Alright, a little note before you read. This is a research paper I write for my History of the American Film Class (HSTAA 365) during fall quarter. Quite different from my usual creative writing updates, but with my busy schedule, and two writing intensive courses, most of my writing time has been spent on school papers. So, here is what I have been up to. It was my best paper for the class. If you would like me to send you the document with all of the footnotes and sources, just let me know.
Mildred Pierce and The ‘Good Woman’
In the 1940’s, film noir was used to communicate a growing pessimism, paranoia, selfishness, and duplicity#. These emotions were spurred largely by the return of World War II veterans, who experienced the confusion and redefinition of gender roles within culture as a result of women’s presence in the work force. When women refused to give up their jobs when the men returned, society saw them as bad women, bad wives, and bad mothers. This attitude is especially emphasized in the 1945 film, Mildred Pierce, where each woman’s ambitions prevent her from achieving happiness or the American ideal of the family unit, and exposes the underlying fear men had in reaction to women’s newfound ambition.
At the time the United States entered the second World War, the “good woman” was also the good wife and the good mother. The “good woman’s” place was in the kitchen and around the home. Her duty was to her husband and to her children. As the war began and the men were sent overseas, the role of “good women” expanded to incorporate ‘good patriot’ as well. Women entered the work force to support their country, their men overseas, and their children. When the men returned, the “good woman” was expected to leave her job and return to the home. “From a humanitarian point of view, too many women should not stay in the labour force,” said Frederick C. Crawford, of the National Association of Manufacturers, “The home is the Basic American Unit.”# From Crawford’s point of view, America as a whole would benefit with the woman leaving the labor force at the end of the war, because the man could resume his role as the ‘worker’ and the woman could resume her role as housewife.
With the 1940’s definition of the “good woman”, Mildred Pierce stands as an example of several women who do not fit the term “good woman”. It can be argued, in fact, that there are no good women in the film, but only an expectation, an ideal, or a deserted role. “Noir thrillers are concerned to some degree with the problems represented by women who seek satisfaction and self-definition outside the traditional contexts of marriage and family.”# This problem is clearly present in the life of each woman in Mildred Pierce. There is Ida, a working woman who comes alongside Mildred, and mentors her as she enters the work force. She has been a bold business woman for so long, she appears to have lost her femininity. “When men talk to me, they talk to me like a brother,” she says in a conversation with Mildred, “to them I’m just one of the guys.”# The tone with which she says those words suggests that she wishes it were otherwise, but Ida is portrayed as being ‘too far gone’ to salvage her femininity.
While opposite to Ida’s masculinity, Veda’s obsession with her femininity and severe hatred for any ‘duty’ makes Veda just as much a “bad woman” as Ida, if not more so. Veda detested her mother for starting out as a housewife, and detests her even more when Mildred becomes a working woman. Veda seeks to be a part of high society so she can avoid the basic tasks categorized as “women’s work”. In her search for high society wealth (though her mother’s business provided plenty of wealth on its own), Veda becomes a dark, heartless gold-digger, contrasting the lighthearted gold-diggers of the 1930’s. Where the 1930’s gold-digger sought out wealthy men to provide and to love them, Veda, the noir gold-digger, acts as the ‘femme fatale’ of Mildred Pierce. “There is an emphatic strain of male sexual paranoia that runs through the 1940’s ’tough’ thrillers: the idea that women can be gently converted from self-seeking ambitions to other-directed love is framed as a fantasy that is less easily realizable than in the 1930’s.”# She feigns love for, marries, and blackmails Theodore Forester, a wealthy young man from a high society name. She claims to carry his child so he would feel morally obligated to give her the ten thousand dollars she demanded when she divorced him. She then pursues Monte Beragon, another high society name. Though he depends on Mildred to support his high society lifestyle, Monte exposes Veda to the life she wants. She uses her sexuality to lure Monte away from his wife (Mildred), and believes (incorrectly) that he would marry her and she could have the life she wanted. When Monte refuses to marry her, Veda shoots him, ending her perceived chance of happiness and family, and ultimately landing her in prison.
The only woman who is suggested to return to being a “good woman” is Mildred Pierce herself. She is discontented with her role as “good woman” during her marriage to Bert Pierce, saying “I felt like I was born in a kitchen”#, but she appears to fulfill her role as good mother by doting on her children, and as good wife by preparing meals for her husband. She converts to “bad woman” by first divorcing her husband, removing man from the family unit. She next enters the work force, essentially replacing the man by taking the role of ‘provider’ and ‘breadwinner’, instead of doing what a “good woman” was expected to do when faced with a divorce: find another husband. She is revealed to have been a “bad mother” all along, as Veda grows up spoiled and manipulative due to Mildred constantly indulging her. Mildred does not simply join the workforce, but goes so far as to start a successful business of her own, another masculine maneuver. “She has two wishes - to be a successful business-woman…and to have an exclusive relationship with her daughter; Veda. Each wish is based around the exclusion of men.”# Ultimately, Mildred fails in both. Her business flags and is torn out from under her because of Monte (a man she marries in hopes of winning Veda’s affection), and she never attains the relationship she seeks with Veda.
With all of Mildred’s masculine elements stripped away by Monte and Veda, she is free to ‘retry’ her role as a “good woman”, as suggested by the last scene. She reunites with Bert Pierce, and appears to be returning to the life she had been living at the start of her story.
The final shots of the film highlight her return to convention…Mildred walks past the building’s cleaning women, who are on their knees scrubbing the floor. This emphatic image of servile ‘woman’s work’ represents the negation both of Mildred’s defiant dream and of the expanded horizons which the war had seemed to offer women.#
With the final image of the “servile ‘woman’s work’” in Mildred Pierce, the film shows the woman’s role as almost slave-like, and Mildred’s story as a warning for ambitious women everywhere. Women with work ambitions like Mildred Pierce and Ida, or hatred of the woman’s role as servant, like vicious Veda, are, in the words of Krutnik, “Represent[ing] conflicting currents within male identity.”# Men felt that their identity was questioned when they returned from the violence of war to find their women, not in the kitchens as expected, but in the work place (an established ‘man’s place’) and reluctant to return to their previous role as ‘housewife’.
