Woman Empowerment

My title suggests one of the reasons I happen to love Mildred Pierce so far. Unlike one of the reasons I liked Ask The Dust so much, it is the plot instead of the writing that has captivated me. Especially during this time period and Mildred’s story that is described to us, I have a lot of respect for the way this woman conducts herself and refuses to be walked over any longer; we get the foreshadowing of this in the very first seen of the book when she kicks out her husband of 11 or 12 years. She refuses to be dependent any longer and makes sure to accomplish this, even when everybody else doubts her.

I also really admire the characters and their relations, or dislike them; either way, I have strong opinions in both directions, which I feel speaks for itself. I was at first speculative of her relationship with Wally, but the book’s progression and his willingness to help her has put me more in his favor. I greatly appreciate her new coworkers as well as her neighbor, Lucy. The latter relationship is what really gets me; I love the old lady’s perception on the world and men especially. She seems to always steer Mildred in the right direction and is a somewhat nurturing character for her when Mildred herself can’t seem to do any more nurturing. Her family, however, baffles me a little bit. I seem to like Ray so far, but don’t care for Bert or Veda. I definitely empathise with their shared sadness in the ending of their relationship, but I don’t have a lot of appreciation for the way he’s treated her thus far, even when he tries to do the noble thing and act with “pride”. Veda gets on my last nerve, even though her mother claims that most of the significant fortunes have happened because of her, I severely disapprove of her arrogance and the way she regards her mother. I do try to keep their age in mind and greatly hope that she either grows out of it or adapts better to her personality as the book adapts.

Overall, I feel captivated by this book and am excited to see where it continues to take us. I am somewhat unsure of why we are reading it for our hardboiled class, except for maybe the different variation of our highly discussed femme fatale character.

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