The Foundling

Mary is glad to be leaving Scranton. She is picked up by Dr. Vogel and her limo driver, Charlie, and she sits up front with Charlie and helps him navigate. When he tries to flirt with Mary, he drives off the road. Mary drives the car out of the ditch after suggesting that Charlie sit on the hood of the car.

Dr. Vogel invites Mary to sit in the back with her, and the warmth from Charlie dissipates. Dr. Vogel compliments Mary on her German name and reveals her white supremacist and eugenics ideologies. Mary admits to being afraid of being around so many “feebleminded” people, a term used to classify people with intellectual disabilities who didn’t fit into the strict moral standards of the time—especially women.

They drive into Nettleton, and the gate closes behind Mary. She is reminded of the gate closing behind her at St. Catherine’s. When Charlie drops Dr. Vogel off, Mary meets her dogs. Mary stays in the backseat after Dr. Vogel leaves.

Mary meets Hal and Betty and their child, Harry. They are a young couple in their twenties with whom Mary will be staying. Hal is excited to show Mary their indoor plumbing, which Mary has never used before. She is surprised by Hal and Betty’s friendliness.

Mary is shown her room, which she shares with Gladys, the other secretary. She is relieved that Gladys is also lower-middle class. Mary unpacks her suitcase after powdering it with Gladys’s powder, which removes the musty smell that reminds her of her uncle Teddy.

The chapter begins three weeks into Mary’s stay at Nettleton with a letter to Marge, a girl who lives near Mary’s aunt’s house. Mary describes Gladys and explains that she works for Miss Hartley, who is the assistant superintendent at Nettleton. Nettleton is largely maintained by the inmates—those living in the facility—who do all of the indoor and outdoor chores without pay. The indoor jobs such as serving and cooking go to the inmates with the best behavior and most pleasant attitudes.

Sophie, Gladys’s friend, is hired to manage “idiots” but doesn’t pay attention. “Idiot” refers to girls with low IQ test scores, though these girls are often traumatized or tortured into dysfunction. Mary observes that “The caregivers of the most severely defective inmates were, themselves, inmates. The more feebleminded were cared for by the less feebleminded” (42). She is surprised by this arrangement. One day, the dairy girls arrive at the dining room, and Mary recognizes one of them as Lillian Faust, one of her friends from St. Catherine’s.

Mary describes the letters she types up for Miss Hartley: “Many letters were from relatives of mentally defective girls from all over Pennsylvania, begging to have them admitted. These queries tended to come from men—husbands and uncles of mentally defective girls” (45). Many of the girls at Nettleton are sent there by men, and many letters from their female relatives and friends plead for their release. However, the girls are women stuck at Nettleton until they are no longer of child-bearing age. Mary also learns that many women are rented out to homes and other jobs for labor, for which Nettleton gets paid. She decides to write a letter to Sister Rosemary to ask about Lillian.

Mary tells Hal and Betty about Lillian, and they are alarmed. They inform her that Miss Hartley and Dr. Vogel fire staff members who know inmates from outside Nettleton.

Mary is lonely. Gladys usually leaves to see her boyfriend after work, and Mary does not want to intrude on Hal and Betty while they dance on Friday nights. There’s not much to do in the summer, and Mary reminisces about her time with Lillian in the orphanage. She remembers when Lillian broke her arm after climbing a tree and Sister Rosemary telling them the parable of the bull, warning the girls to watch for the bull in a field of cows. Mary recalls that Lillian was Sister Rosemary’s favorite. She does not understand why Lillian is at Nettleton.

On Sundays, Mary usually drives into town to attend mass and bring Dr. Vogel to see her mother. One Sunday, Mary meets Roberta “Bertie” Nolan, a widowed nurse she heard about from Dr. Vogel. Mary assumed she was old and boring, but Bertie turns out to be young and fun.

