Aahana Swrup
Marielle Heller’s dark comedy film ‘Nightbitch’ is a peculiar yet profound exploration of motherhood, presented through the lens of magical realism. It follows the story of a stay-at-home mom who trades in her career as a critically acclaimed artist for mundane days devoted to the care of her toddling son. However, as her days pass in her perfectly monotonous suburban neighborhood, she soon begins to notice an off-beat transformation.
As motherhood’s arcane, animalistic facet emerges, she is compelled to embrace a whole new side of herself that may or may not come with a furry tail and sharp canines. The film’s eccentric and, at times, metaphorical employment of a metamorphosing journey adds an intriguing layer to the narrative. Inevitably, the titular character’s adventurous path leads to an equally riveting conclusion. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Nightbitch Plot Synopsis
The central character, known only as Mother throughout the story, agrees to quit her job and become a full-time mom with the birth of her firstborn son. As a result, a couple of years down the lane, she finds herself living the same domesticated life of repetition, with every hour of every day revolving around her son’s care. Her husband—the working parent out of the pair—frequently travels for his job, leaving Mother to take care of the son by herself for weeks on end. Even when he returns home, his parenting skills leave much to be desired, as his default incompetence prevents Mother from ever catching a break.
Consequently, her tedious routine and reluctance to connect with other moms for fear of being defined by her motherhood traps Mother in a partially miserable life. Simultaneously, she also notices a number of troubling physical changes, including sharper teeth and a curious fuzz growing in the bottom of her spine. Similarly, while the mother-son duo hang out in the neighborhood, they invite added attention from a pack of stray dogs. As these transformations emerge, Mother also begins remembering an uncanny part of her childhood surrounding her mother’s resigned melancholia.
Eventually, one night, the pack of dogs from the park arrives at Mother’s doorstep with heaps of dead animals as an offering. Even though she assumes the instance to be a weird dream, the following morning proves her wrong. As a result, the recent events become impossible to ignore, compelling Mother to seek out the answers in the local library. The librarian, Norma, an experienced mother, points her toward the title “A Field Guide to Magical Women,” which strives for a scientific analysis of animalistic transformations in women. Once Mother delves into the book, she realizes her experiences aren’t isolated, and the connection between motherhood and the wild is natural.
Consequently, Mother begins exploring this new aspect of her identity bit by bit by forgoing social norms. She starts eating without her hands, even making a game of it with her son. Furthermore, after a family visit to the museum, which reinforces her belief that she has forsaken her artistic side, she decides to quit her profession for good and receives her husband’s unbridled support. Soon enough, her inclination toward her animalistic tendencies leads to a full-blown transformation into a dog under the night’s cover. This results in an uninhibited embracing of her dogged life. However, Mother is forced back into the reality of things when one night out with her wild, pawed friends inevitably ends in the death of her poor pet cat.
Consequently, this forces Mother to confront her emotional struggles, leading to an intense argument between her and her husband. She is furious at him for wordlessly allowing her to give up her life in favor of being solitarily defined by her motherhood. In turn, her husband accuses her of changing beyond recognition, callous of the sacrifices she has made for their family. Thus, she decides to stand up to their unequal approach to parenting and demands a separation.
Nightbitch Ending: Do Mother and Husband Get a Divorce? Do They Get Back Together?
Throughout the story, Mother’s unfulfilling marriage with her husband remains an underlying source of conflict that feeds into her overarching identity issues. After the new addition of their son to their family, the couple had decided to opt for a stay-at-home parent situation. Consequently, Mother ends up putting her career on hold to devote herself to her child’s care. Even though this allows her to form an invaluable bond with her son, it also presents a demanding reality for her. This all-or-nothing approach to parenting leaves Mother exhausted and robbed of her sense of self outside of her relationship with her son.
Similarly, the couple’s arrangement also cleaves a significant distance between the husband and his family to the point where he grows blind to their struggles. Furthermore, due to unfair societal norms, he fails to realize the sacrifice he demands from his wife. He doesn’t question the selfishness of encouraging Mother’s decisions to give up her career and chooses to be consistently inept in his job as a father. As such, she is forced into a perpetually thankless and unsupportive job while he gets to ignore the gravity of the situation.
