48 pages • 1 hour read
Marie BenedictCarnegie's Maid
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 37-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 37-40 Summary
In early October, Mrs. Carnegie and Andrew attend an opera performance at the Academy of Music, where New York’s social elite have gathered. While the Carnegies enjoy the music, Clara is banished to a bench outside the auditorium chamber along with the other servants. During intermission, she overhears other ladies’ maids gossiping about Mrs. Carnegie’s unfashionable attire. She has apparently violated some arcane rule about sleeve length set by the Knickerbocker ladies. The Knickerbockers are the highest level of the social elite and come from old Dutch families. They keep to themselves and have their own secret mandates about fashion and etiquette.
By late November, Clara is aware that the Carnegies haven’t broken through the barrier of New York high society, though Mrs. Carnegie is still oblivious to this fact. By prearrangement, Clara and Andrew frequently meet at a park near the hotel to discuss their business transactions. One day, they get into a disagreement about financing for the Western railroad projects. Andrew wants to find investors in New York, while Clara thinks he should source his funds locally. Clara speculates that Andrew is seeking New York investors as a way of gaining access to Knickerbocker society.
Clara points out how undemocratic the Knickerbockers are and that their views run contrary to everything that Andrew believes. She discourages him and says that even the Vanderbilts aren’t accepted into the inner circle. Andrew replies that he likes a challenge. When Clara presses her point, Andrew bridles and says he won’t allow her to tell him what to do.
By early December, the social whirl has weakened Mrs. Carnegie, and she falls ill. A nurse is called to attend to her. Although the sickness isn’t serious, the nurse remains on duty, and Clara becomes intrigued by her vocation. She muses about the professional opportunities for women: “I had never considered that professions for women existed outside service or marriage, if one considered marriage a profession” (273).
Later that day, Clara receives a package. It is a beautiful blue evening gown. This is a gesture of apology from Andrew, who invites her to attend the opera with him.
With Mrs. Carnegie indisposed and under the care of a nurse, Clara is free to spend the evening with Andrew. She wears the new gown and receives appreciative glances from the hotel guests as she descends the staircase. Andrew says, “You look more fully yourself. As if the servant’s uniform was the costume, and this gown was your natural garb” (277). The opera that night is La Traviata, which tells the love story of Alfredo and Violetta, but there are obstacles because Violetta is a courtesan. Clara sees a parallel between the hurdles faced by the lovers in the opera and her relationship with Andrew.
Chapters 41-45 Summary
During the carriage ride home, Andrew broaches the subject of the social divide that separates them. He says, “You have taught me that I should carve out a different path. Pedigree, an accident of birth, does not give a man the right to public respect. Only good deeds can do that” (284). Andrew proposes marriage to Clara. When she accepts, they share a brief kiss.
For the rest of their New York season, Clara and Andrew continue their surreptitious meetings and make plans for their future together. By April of 1867, the entire Carnegie family is reunited in Pittsburgh, where Tom and his wife have claimed ownership of the house. Andrew moves to the nearby Union Depot Hotel while considering where to resettle himself and Mrs. Carnegie. During this time, Clara receives sad news from home. Her younger sister, Cecelia, has died. The money Clara sent for the family’s boat tickets was consumed by doctor bills.
The next day, Clara meets Andrew in town, and he gives her two envelopes. The first contains a bank account that holds the money for her stock shares, worth $1,250. The second envelope holds stock certificates for 100 shares in the Woodruff Railcar Company because her idea about the Pullman consolidation allowed Andrew to capture the franchise. These funds make Clara independently wealthy. Andrew says that it’s time to tell his mother about their engagement.
That same day, Clara goes to visit her cousins in Slab Town. To her surprise, they have moved to even worse accommodations than before, since Patrick has lost his job at Iron City Forge. Clara now realizes that Iron City merged with Cyclops and that the Carnegie brothers were involved in the transaction. Maeve says, “There’s no work for iron founders anywhere in Pittsburgh. The consolidation put loads of iron workers of all types out of work” (299).
After hearing this awful news, Clara marches right back home and confronts Andrew in the library. He defends his business practices by saying that terminations are necessary when mergers take place. Clara retorts, “Where is the concern, Andrew? The remorse? Not only for my cousin but for the other lives damaged by the ‘terminations’” (304). Clara points out that when Andrew was himself an immigrant, he wouldn’t have behaved so heartlessly. Before Andrew can form an angry response, his mother arrives, and Clara leaves the room.
