Nightwood

After her separation from Robin, Nora is in a tortured state and goes unannounced to O’Connor’s room at a boarding house, looking for comfort that he cannot give. It’s about three o’clock in the morning, and she finds him in a bed covered in “dirty linen” and dressed as a woman; he wears a “woman’s flannel night gown” and “a wig with long pendent curls,” and he has rouged his face and painted his lashes (85). The doctor attempts to hide all of this from Nora by snatching the wig from his head, but it’s too late. He had been expecting a different visitor, and this is why he had called out for her to enter.

Setting her embarrassment aside, Nora’s first words to O’Connor are: “Doctor, I have come to ask you everything you know about the night” (86). The doctor then commences one of his lengthy monologues, telling her that “night does something to a person’s identity, even when asleep,” and describes the way lovers can betray each other by lying with another person in their dreams (87). Important O’Connor’s explanation of the night is the distinction he makes about French nights and their peculiarity: “The night and the day are two travels [.