Why did Norman Mailer nearly stab his wife to death at a party?
The idea of “cancel culture” as this all-consuming force that can bring anyone to their knees is and always has been a scare tactic to prevent people from holding men accountable for their abuse.
A quick look through history shows exactly what fresh hell men could get away with scot-free, to the point where the story of Norman Mailer is actually a pretty tame one by some standards.
To be clear, it’s still horrifying, but it only nearly had a body count. Which makes this a different case to the likes of Matthew Broderick, Marcos Alonso and countless others. Though not for lack of trying on Mailer’s part. By 1960, Mailer was already one of the most famous and respected writers around and had been married to Adele Morales for six years. They had met in 1951 and, despite Mailer being married to another woman at the time, began an affair almost immediately.
Their relationship was chaotic from the very beginning, and getting married in 1954 did not help this. Neither did having two daughters, Danielle in 1957, and Elizabeth in 1959. To describe their relationship as volatile barely covers it. Barely a night passed without some form of screaming argument, almost always while intoxicated on the small mountain of drugs and alcohol moving through their home at any given time, and sometimes about the extramarital relationships both were carrying on with at any given time.
It’s worth mentioning that, according to reports from their group of friends at the time, this was fairly mutual. Both Mailer and Morales seemed to hate each other’s guts, and both gave out as good as they could. However, this is the late 1950s we’re talking about. Of course people at the time thought that a woman fighting back against their abuse would make them “both the problem”. Especially because of what happened next.
Something which makes it fairly clear who the problem was.
How and why did Norman Mailer nearly kill his wife?
On November 19th, 1960, Mailer and Morales hosted a large party at their apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
This was ostensibly to celebrate their friend Roger Donoghue’s 30th birthday, but secretly, Mailer wanted to announce his intention to run for mayor of New York City. He never got around to announcing this, however, as the party turned poisonous very quickly, with Mailer getting blackout drunk and ornery, trying to fight half the guests in his intoxicated state.
This escalated to him leaving the apartment at 3am in order to find a punch-up, returning an hour and a half later, having clearly had several fights. This turned into a fight between Mailer and Morales, and at 5am, Mailer drew a penknife and stabbed his wife near the heart in front of the party’s five remaining guests.
According to reports, as Morales hit the floor, he told the guests, “Don’t touch her. Let the bitch die.” Morales didn’t get to a hospital for another three hours, at which point Mailer had barricaded himself in the apartment with their youngest daughter, Elizabeth.
Morales survived, but just barely. The final straw of the whole “both were bad to each other” argument was the fact that Morales refused to press charges against the man who nearly murdered her, which is the behaviour of an abuse survivor. Mailer still pleaded guilty to third-degree assault but got off with a suspended sentence and mandatory psychiatric care at Bellevue Hospital. Once he was released, he fell immediately back into old habits and never even seemed mildly remorseful for his behaviour.
Thankfully, Mailer and Morales divorced in 1962, but typically, Mailer never saw an iota of repercussions for nearly killing his wife. To the point where the memory of it seemed to inspire much of his following work. Something to think about the next time you catch yourself thinking that “cancel culture” is evil and we all deserve a second chance.
Men get as many chances as they want, and always have done.