Lakewood

Lakewood is the private psychiatric hospital where Norma Jeane Baker arranged for Gladys Mortensen to live after her own salary increased. In the novel, the move gives the place a significance beyond treatment: it becomes the setting for Norma Jeane’s attempt to care for her mother and her hope that care might make forgiveness possible.

Identity and Setting

Lakewood is identified as a private psychiatric hospital, described as considerably more welcoming than Norwalk State Hospital. The contrast matters to Norma Jeane’s decision: she is not simply transferring Gladys between institutions, but trying to secure a more congenial place for her. The available account does not specify the hospital’s location, daily routines, or medical practices.

Gladys’s Transfer

After the Studio forgives the scandal surrounding the nude photograph and raises Norma Jeane’s salary to one thousand dollars a week, plus expenses, she immediately sets about moving Gladys to Lakewood. The sequence connects a change in Norma Jeane’s professional circumstances to a concrete act of support for her mother. The account presents the transfer as something she can now arrange, rather than as a change in Gladys’s condition.

Hope of Reconciliation

Once Gladys has been settled at Lakewood, Norma Jeane wonders whether her mother might forgive her. That uncertainty gives the hospital an emotional role in their relationship: it offers a more welcoming place for Gladys, but cannot guarantee that the care Norma Jeane provides will be recognized or returned. Lakewood therefore marks both a practical improvement over Norwalk State Hospital and the persistence of the unresolved bond between mother and daughter.