After they drop off Dr. Vogel, Mary discovers that Bertie knows everyone and is popular in town and at the church. Bertie married young, and her husband died during World War I. She worked at an army hospital and then at the same asylum as Dr. Vogel. When a position opened up at Nettleton, Bertie was recommended and took the job. Mary asks Bertie about Lillian, and Bertie agrees with Hal and Betty: Mary should not mention anything to Dr. Vogel.

Bertie convinces Mary to go on a double date with her. Her date is Brooks, a philosophy professor, and Mary’s is Jake Enright, a young journalist who is reporting on a labor dispute at the steel mill. Mary finds Jake attractive despite his disheveled appearance. The men offer to take Mary to the university library, and Mary and Jake pick out books for each other. She picks Moonstone, a mystery novel about the Indian Hope Diamond’s disappearance. He picks The Monk, a Gothic novel about the corrupting influence of men in power on young girls. Jake asks Mary on a date, and she agrees.

Bertie, Mary, Jake, and Brooks all talk, and Bertie says her job as a nurse is boring. She is relieved because, at the asylum, she saw a lot of violence toward and abuse of women patients by the male staff. The group discusses what happens to the women at Nettleton after they are released, as they don’t know how to navigate the world after spending their entire lives at the institution.

Bertie unexpectedly comes to speak to Dr. Vogel about Ida, an inmate who has had a miscarriage. Charlie is out, so Dr. Vogel asks Mary to drive her to the bank to meet the bank president, Mr. Whitcomb. At the bank, Dr. Vogel confronts Mr. Whitcomb and accuses him of raping Ida while she was working in his household: “She’s the pretty plump thing with red curls, a large bust, and the reasoning skills of a toddler who you raped. More than once” (72). Dr. Vogel extorts Mr. Whitcomb and gets a low-interest loan from the bank to finance the new medical building, as well as a generous donation from Mr. Whitcomb.

While Mary waits in the car, she remembers her uncle, Teddy, a police officer who molested her during her childhood after visits with her father. Teddy taught her how to drive. Dr. Vogel comes back to the car crying after her meeting with Mr. Whitcomb. She explains that despite the progress that women have made, it is still a man’s world that requires women to play by men’s rules. Dr. Vogel is disgusted by the predatory nature of men. However, she also says that Ida probably doesn’t remember anything, which is why she made the deal with Mr. Whitcomb. Mary doesn’t understand how Ida could forget being raped because Mary remembers her own sexual assaults so vividly. She lets herself be convinced by Dr. Vogel, who takes on a maternal role for Mary.

Dr. Vogel reveals her connections to the suffragist movement and speaks vitriolically against the men who spit at her grandmother and mother when they picketed for women’s suffrage. She describes these men as drunk, uneducated immigrants. After they bond, Dr. Vogel insists that all of the events surrounding Ida remain strictly confidential.

The following day, Dr. Vogel promotes Mary to be her secretary and demotes Gladys to be Miss Hartley’s secretary. Gladys is resentful, and though Mary is in awe of Dr. Vogel, she is lonely without Gladys’s comradery. Mary focuses on her work and types out a letter from Dr. Vogel responding to slander about “slave” conditions at Nettleton.

Mary goes out with Bertie, Jake, and Brooks. Mary is nervous and quiet at first, in contrast to Jake’s ease and wit. They all discuss Nettleton, and Brooks continues to refer to Dr. Vogel as a “he” because he can’t conceive of a female doctor. Bertie puts him in his place. Jake is surprised that the inmates teach the staff how to dance. He doesn’t understand how they could be “feebleminded” if they are capable of teaching. Jake also reveals that he is Jewish, and Mary is surprised. They have an awkward exchange that Jake smooths over. As someone interested in labor issues, Jake also wonders what happens to wealthy “feebleminded” women who have children and are never involuntarily hospitalized. The night ends with Brooks asleep in the back of the car, Bertie angry at Brooks, and Mary and Jake sharing a kiss—Mary’s first.