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 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary

As a waitress, Mildred is immediately thrown into an extremely busy shift with a harried hostess, Ida, who orders her around mercilessly. Ida and Mr. Chris, the manager, do not want her, so she’s been hired on a trial basis because Archie, the chef, insists on keeping her.

That evening, Mildred tells Lucy about her new job and wonders if she should keep it. Lucy counsels her to stay, since she needs money so desperately: “You're in a spot. It's all right to be proud, and I love you for it. But you're starving to death, baby” (61). Mildred compels Lucy to keep the job a secret, especially from Veda; knowing her mother is a uniform-wearing waitress would dampen Veda’s pride.

When Bert shows up to the house, the girls are overjoyed to see him. Veda asks if her father would like her to open a bottle of Scotch for him—a bottle Mildred has been keeping sealed in case she needs to sell it. Mildred scolds Veda over her impertinence, but Veda pretends to be above the criticism. Veda feigns an elitist conversation with her father as Ray pretends to get drunk. As she watches Bert play with the girls, Mildred realizes how much she loves him.

After the girls go to bed, Wally rings the doorbell. Realizing that Bert is there, Wally pretends he has come to see Bert. Mildred takes the car keys out of Bert’s coat. After Wally leaves, Bert tells Mildred he has come to get his insurance policy, which has a cash value of $256. Mildred hands it over without hesitation, but refuses to return the car keys. She drives him back to Maggie’s house, and then drives down Colorado Avenue, exhilarated.

Chapter 5 Summary

Imbued with renewed confidence, Mildred quickly becomes the top server in the restaurant. She learns how to coax tips from her male customers, while deftly fending off their romantic overtures. It dawns on her that the pies served in the restaurant are poor. She creates a scheme to lure Mr. Chris, the manager, into contracting with Mildred for her homemade pies. The plan works flawlessly.

Mildred demonstrates real business acumen, expanding her pie business to a second eatery. She hires Letty, a young woman, to babysit and help with housework. Still, when she must pay $75 interest on the mortgage Bert took out on the house, Mildred borrows $50 from Wally to make the payment.

One day, Mildred comes home from work to find Letty wearing one of her waitress uniforms. Veda found it while snooping in Mildred’s closet. Veda has been making Letty call her “Miss Veda” and walk behind Veda and Ray when they go to the swimming pool, pretending that the uniforms must be for Letty, though clearly Veda knows Mildred works as a waitress. When Mildred confronts Veda, Veda expresses humiliation that Mildred is a waitress, infuriating Mildred, who spanks her. After Veda goes to bed, Mildred has a breakthrough: “[A] hot, electric idea flashed through her mind. Why not have her own restaurant? She looked in the mirror, and saw a calculating, confident woman's face squinting back at her” (87).

Chapter 6 Summary

Mildred studies how the restaurant is run. She compiles a list of necessities, which will cost $1000—a lot of money. Though she does not want Wally to be her financial backer, she runs her plan past him. Wally gets very excited. He explains that the company he and Bert work for, Pierce Homes, must pay hefty property taxes; however, if they donate their model home to Mildred, they can declare a loss to lower taxes and Mildred will have an ideal spot for her restaurant. The only problem is that Mildred has to divorce Bert, who was an original owner of the property and thus cannot receive it through donation. Though she is reluctant at first, Mildred believes this is the way to fulfill her dream.

Bert resists granting Mildred divorce. They have a fight about the divorce and their extramarital relationships. It goes from verbal to physical: “She turned away quickly, thrust her hands into the dough, tried to remember that arguing with Bert was like arguing with a child” (97) and then throws the pie dough in his face.

Lucy tells Mildred that Bert is grandstanding: “Bert’s like Veda. Unless he can do things in a grand way, he’s not living, that’s all” (98). She suggests that Mildred make him a special pie as a conciliatory move. As Lucy predicted, the pie works—they have a civil discussion, Bert agrees to the divorce, and won’t seek ownership of their house. They apologize for their conduct and end up laughing about the big argument. Bert pretends to sock Mildred in the jaw so that she can claim cruelty as a reason for divorce.

During the divorce proceedings, reporters take photos of Mildred at the courthouse. Signing the legal papers, Mildred feels sorry for Bert, feeling she has taken everything that was his. Lucy reminds her that Bert would have lost the house to the lenders after defaulting on the mortgage. When Mildred says, “But he looked so pitiful” (102), Lucy replies, “Baby, they all do. That’s what gets us” (102).

Chapter 7 Summary

Mildred has purchased everything she needs for her new business and has set up contracts with several restaurants to supply pies. During her last shift at the L.A. restaurant, she meets an attractive customer, Monty Beragon, who makes a date to take her to Arrowhead Lake.

Monty has a rough-hewn cabin at the lake. They decide to go swimming. Mildred is worried that her hair smells like the restaurant kitchen and wants to wash it in the lake before Monty gets close enough to smell it. She dives into the lake while Monty stands on the floating dock, watching her. They tease each other, playing in the water, and then go back to the cabin and have sex. Monty does not work—he has inherited an orchard that provides his income. After spending Friday night and most of Saturday at the lake, Monty wants to stay through Sunday, but Mildred needs to make pies for delivery on Monday. On the drive back, she has Monty take her by her new restaurant and gives him a tour. She invites him to come on Thursday when her restaurant opens for business.

After Monty drops off Mildred, her neighbor Mrs. Floyd angrily demands to know where she has been—her daughter Ray has been taken to the hospital with the flu. Instantly terrified, Mildred assumes this is God’s judgment upon her.

Chapters 4-7 Analysis

The novel is rife with class prejudice, which is typically rooted in power dynamics. Veda is an aspiring elitist who puts on affectations of sophistication: She offers Bert fancy Scotch, mocks Maggie for being middle class, and forces Letty to act like a servant when Veda and Ray go to the pool. Some of this clearly comes from Mildred, who looks down on people with menial jobs who have to wear uniforms, embarrassed to be one of them. More generally, professionals, and experienced workers like Ida, look down on the unskilled; while rich upper-class Californians look down on working class people.

Even at 11 years old, Veda already has a very complex relationship with her mother. Mildred adores Veda, craving any sign of affection from her, and yet fully recognizes that Veda is cynical, cruel, and cold-hearted—the most frequent description Cain uses about her. Mildred is often aghast at Veda’s behavior and verbal cruelty. However, when she lashes out at Veda physically—for instance, when she spanks Veda in Chapter 3, it is Mildred and not Veda, who breaks down in tears—almost as though the mother must make up for the lack of emotionality in her daughter.

In Cain’s world, women understand men’s motives and responses, covertly battling them in an ongoing war of the sexes. Lucy, an old veteran of this war, universally looks down on men—the result of her observation that men look down on women, who can only wield power over men through manipulation. As Lucy predicts, Mildred’s only way to get Bert to have a civilized discussion about divorce is to make a big show of soothing his feelings: Bert needs to feel important to agree to divorce Mildred. He claims to gift her the house, an absurd gesture, since Mildred is already paying the second mortgage, but she must act as though he is being extremely generous.

In this section, Cain demonstrates the ability to capture authentically the cadences and underlying emotions of the conversations he is recording. When Ida, Anna and Mildred talk in the restaurant, their distinct personalities come through clearly in the dialogue along with the tenor of the emotional bond between them. When Mildred and Monty are riding in his car, the romantic undertones are clear in their banter. Cain conveys the emotions his characters are feeling not by naming their emotions but through their words and actions. As a part of making up after their fight, Mildred and Bert mutually agree to be blind to the other’s infidelity and laugh playfully about their argument. Cain implies there is underlying tenderness and affection between the two.