Mildred Pierce

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1941

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-7

Chapters 8-10

Chapters 11-13

Chapters 14-17

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

The novel is set in Glendale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. It is the early 1930s, the heart of the Great Depression. When Mildred Pierce’s husband Bert comes into the kitchen, she confronts him about his affair with the flirtatious widow Maggie Biederhof, telling him to choose between her and Maggie. Bert packs his clothes and leaves without talking to his daughters, Ray and Veda, who are at school. Bert drives away with the car, leaving Mildred no way to deliver the massive cake she is icing. Mildred confides to her neighbor and friend Lucy Gessler that Bert has gone.

Mildred’s older daughter Veda acts much older than her 11 years. She is pretty, confident, and self-possessed. Though Mildred has little disposable money, she pays for Veda’s piano lessons. When Mildred tells Veda that Bert is not coming back, Veda, who prefers her father over Mildred, coldly replies, “I see, Mother. I just wanted to know” (16). Veda then relays the news to her seven-year-old sister Ray. Veda disdains Maggie as “distinctly middle-class” (16).

Mildred is 28, has blonde-brown hair, blue eyes, and a pleasant face. Mildred’s figure is alluring, particularly her legs. When Mildred was a high school junior, Bert seduced her in the model house of his home building company. She got pregnant and had to drop out of school and marry Bert.

Chapter 2 Summary

Mildred’s relief and joy at Bert’s absence are followed by financial anxiety. Her pastry orders are sporadic. With only $9 left, she pays her gas bill and buys groceries. Bert’s father takes the girls until Monday morning. When Bert’s former associate, attorney Wally Burgan, drops by to ask a business question, Mildred tells him Bert has moved out. Wally asks Mildred to go on a date.

Lucy drops by to invite Mildred to a party and discovers she is going on a date. Lucy tells Mildred, rather than letting Wally buy her supper, to prepare one of her wonderful meals for Wally. Lucy has an extremely low opinion of men, lumping them all together as predictable, self-serving liars: “There’s practically nothing can be said in favor of them, except they’re the only ones we’ve got” (29).

Mildred follows Lucy’s suggestions and the evening develops exactly as Lucy had predicted. Mildred lights a fire, pours Wally some good liquor, and serves a tasty meal. Afterward, they have sex, beginning a relationship.

Chapter 3 Summary

Mildred struggles to find a job. Her first interview is with a man who wants a physical relationship; she realizes many men use similar ploys. After numerous attempts to get an interview fail, Mildred at last speaks with a compassionate personnel manager, Mrs. Boole, at a department store. After their conversation about Mildred’s difficulties, Mrs. Boole sends a telegram offering her a job as a lowly waitress in a tearoom atop the department store. Mildred declines.

Mildred interviews with an employment agency run by Alice Turner. Alice is blunt: Mildred has no employable skills and no chance of landing a real job—unlike the other people seeking work:

Look at it, a whole drawer full, men and women, every one of them a real executive, or auditor, or manager of some business […] They're all home, sitting by their phones, hoping I'll call. I won't call. I've got nothing to tell them. What I am trying to get through your head is: you haven't got a chance (47).

Alice counsels Mildred to find another man to take Bert’s place. Soon afterward, however, Alice contacts her about a potential job as a housekeeper. Mildred reluctantly goes for an interview at a house in an exclusive neighborhood. When the houseman realizes Mildred is there to interview for the housekeeping job, he sends her to the back door. She meets Mrs. Forrester, the homeowner, who wears a “flowing negligee” (51). During the interview, Mildred realizes she cannot abide by the humiliating terms of employment—for example, her children cannot fraternize with Mrs. Forrester’s children. She “terminates the interview” (52) and marches out the front door defiantly.

Mildred goes into a restaurant to get out of the heat. As she is eating, two servers get into a shouting match and are fired. Mildred realizes the restaurant needs servers and heads for the manager in the kitchen to apply.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

Mildred Pierce engaged the reading audience Cain had acquired with his earlier crime novels, drawing readers in with a moderately racy plot and interestingly flawed characters. The novel falls into the noir genre prevalent from about 1930 through the 1960s, noted for characters with distinct flaws and weaknesses and most typically comprised of detective stories and mysteries about characters of questionable morals and checkered pasts. Despite its pulpy aspects, however, Mildred Pierce is proto-feminist: the story of a plucky single mother trying to provide for her family when she has no training or experience beyond being a homemaker. The author is unsparing in demonstrating the difficulties faced by people like Mildred in the 1930s—a period only a decade old for his original readers. The situation Mildred faces was typical during the Great Depression, when many jobless men abandoned their families.

Several historical details make their way into the novel. Most important to its plot and character motivations is the Great Depression, a period of worldwide economic disaster that took place after the stock market crash of 1929. In the US, during the 1930, unemployment soared; for those who did have jobs, incomes fell precipitously. Government policies, including protectionist tariffs and the reliance on the gold standard, made the Depression worse and longer-lasting. In the novel, as Mildred scrambles to find a job only to be told that far more qualified people are also out of work is one symptom of the effects of this financial crisis. In addition to the Great Depression, another historical backdrop is Prohibition: the period between 1919 and 1933 when distilling and serving alcoholic beverages was illegal in the US. In the novel, because Lucy’s husband Ike is a bootlegger, transporting illegal liquor, Lucy can provide alcohol Mildred can use to seduce Wally. Finally, a smaller historical detail comes from Cain’s own life. For his depiction of the dysfunctional, codependent, and antagonistic relationship between Mildred and Vera, Cain drew on an actual mother and daughter whom he knew well: Kate Logan Cummings, an opera singer who sacrificed her profession to promote the career of her daughter Constance Cummings.

The novel portrays men as sexually predatory, selfish, and manipulative. Each man in her life takes advantage of Mildred in a different way. First is Bert’s financial abuse. The substantial debt burden Mildred carries is not of her making. Rather, Bert acquired multiple mortgages against their house despite having no way of repaying them—debts that fall on Mildred when Bert abandons her in favor of a widow who will take care of him. Next, Mildred encounters one of the many exploitative men who advertise fake jobs only to make sexual overtures to the women who come to interview. Wally also turns out to see Mildred as an object. After Mildred sleeps with Wally, he leaves money for her upon departing—a gesture Mildred interprets as payment, telling Lucy, “I’m on the town” (37), slang for sex work.

The only people who do not objectify Mildred are women: The conspiratorial Lucy, the sympathetic Mrs. Boole, and the world-weary Alice Turner are the only people to give Mildred real insight and assistance.