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.

Royal Mistress Challenge: the allure of the mistress

Photo by John Cunliffe for Abigails Ateliers. All rights reserved.

When I began collecting the titles of novels for the Royal Mistress Challenge, I realised that this amounts to a sub-genre in itself. What is the perennial allure of the mistress? I think it comes down to five things:

1. Beauty
2. Power
3. Money
4. Sex
4. Mystery

Beauty first. We like reading about beautiful people, otherwise People magazine would go out of business pretty darn quick.  Mistresses were nearly always renowned for their beauty; the few who weren’t, like Mlle Choin, the mistress/secret wife of the Grand Dauphin, Louis XIV’s son, don’t tend to get written about very much.

Power. Mistresses and favourites were hated figures, because they were blamed for the poor decisions made by the king.  One of the reasons Marie Antoinette was so unpopular for much of her husband’s reign was that he did not have a mistress, so when things went wrong, there was no-one to blame but her.

How much power the mistress actually had varied.  In the medieval period the mistress was a shadowy figure, there for the king’s convenience, and baronial families objected to their daughters being ‘despoiled’ by the king.  By 1500 the mistress was emerging as a power player, and during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries families backed potential mistresses like political candidates.  In return they expected their piece of the pie.  And that leads us on to:

Money. The early modern period was the heyday of the mistress, who, in addition to houses, jewels and art, gathered land, money, offices, privileges and pensions and redistributed them to supporters and relatives.  By the nineteenth century, with the decline of royal autonomy, the mistress was less rapacious, but still enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle.

Sex. By definition, a mistress is desirable.  We like reading about desirable people.  Otherwise InStyle magazine would go out of business pretty darn quick.  An aura of exciting sex hangs around the mistress.  Whether she was enjoying all this sex as much as the king is another matter, which merits further discussion.  When she was having sex with the king, that was.  Anne Boleyn held Henry VIII off for six years because she didn’t want a hit-and-run romance like the one he had with her sister Mary.  Madame de Pompadour made the transition from mistress to best friend and confidante of Louis XV without losing any of her influence over him.

Mystery. The mistress might be a public figure, but unlike her counterpart, the queen, she was not constantly on display.  She wasn’t crowned, she didn’t eat in public or have crowds of people trooping through her apartment.  Often surprisingly little is known about her relationship with the king.  While sources abound for the reign of Louis XIV – we know what he was doing every day for much of the time – almost no letters survive between him and his mistresses, none of whom wrote their memoirs.

And maybe there’s an X-factor that defies analysis.  One thing is certain: looking at reviews of royal mistress novels, a theme quickly emerges.  Major Mary Suedom.  Wikipedia is pretty good on popular culture, so I’ll leave the definition of a Mary Sue to them:

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers.

And so I decided that the heroine of every one of these novels I read, and I mean every one, will have to undergo that most dreaded ordeal of any fictional character.

Yes.  You know what I’m talking about.

The Mary Sue Litmus Test.

Anyway.  Having decided this, Moppet felt she’d better put her own house in order before she started calling other people’s characters Mary Sues.  I.e.: make her own alter ego, Lady Moppet of Yorkshire, take the Mary Sue Litmus Test.

The phrase ‘alter ego’ should give everyone a clue that there was never much hope that Lady Moppet wasn’t a Mary Sue.  But there’s always some hope.  Isn’t there?

So, first, Miss Moppet did the Writers’ Mary Sue Test (squeaking with laughter all the way through).  The results:

Lady Moppet of Yorkshire isn’t a character: she’s you, or you as you’d like to be. She isn’t really very cool: she blends into crowds, she hangs out on the fringes at parties, and wearing shades after dark makes her run into things. She may have sometimes thought that she was special, or destined for greater things, but probably dismissed the idea as a fantasy. She’s come in for her share of hurt, but gotten off with minor damage. And you’ve been sparing with the free handouts: whatever she gains, she’s worked for.

You may have let yourself get a little too close to Lady Moppet of Yorkshire. Maybe she’s you as you wish you were, or maybe you’re just afraid no one will like her and are trying to give her a free ride. Have some confidence in your writing! Lady Moppet of Yorkshire is a good character. Give her room to be herself before you stifle her.

I’m not going to use this test for the Royal Mistress Challenge novels because there are too many questions that only the writer can answer, such as ‘do you frequently fantasise about being your character?’  I could have a guess, but it hardly seems fair.

So Miss Moppet found another test, The Original Fiction Mary-Sue Litmus Test.  And did the test again.  Hoping that maybe this one might come out differently!  The way you re-read Gone with the Wind!  Hoping that this time, everything will be okay!

And you were expecting?  She is a royal mistress, after all.

Coming soon: The Alphabet Challenge, and more

Earlier today Historical Tapestry launched their first challenge: The Alphabet in Historical Fiction.  Here’s the deal:

HT is going to host its first challenge! Based in Mysteries in Paradise’s community challenge we now present you The Alphabet in Historical Fiction. To participate, just follow the rules:

Each fortnight you have to write a blog post about an historical fiction book of your choice (it might even be something you already read before), but it MUST be related to the letter of the week.

You have several possibilities:

- the first letter of the title
- the first letter of the author’s first name or surname
- the first letter of a character’s first name or surname
- the first letter of a place where an historical event took place

You just have to choose one of them and participate.

This is my first challenge too so I’m pretty excited.  Here’s a taster of my first challenge post:

The first letter is A and to me, A can only mean Angelique.  As in:

The unforgettable heroine whose fantastic adventures have given an entirely new meaning to historical romance!

As in:

The most ravishing – and surely the most ravished – heroine of all time.

As in:

Angelique – half angel, half devil, wholly woman!

(Pan certainly knew how to shift their paperbacks in the early 1960s.)

So: I will be discussing the Angelique series by Sergeanne Golon.  But the letter A will not be the only letter of significance.  The initials BB will also feature.

What else?  Well, Lady Moppet tells us how she found out that Oscar and books don’t mix well.  Also coming up in the near future:

• More Catherine Chronicles, plus some extras
• How Alison Weir was duped
• Latest releases from Persephone Books

Coming soon

What’s coming next?

More images of the Houses of Parliament, and the conclusion of my tour

Thoughts about Anne Boleyn, book covers, and the colour green

And last but not least: Lady Moppet’s first post

Enjoy!

This image is from the 1939 trailer for David O. Selnick’s production of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind.  Watch the full trailer here.  It is available on the four-disc collector’s edition, which I highly recommend.