"Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" follows the titular character through increasingly complex and compounding life events and scenarios often reflective of the changing social fabric of America in the 1970s. Some of the character's key traits, unusual, but prescient for the times, include her initially numbed-out response to conflicts both external and emotional, her indecisiveness and her potential to suddenly snap out of one state of mind and swing to its opposite. Moral quandaries frequently seem on the verge of vanishing into apathy, until she is reminded of her love for her family and the need to keep them together.