Chapter 46-Epilogue Summary
The following morning, Mrs. Carnegie leaves the house alone on a private errand. By four o’clock that afternoon, the elderly woman returns and summons Clara. She is angry because she knows about her maid’s romance with her son. She also knows about Clara’s initial deception. Mrs. Carnegie asked Mrs. Seeley to investigate Clara’s story. She discovered that the real Clara Kelley died during the crossing and left behind a fiancé named Thomas. Mrs. Carnegie fires Clara on the spot and forbids her from ever contacting Andrew again. In exchange, she promises not to tell him about Clara’s lies. Mrs. Carnegie admonishes, “If you leave now and never speak to him again, I will allow him to believe that the lovers’ spat I interrupted yesterday drove you away” (310). Clara weighs her options. She fears that if Andrew knew she had been lying to him, he might try to exact revenge on her or her family. Further, she wants him to remember her as the woman who inspired him to carve out a future for himself untainted by avarice. She considers, “The chance existed that my influence might remain. Even though I would be gone” (311).
In a matter of minutes, Clara packs her meager belongings and sneaks down the stairs: “Only my copy of Aurora Leigh and my envelopes from Andrew with the stock certificates and bank account information would journey along with me” (312).
Clara stops to say goodbye to Mr. Ford but hears a commotion in the hall. It is Andrew calling for her, but Ford hides her in the pantry. Clara can hear Mrs. Carnegie saying a maid can be easily replaced while Andrew vows to look everywhere until he finds Clara. Before she slips away, Clara writes down her cousin’s address, asking Ford to get in touch if he ever finds his family. As she steps out of the house, she is determined to make a new start for herself and discard all the confusing roles that she has been forced to play.
The story skips forward to October 1900. During the intervening decades, Clara pursued a successful career as a nurse. On this particular day, she is planning to attend the opening of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh with her grand-niece, Maeve. She carries two old letters with her. One is dated from 1869 to inform her that Mr. Ford was reunited with his wife and daughter. Ford retrieved the other note from Andrew’s study. It was a draft that was never sent, but it was intended for Clara. In it, Andrew writes that she woke him up to his true nature. Clara finds herself wondering if her influence over Andrew would have been greater if she had stayed with him and concludes, “Perhaps his memory of me was my strongest legacy” (322). As Maeve and Clara ascend the library steps, Maeve asks if Clara knew Carnegie. She replies simply, “I knew him well [...] Long ago, I was his maid” (322).
Chapter 37-Epilogue Analysis
The book’s final segment examines The Class System and Roles and Identities one last time, but it does so with a twist. The class system is seen as an artificial means to exclude people from elite groups simply to reinforce a sense of superiority among those who consider themselves better than others. While the Carnegies are on the upper rung of Pittsburgh society, they are nothing to the Knickerbockers of New York. Clara overhears the maids of these society matrons mocking Mrs. Carnegie’s expensive new gown because it doesn’t conform to their rules about fashion. The point of the exercise is to reinforce the superiority of those who make the rules of the class system. One maid mimics her mistress and says, “Our ways should not be widely shared. That would be too democratic, inviting into our society all manner of people who do not belong” (263).
American democracy hasn’t penetrated the ranks of New York high society. While Clara is aware that her employers are being rejected, Andrew is just as oblivious as his mother to the slight. Clara says, “Andrew, they will likely do business with you but never admit you to their ranks. Commodore Vanderbilt has been trying for years, and he has received constant snubbing for his efforts” (269). While Andrew embraces democratic principles, he is still eager for the approval of the social elite. The folly of this approach is apparent. To a lesser degree, the book indicts the class system for putting wealth to bad use if its only aim is to impress others while excluding them from the ranks of the elite.
In the book’s final chapters, Roles and Identities are examined with the intention of discarding roles and embracing identities. Both Clara and Andrew experience epiphanies regarding their true natures. In both instances, these revelations are related to the book’s theme, The Purpose of Wealth. Andrew’s business practices have led to company mergers that throw hundreds of people out of work. When Clara’s cousin loses his job at an iron foundry, she confronts Andrew about the consequences of his actions. Thus far, he has acquired wealth to enhance his family’s prestige and power. He has thought little about the lives that have been wrecked as a result. Even after Clara points out the irony of a Scottish immigrant exploiting other poor immigrants for his own gain, he seems unmoved.
Unlike Andrew, Clara sees the need for change. As a lady’s maid, she has always feared speaking out of turn because it might jeopardize her position. Andrew’s bad use of his wealth causes her to rebel against the passive role she has played. When Mrs. Carnegie forces her to leave, Clara does so willingly, seeing her abandonment of the maid’s role as a form of liberation:
I had played at so many roles in the years since landing in America, I had lost myself. Sacrificed myself to one set of ideals and then another [...] until I no longer knew my own mind. No more. I stepped out into the night, onto my own fresh path (316).
Clara emerges from the Carnegie mansion to embrace her real identity. Though it takes Andrew a while longer, he ends up doing the same. The loss of Clara becomes a wake-up call that brings him back to his true nature. In a letter he never expects her to see, he writes:
You found me just before I was beyond all hope of recovery. Your morals, your convictions, and your honesty brought me back from the brink, away from the idolatry of money and self. You reminded me of who I really am (318).
Henceforth, Andrew will put his wealth to good use. With his moral compass restored, he will establish charities and build libraries as investments in the future of humankind.
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