在《麗南小姐》中，馬丁‧麥多納呈現了母女關係的悲劇。劇中母親與女兒之間的家庭暴力展現其失能關係，而莫琳所犯下的弒母罪雖是突然卻也是二十世紀中期愛爾蘭傳統家庭悲劇可預期之結果。本文不只嘗試於分析用恐懼、義務及罪惡感來分析此母女/照護失能關係，並且以關於弒母的心理分析理論及不可切割的母女關係之論點來探討莫琳所犯下不可避免的弒母之罪。在這個愛爾蘭傳統社會對母親及女兒的期待中，理想和簡單的和諧母女關係在佛蘭家中是失敗的。無法符合對於服從女兒的社會期待，莫琳被迫為梅格唯一的照顧者且試圖逃離梅格的控制，她希望能逃離這段關係。作為一個失能母親，梅格企圖透過情緒勒索來控制莫琳卻驅使莫琳犯下弒母罪。為了找尋自己與避免變成跟她母親一樣，莫琳不可避免地殺了母親。莫琳無法逃離前伊底帕斯情結與母女之間的連結，她最終發展成一個「惡婆娘」，重覆母親的行為，也永遠無法擺脫梅格的控制。

In The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Martin McDonagh represents a tragedy of the mother-daughter relationship. The domestic violence between the mother and daughter exhibits the dysfunctional relationship while matricide committed by Maureen, the daughter, became the sudden yet expected result of the built-in tragedy in a traditional remote household in Ireland in the middle of the 20th century. The study not only aims at analyzing the dysfunctional mother-daughter/caretaking relationship through fear, obligation, and guilt (FOG) which Susan Forward proposes in Emotional Blackmail (1997), but also investigates Maureen’s inevitable act of murder in terms of psychoanalytic theories on matricide and the inseparable bond between a mother and a daughter. In the context of traditional Irish Catholic motherhood and daughterhood, the ideal of harmonious mother-daughter relationship becomes a failure in the Folan. Unable to meet the ideal of an obedient daughter, Maureen was forced to be a sole caregiver and struggled to break through Mag’s manipulation and hoped to escape from the problematic relationship. As a dysfunctional mother, Mag attempted to control her daughter through FOG and impelled Maureen to commit matricide. Maureen took the inevitable trip to kill her mother in order to find her identity and avoid becoming her mother. Maureen could not escape the pre-oedipal complex and the mother-daughter bonding, and she finally developed into an angry spinster, repeated Mag’s manners, and never escaped Mag’s control.

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