“I’m interested in knowing about the longing that unites all women, all mothers. What is that longing? How could we possibly long for something beyond our offspring?” (Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder)
Nightbitch, the unspoken tale of Motherhood, was a book written for every mother who has struggled. Every mother who has yearned and longed and begged to feel content. To feel perfect. To feel truly whole as a mother. As a woman. As an animal. As a life-creating god.
You are seen. You are understood. And you are not alone.
So, how does the amazing message Rachel Yoder painstakingly crafted into each page of her book translate onto the big screen?
Overall Thoughts
In short, the movie did an excellent job capturing the essence of Yoder’s book. The inner dialogue of Mother’s thoughts were translated perfectly to the screen. In fact, many quotes from the book can be heard coming straight from Amy Adams’s mouth as she let her struggles around motherhood and womanhood come to a boil inside herself.
“You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don’t let it rage into a mountain of light, because that’s not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn.” (Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder)
It was really interesting to not only listen to Adams reciting the thoughts plaguing Mother’s brain, but also acting on her intrusive thoughts and giving a real voice to what she’d like to actually say or do, even if it’s just a scenario she’s created in her head. We get an example of this right in the beginning, with Mother and her son in the grocery store, when she is asked by another woman if she enjoys being a stay at home mom. Although it wasn’t what really happened, I loved seeing her speak from the heart, and it was interesting to see the reaction she thought the other woman would have upon listening to her, one of disappointment or even disgust. This is far from the reactions we see later when Mother truly gives voice to some of her feelings, which demonstrates how she truly believes others would view her if she were to speak and behave as she wished.
I thought that the way Mother’s internal monologue was showcased in the movie actually gave it more of an impact, especially when juxtaposed with scenes of her being a loving, doting mother, highlighted side-by-side with harsh cuts and drastic changes in music. And this is the essence of Nightbitch: the struggle of losing the woman you were to become the mother you are and the darker, often unspoken, feelings that make you feel monstrous for yearning for something that isn’t your child. Because how could a mother want something more than her beautiful, perfect child?
“Was being free to do what you needed and be who you wanted–truly free–monstrous? If so, it was not a wrong kind of monstrous, but a beautiful one.” (Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder)
Although I believe that Nightbitch, the movie, was able to capture the message of the book beautifully (I did cry), there were a few major differences that I found interesting and worth analyzing.
Mother and Daughter Bond
The difference that I find the most interesting is the inclusion of Mother giving birth to a daughter at the end of the movie. Although I originally thought that this was a clever allusion to Mother’s idea of displaying her son’s live birth as an art piece, I don’t think this is the case. By introducing memories of Mother’s mother early in the movie and spreading flashbacks of her childhood throughout, I believe that Nightbitch, the movie, puts a stronger emphasis on the relationship between a mother and her daughter. This is something that Mother doesn’t get to experience the flipside of because she has a son. Until the inclusion of her birth to a daughter.
In both the book and the movie, Mother looks back on her childhood and remembers the odd behavior of her mother, leaving the house at night to lie in the grass. Alone. But always coming back to her. This is important because it allows for her to recognize some of the things she herself is feeling within her mother. Her mother similarly gave up her dream and Mother recognizes now that a piece of her mother had withered away, that she lost a part of her identity and wonders if she, too, yearned to get that piece of herself back.
These flashbacks are very contained in the book, in a single section, and Mother only really thinks about them and what it meant to see her mother suffer silently towards the end, when she herself has realized that it is not only important to find the balance between Nightbitch and Mother for herself, but it is just as important for her son.
“She returned to her mother lying in the dark grass in the middle of warm summer nights and wanted to pull her up, take her by the shoulders, shake her with both love and great, great anger. Look at you! she would say. You’re amazing! You’re my mother! Why are you acting like this? Go to Europe! Insist on your joy. Time is short, and you must make haste, not only for yourself but for me as well.” (pg 205)
This is a difference that does not change the ending or affect the overall message that the book intended, but is highlighted particularly by the inclusion of Mother having a daughter herself. In some ways, having a daughter is the perfect conclusion to her journey, for now that she has discovered her own secret to motherhood, she can be there for her daughter in ways that her mother wasn’t there for her.
Relationship with Jen
There’s always going to be a sub-plot or two to get cut when turning a book into a movie. In the case of Nightbitch, Jen and her herb-selling MLM business was one I initially didn’t mind being gone, until I realized that a big part of her relationship with Mother was lost in doing so.
Throughout the entirety of the book, Jen tries to build a relationship with Mother. Her primary way of doing this is by inviting her to her herb party, where she will hopefully decide to buy into the MLM and start building her own business. Although Jen admits that it’s not really about making money, that it’s more for the sense of community built for the mothers and carving out a sliver of time away from their husbands and children, she has found herself quite in debt and, subsequently, trapped.
