Motherhood and apple pie: Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

This 1941 novel opens ten years earlier, on the day Glendale housewife Mildred Pierce becomes a single mother. Exasperated by her newly unemployed husband’s philandering and lack of gumption, she finally tells him to leave, and becomes the sole provider for her two young daughters, Veda and Ray. Ray is adorable. Veda, who is by far Mildred’s favourite, is the most affected, snobby eleven-year-old you’re ever likely to meet, in fiction or out of it.

Mildred’s first strategy for dealing with this situation is to find herself another man. This distances her from the modern reader who would expect her to look for a new job rather than a new husband. But in 1931, being a wife was considered a job. Mildred is an excellent housekeeper and such a good cook that she can sell cakes and pies to bring in a small income. But it’s not enough to live on and, when her marital plans fall through and she presents herself at an employment agency, the owner bluntly explains to her just why devoting her life to being the perfect wife and mother has left her unemployable:

‘You’ve let half your life slip by without learning anything but sleeping, cooking, and setting the table, and that’s all you’re good for.’

There are just two options for Mildred: domestic service or waitressing. And here’s where we get the first hint that her judgement may be a little skewed. She picks waitressing because it’s easier to hide from Veda what she is doing.

Veda wants all the good things money can buy, but she’s a little fussy about how exactly that money is earned. Predictably, Veda discovers the waitressing and tells Mildred she’s disgracing them with this kind of work. Mildred responds with fury, angry enough to strike her adored daughter. Less predictably, Mildred then backs down and tells Veda that her attitude is the right one. Mildred wants Veda to have too much pride to take a menial job, even when that job is all that stands between her and poverty. But of course, Mildred herself will always stand between Veda and poverty. The humiliation she feels at her new occupation is compensated for by the chance to make a new life for Veda. Not only does Mildred manage to sell her pies to the restaurant where she works, having learned the business from the ground up, she opens her own restaurant.

This part of the book was fascinating. It’s inspiring to see Mildred gain confidence as she realises that she has what it takes to become a successful businesswoman. In fact, it made me want to bake a pie, or sell something. Mildred’s story takes place over seventy years ago, and her world has mostly vanished, yet she’s a modern woman, battling with an economy very similar to today’s. She’s relatable. When, needing a delivery vehicle, she inveigles the family car back from her estranged husband and takes it for a celebratory spin, I know how she feels:

Glancing at the gas, she saw there were two gallons in the tank, and kept on straight ahead. At Colorado Avenue she turned. It was the first through boulevard she had been on, and the traffic signals were off, with yellow blinkers showing. She gave the car the gun, excitedly watching the needle swing pas 30, 40, and 50. At 60, on a slight upgrade, she detected the gravelly sound of ping, made a mental note to have the carbon removed. Then she eased off a little on the gas, breathed a long, tremulous sigh. The car was pumping something into her veins, something of pride, of arrogance, of regained self-respect, that no talk, no liquor, no love, could possibly give.

But when it comes to Mildred’s personal life, far from cheering her on, I wanted to tell her to get a grip and set some boundaries. Not only does Mildred let Veda walk all over her, she acquires a socialite boyfriend, Monty, who is soon doing the same thing. This is a novel which sets out to show the dark side of motherhood, apple pie and the American Dream. It’s like a gingham apron with a black satin lining.

The ending doesn’t do justice to the power of the foregoing story, and I could see why the scriptwriters of the 1945 Joan Crawford adaptation threw in a murder which doesn’t appear in the book. The 2011 dramatisation starring Kate Winslet is reportedly much closer to the original material. Here are two confrontational scenes between Mildred and Veda from both adaptations:

Mildred Pierce: Mildred and Veda (1945)

Mildred Pierce: Mildred and Veda (2011)

And here’s Carol Burnett as ‘Mildred Fierce’ (1970). This sketch does a lot to indicate Mildred Pierce’s place in popular culture. In 1970 a female CEO was all too easy to parody, yet less than fifteen years later Joan Collins would be playing a powerful businesswoman with an endless procession of male assistants (and a 1940s-inspired wardrobe). In the 21st century, characters like Ugly Betty‘s Wilhelmina Slater, magazine maven and single mother, continue to owe something to Mildred Pierce. The difference is that Alexis and Wilhelmina are post-feminist characters who never allow husbands, boyfriends or children to get the better of them.

Perhaps the idea that women could never have it all, that they had to pay a price for business success, first became popular in the 1930s. Like Scarlett O’Hara, the Southern belle who builds a lumber empire in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind (1936), Mildred attributes her survival in hard economic times to the quality of “gumption” – and like Mildred, Scarlett fails as a wife and a mother. But if Scarlett loves too little, Mildred loves too much. In this layered, compelling novel, she is both role model and cautionary tale.

ETA: I borrowed this book from the library.

Tags: gone with the wind, james m cain, joan crawford, kate winslet, mildred pierce, scarlett o'hara