I apply the Freudian theories of regression, substitution, and mother-want to argue that the speaker of Monna Innominata uses different relationships as substitutes for the primal desire to return to the mother. Grounded in Freud’s fort-da theory, I argue that the speaker experiences anxiety about separation and connection as she cannot return to the full connection and satisfaction of needs experienced in the womb. Both the romantic and religious relationships place the speaker in a state of infantile regression through her dependency and longing as they fail to satisfy the speaker’s deeper desire to reunite with the mother. Freud writes that the only way to return to the maternal is through death. The speaker achieves reunion with the maternal and escapes from failed substitutions through a return to the silence of death.