Inevitably, this culminates in a dire situation that demands equally extreme solutions. Although Mother tries to adjust to her new normal, where she is no longer an artist and only a mother, it proves to be an unsustainable route. By repeatedly giving in to her transformations, she allows a certain animalism to take over her life. She no longer cares for the civilities of a fancy dinner, dissuading herself into believing she no longer has anything intellectual to add to conversations. Nonetheless, this intense cynicism and rejection leads to a point where she inadvertently ends up contributing to the family cat’s death. This becomes a wake-up call that pushes Mother to finally put herself first.
For the same reason, Mother decides to separate—at least momentarily—from her husband in order to figure out a more equitable approach to parenting. By splitting their household into two and trading off weeks with their son, Mother gets to explore her own identity as an individual while her husband learns the struggles of single parenting without any support from his spouse. During this time, the woman allows herself the space to analyze her relationship with motherhood through the artistic medium. As a result, she creates an art exhibition in which she highlights the correlation between nature and motherhood—even its wild aspects.
Once Husband attends this art exhibit, he begins to realize the error of his ways. It functions as tangible evidence of his faults when he carelessly allowed Mother to give up on her career. Moreover, the exhibit, paired with his new understanding of the demanding nature of parenting, opens his eyes to the sacrifices his wife has made in the past. As such, in the aftermath of the installation, when the couple—who never really stopped loving one another—have a conversation, they’re at a better place in their roles as parents.
In turn, this will help them fix the cracks in their relationship. In the end, Mother and Husband get back together, and they become one collective family again. In fact, the film offers a glimpse into their future where Mother is going into labor again, this time for the birth of her second child, a daughter. Her husband is right there with her, no longer a mindless passenger but a supportive participant in their shared journey of parenting.
What Does Mother’s Transformation Symbolize?
While the film charts a pretty straightforward path in its narrative, its central storyline remains a point of intrigue. The story presents Mother’s transformation into a dog as a factual and realistic development in her life. She is shown to have undergone real changes, such as growing a tail and additional nipples—and she even turns into a full-fledged dog on multiple occasions. Not only that, but the implication remains that this transformation is something that multiple women before her have experienced. Most notably, Mother remembers her own mom, who gave up a career in music to become a parent and had gone through a similar case of eerie melancholia and bursts of escape.
Therefore, the metaphorical lines between Mother’s transformation begin to blur. It is true that the character is actually a shapeshifter within the confines of the story’s magical realism boundaries. Even so, the plot device is also a metaphor for motherhood at large. The story argues that motherhood—and its uniquely troubling and isolating reality under the current societal norms—is a wildly transformative journey. Aside from the obvious struggles of pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period, the taxing responsibilities of motherhood also have a grating effect. All of this culminates into a breakdown that paves the way for a more feral side of motherhood.
For the same reason, the nighttime transformation becomes a coping mechanism for Mother, who finds a sense of self by giving into her rejection of the social norms. As a result, a less literal interpretation of Mother’s transformation also remains possible. The physical changes she undergoes symbolize the switch she feels in her physicality after motherhood changes her body. Her canine-like aggression can be seen as the frustrations of oppressing her actual dreams and desire to operate as a stay-at-home mother. Lastly, her nightly savage runs are a symbol of her need for freedom from her oppressive reality. Nonetheless, as her pet cat’s death reveals, her transformations—metaphorical surrendering to her feral nature—aren’t a sustainable practice.
Why Does Mother Stop Transforming?
Once the nature behind Mother’s transformations becomes more evident, so does its inevitable end. Mother begins noticing the early signs of her would-be transformations when she’s pushed to the extreme. After years of being a stay-at-home mom who is essentially a single mother in what is supposed to be a partnership between spouses, she can’t help but eventually snap. She’s mourning the loss of her career and her identity as the realization sets in that she can’t call herself an artist anymore without feeling like a fraud.
On the other hand, Mother’s marriage crumbles rapidly due to her husband’s neglect and disregard. Therefore, this utter loss of identity and connection, save for her role as a mother, pushes the woman to seek out an escape by embracing the wilderness inside her. However, by the story’s end, she has managed to tinker with some gaps in her identity. She has returned to her artistry and has formed bonds with other women who share her experiences as a mother.
Likewise, the mother’s momentary separation from her husband strengthened their relationship, allowing them to grow together as a unit. For the same reason, her transformation fades out of necessity. Metaphorically, this showcases the start of a healing journey that will lead to a more sustainable and enjoyable life. However, in a more literal sense, it could be interpreted as Mother gaining better control over her shapeshifting predicament.
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