples, the lioness exemplifies a complex being who warrants admiration for her strength and beauty, but who is also capable of inciting fear and inflicting violence on those around her.

Dolls serve as stand-ins for children, whether as a symbol of the child that two women cannot produce together or as a totem of the son Robin abandoned. Nora describes Robin as staying home to play with toys, a doll being one of them. Nora notes that even though Robin had brought the doll into the house as a gift for both of them—Nora calls it their “child”—Robin treats it poorly (156). Nora catches Robin striking the same pose with the doll—holding it high above her head “as if she would cast it down”—as Felix once saw Robin holding Guido (156). Robin uses the doll as an outlet for her anger in a way she could not bring herself to do with Guido. She hurls it to the floor, crushing it with her foot and turning its head to dust.

Further, even though Robin destroys the doll representing her union with Nora, she is still compelled to give a doll to Jenny in the same symbolic way.

O’Connor complicates the significance of the doll by linking it to “sexlessness” and gender ambiguity, stating “the doll and the immature have something right about them, the doll because it resembles but does not contain life, and the third sex because it contains life but resembles the doll” (157).

Churches and chapels appear through the novel as sites for refuge, consolation, confession, soul-searching, and accessing hidden aspects of the self.

Early in the novel, the reader witnesses the doctor visiting the church of St. Sulpice, “bathing in the holy water stoup” and pushing aside other parish members “with the impatience of a soul in physical distress” (33). Later on, he recounts to Nora a time in his life when he was having a crisis of faith, and felt tormented by his struggle to reconcile his gender identity with god’s plan. He says to himself, “Matthew, tonight you must find a small church where there are no people, where you can be alone like an animal, and yet think” (140).

Robin’s obsession with visiting churches begins during her marriage to Felix, seeking blessings from nuns and praying, but “her prayer was monstrous because in it there was no margin left for damnation or forgiveness, for praise or for blame” (51). The way in which she frequents bars, “often silent, her head bent over” mimics a figure in prayer, and both sites offer her a means of escaping her domestic partnerships and accessing her more feral desires; in church, her thoughts drift to women, and in bars, she connects with them physically (53). In the final chapter, Robin seeks out the decaying chapel on Nora’s property as a private space to exorcize and/or exercise her deepest animalistic tendencies, barking and crawling “in a fit of laughter, obscene and touching” (179).