What I love about this is that it shows that even though Jen did not share the same struggles as Mother, she also has a secret to hide and feels trapped in the decisions she has made and the consequences they have on her life. Everyone has secrets. Everyone has shame. And even though Mother was initially disappointed that Jen’s secret wasn’t also that she turns into a dog, Mother still understood Jen’s feelings and helped her get out. They helped each other as mothers, as women, and were there for each other in ways no one has ever been there for them before. This was just the beginning of the real friendship they so desperately needed.
“Nightbitch meant to always be on guard, to doubt and confront, to critique and question, her husband, her motherhood, her career, these women, capitalism, careerism, politics and religion, all of it … she needed this, needed other women, other mothers, and even if these weren’t the exactly right ones, they were a start.” (Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder)
By cutting out the herb MLM sub-plot, I felt as if Mother’s struggle with making friends and building a community for herself was pushed to the back burner. It was mentioned, but the journey from Mother hating spending time with other mothers to inviting Jen and the other mothers into her home to confess that she killed the cat was underdeveloped and abrupt. If felt like something was missing and I wish that Mother’s relationship with the other mothers had been explored more in the movie.
Mother and Husband Separation
The separation of Mother and Husband was the difference that caught me the most off guard. It was also the difference that I enjoyed the most.
Throughout the entirety of the book, Mother and Husband remain together. Towards the end, Husband finds Mother in the backyard, digging in the dirt to find the rabbit corpse she buried there. She is no longer scared to show him this side of her. Where panic once was, a vast calmness spreads inside her. She looks him in the face and says that this is who she is. This is everything she has become. This woman. This mother. This animal. And he looks upon her with nothing but love and awe and acceptance for this version of herself that she has made.
Because this book was originally written for Yoder’s husband before it turned into an ode to mothers, I understand why she chose to keep Mother and Husband together, for him to accept all of her changes and new demands without a complaint. To see the mother and woman she was becoming, animal and all, and to be nothing but adoringly in awe of her. It makes sense. That being said, I actually liked the choice the movie made more.
With Mother asking the Husband for space, it forces him to live as a single parent, even for just a few days, and this experience allows for him to have a more profound understanding of what Mother has been going through for the last two years. Within these weekends, he realizes just how much of herself she has given up, the pieces of her life that had to be destroyed in order to make room for their son.
“How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didn’t know what to do with theirs? And what a mean trick to call such things holy or selfless. How evil to praise women for giving up each and every dream.” (Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder)
Because of this experience, Husband’s revelation at the end of the movie, his renewed love for her, feels more real to me. It’s more believable, after experiencing just a fraction of her struggle and seeing the woman she blossomed into once she was able to make space within herself for her dream once more.
Either way, the same conclusion is reached and both the book and the movie address the idea that you can be both a mother and chase your dreams, that you don’t have to give up one to do the other.
Art Installation
To recap Mother’s art installation, in the movie we see Mother display a series of paintings of mothers and dead animals and a central sculpture of taxidermy animals and their skeletons, painted gold, hanging above them. In the book, this is quite different.
Book Mother is not a painter, but a performance artist, and we get two different art pieces from her. The first is for the mothers in her neighborhood, in which she walks as a dog on stage and eats a steak. At least, it is insinuated she’s a dog, but is unclear. When walking down the aisle, she’s described as a “dog-type thing,” but after she eats the steak, it is said blood was smeared over “her face, her cheeks, her chin.” Is she a dog? Or is she simply a woman behaving like a dog? We don’t know. But the intimacy of this event and the raw understanding of the other mothers creates a very sacred, emotionally charged moment for everyone involved.
The second show the book describes to us is drastically different. This one has been planned and rehearsed and performed in front of an audience many times. Mother is undeniably described as a human as she sings and dances among animal bones, ending the show controversially by hunting and killing live rabbits throughout the theater.
“This is just woman and nature. Her very own nature.” (Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder)
Although the differences in the art Mother creates is very interesting, what I find just as compelling is that the movie takes a more definitive stance regarding Mother’s experience. Turning into a dog is, of course, a metaphor, but the book leans into the surrealism of it all and does not give a definitive answer. While the movie has a few unarguably surreal moments, the ending very clearly gives us an art installation grounded in reality. It is filled with art that captures the essence of her journey, while showing no signs of her experience of turning into a dog. The book takes a very more surreal approach and leaves it up to the reader to decide if Mother did in fact turn into a dog, or if it was simply just one big metaphor.
I, personally, like to think that there was a bit of magic in the book and Mother found her power just like all the different kinds of women in Wanda White’s book. But that’s just me.
The Perfect Ode to Women
Despite the different choices the movie made in telling Nightbitch’s story, it still captures the message Yoder intended with her book. It is a story that will make you angry beyond belief, cry, and maybe desire to go slap a man (Husband, I’m looking at you), but it was so beautiful in its raw, gruesomeness. While I believe that the book explores the themes and topics that help drive Yoder’s message in a more in depth way, I would confidently recommend the movie as well as the book. Whichever platform suits your media-consuming needs. It was entertaining, horrifying, and very powerful, the perfect mix for a story that will sit with you long after you’ve finished watching, or reading, it.
But don’t say I didn’t warn you because, as Nightbitch would say, motherhood’s a bitch.
