The first reason why Mildred is a bad wife is because she is self centered because society took out personality. In the story “Fahrenheit 451”, The captain to Montag’s squad, Beatty, states “... Fill them with enough useless information to where they feel like they're thinking, they’ll have a sense of motion without moving.” Mildred is shocked full of this useless information, that she thinks she’s thinking. (i went off subject) Mildred made the quote, “She’s nothing to me!” to Montage(her husband/ main character) over what he saw, or how she looked like. It takes a lot to just live with the fact to watch someone die. But it truly takes someone heartless to not care at all. Society took out personality so people can no longer have hearts. But …show more content…
And she calls people on a program on the TV her “family.” Society didn’t want people to think, so they took out the thinking part. They took out the feeling in TV. What’s the point of watching TV if you can’t learn anything from it. I guess that old saying about a TV having the capability to ruin your mind is true. The big screen that people think must be a tool to brainwash people into thinking that they are actually needed in this world.
The third reason why Mildred is a bad wife if because she doesn’t have a heart. Everyone feels the lost if someone you know died. Montag just realized that he’s been killing people for the wrong reason. People whose only offense is reading books, and killing an innocent soul is no different than being a murderer. She doesn’t care that people died. She doesn’t give a crap that her husband is a murderer. “She means nothing to me!” are the exact words that she used because she only cares about herself.
All in all, Mildred is a horrible wife, she’s heartless, self centered, and robotic. She may have been better before marriage, but she just went from bad to worse. No one can not feel the pain of a loss, and the only thing that’s worse than killing people is not saving someone who you know you can save. That is the worst thing
First, MIldred is Montag’s wife, and she acts as if she is a robot. Montag is different from everyone else, he thinks more about certain stuff than other people do. Unlike Montag Mildred doesn’t think as hard as he does. This is a reason of why or how she is robotic. The way Mildred speaks to Montag is another reason to why she has robot like actions. In the book, Mildred or MIllie says, “I had a nice evening”, then Montag replies “What doing?”, Millie then says, “The parlor”,
As stated in the ‘Roles of Women in the 1950s, by a home economics textbook published in 1954,’ This time called for… “loving wives who supported their husbands emotionally. Divorce was cause for shame, even though not every couple was happy. Pressure to conform (for men to be good “company men” and women to be perfect housekeepers and mothers) caused stress for both sexes.” Mildred may be seen as happy however if we further analyze the text she may not be. In the first part of the story it seems odd that Mildred, although a complete airhead could down 30 sleeping pills and had no idea that she did. This again as discussed in the Feminist Literary Theory makes a woman in literature seem less intelligent than their counterpart. However it could be argued that Mildred popped these pills unhappy but has no way to show it. In this dystopian society as well as the 1950s when the book was written is was a woman's job to be happy or at least pretend to be. In the story she states that she is proud of the life she has with her husband and that she is satisfied. Now just like in the 1950s the ideal woman would be there too smile and welcome her husband home from a long day at work, Mildred is the ideal woman in her society as well. Lastly, the plumbers when ‘fixing’ Mildred after she downed all the pills said this happens all the time, we
First, Mildred is unfeeling when she didn’t care that a woman had burned herself to death. A quote from the story is “She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should have thought of that.” