Mildred Pierce

Mildred Pierce is

The novel

Mildred Pierce, which is set in and around Los Angeles in the 1930s, depicts the life of an American self-made businesswoman. Frustrated by her unemployed, penniless, apathetic and fatalistic husband, Mildred Pierce, despite the Depression, sets out to realize her own American Dream by becoming the breadwinner of the family - she bakes beautiful and delicious cakes for the people in their neighbourhood - and, soon afterwards, by ejecting her unfaithful husband and caring for their two daughters as a single mother, regaining her self-esteem on the way. After trying her hand at all kinds of jobs, including waitressing, she finally succeeds in opening her own diner and very soon is the proud owner of three restaurants. An attractive young woman who believes she is entitled to some spare time and fun as well, she starts an affair with Monty Beragon, the impoverished owner of a California-based fruit company.

Related Topics:
Los Angeles - Depression - American Dream - California

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After her young daughter Kay has died of some infection, Mildred focuses all her love on her one remaining child, Veda. Arrogant and haughty, Veda basks in her mother´s success but increasingly turns into an ungrateful child, demanding more and more from her hard-working entrepreneur mother without contributing anything to the family income herself. Rather, she starts training, and eventually performing, as a singer, a fact which, although it makes her mother proud, also costs an awful lot of money.

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Events head toward a sad climax when 17 year-old Veda tries to get money out of a wealthy family by alleging that she has been made pregnant by their son. Only gradually does it dawn upon Mildred what a nasty character Veda has developed, as her daughter has not only had pre-marital sex but as she has done so out of greed rather than love. When subsequently Veda lets herself be seduced by hedonistic Monty Beragon - Mildred catches them almost in the act in Monty's bedroom, with Veda getting out of bed stark naked - Mildred finally realizes her inability to continue their mother-daughter relationship. Veda and Monty go away to New York together, Veda leaving her mother for good, finally able to get away from "everything that smells of grease". At the very end of the book Mildred makes up with her somewhat reformed husband, and the reunited couple wish their daughter to hell.

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