| Psycho character | |
|---|---|
| Norma Bates | |
| Aliases | "Mother" Bates |
| Gender | Female |
| Born | 1907 |
| Died | 1949 (42 years old) |
| Race | Caucasian |
| Relationships | Norman Bates (son) Emma Spool (sister) John Bates (husband) Dr. Constance "Connie" Forbes-Bates (daughter-in law) |
| Enemies | Men |
| M.O. | Taking over her son's mind, causing him to stab his victims to death while wearing Norma's clothing. |
| Weapon of Choice: | Kitchen knife |
| Portrayed by: | Paul Jasmin, Virginia Gregg, Jeanette Nolan (Psycho) Virginia Gregg (Psycho II - Psycho III) Olivia Hussey, Alice Hirson (Psycho IV: The Beginning) |
Mrs. Norma Bates (née Spool) is a fictional character in the novel Psycho by Robert Bloch and the Universal Studios Psycho franchise starring Anthony Perkins, Psycho, Psycho II, Psycho III, Psycho IV: The Beginning and the TV spin-off Bates Motel. She is not strictly a character in the novel by Bloch, and her presence is indicated only as a voice and a corpse in the Psycho films. She is not depicted as a character until the fourth film installment (Psycho IV).
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After the death of her husband John, Norma raises her son Norman Bates with cruelty, teaching him sex is evil and that all women except her are whores. In Psycho IV (which retells much of Norman's and his Mother's past from the original Psycho film), it is implied that "Mother" suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, which Norman inherits, although Bloch's novel doesn't mention such a plot point.
For many years, Norma and Norman live together as if there is no one else in the world. When Norman is a teenager, his mother meets a man (named Joe Considine in the novel, renamed "Chet Rudolph" in Psycho IV), whom she begins dating, and plans to marry. Joe convinces Norma to open a motel. Norman grows insanely jealous of his mother, believing that she has abandoned him for her boyfriend, and poisons them with strychnine, making it look like suicide.
Unable to bear the loss of his mother, Norman steals Mrs. Bates' corpse and mummifies it, and speaks to it as if his mother were still alive. He also speaks to himself in her voice and frequently dresses in her clothes; he becomes his mother in order to escape the guilt of having murdered her.
When the "Mother" persona of Norman's mind is aware of Norman's sudden desire for a certain woman, "she" would kill the woman. One of Norman's victims is Marion Crane (Mary in the novel), who fled to the Bates Motel after stealing $40,000 from her employer in order to marry her boyfriend, Sam. She draws the attention of private investigator Milton Arbogast to the motel and then the house, where Norman refuses to let him see his mother. Suspicious, he goes to the Bates house, where "Mother" kills him as well. Sam and Lila Crane, Marion's sister, soon arrive, suspecting Norman of killing Marion for the money.
Norman Bates, now supposedly cured, is released from the institution and returns home to the Bates Motel and the Bates House, only to be confronted by notes supposedly written by Mrs. Bates and phone calls by someone who claims to be his Mother. Norman takes a job at a local diner and befriends Mrs. Spool, the cook, and a waitress named Mary Samuels, who has boyfriend trouble and is left without a home. Norman offers a room at his house for Mary, and she reluctantly accepts. Then, mysterious murders are committed by a woman with a knife to people who come to the motel and the house.
Norman's sanity begins to crack, as he starts to believe that it is his Mother's ghost that committs the murders, but his psychiatrist Dr. Raymond, to change Norman's thinking, he shows him Mrs. Bates's corpse (who, for an unknown reason, holds a knife with dried blood on it) and reveals to him that Mary Samuels is actually Mary Loomis, the daughter of Sam Loomis and Lila Loomis (the sister of Marion Crane) and are plotting to drive him crazy in order to get revenge. Actually, Mary feels sorry for Norman while Lila continues dressing up as Norman's mother and appearing through the window of Mother's bedroom. Mary believes that there is someone else in the house, the one who is committing the murders, and when Norman explains to Mary that the woman-murderer might be his real mother, she becomes suspicious if Norman was ever adopted.
While Norman is at the swamp with the police where a car containing the corpse of the ex-manager of the motel is found, Lila sneaks in the house to dress up as Mother, but then the murderer comes in and finishes her. When Mary and Norman return to the house, with Norman slowly going mad again, he receives a phone call from Dr. Raymond but in his mind, the phone call is from Mother. Mary, disturbed, tries to convince Norman to stop answering the phone to mother by dressing up with a dress, a wig and bearing a knife to make him believe she is his mother. He still continues talking to no one on the phone, and when Mary accidentally kills Dr. Raymond who has come to the house to catch Mary, Norman drives her to the cellar believing she is Mother and tries to hide her (the police have arrived outside), Mary discovers Lila's corpse hidden in a pile of coal, and convinced Norman is the murderer, she tries to kill him but is shot by the police before she manages it.
In Psycho III, a reporter named Tracy Venable latches on to the history of the Bates/Spool families; her research leads her to the disturbing story of a love triangle between John Bates and the Spool sisters, Norma and Emma.
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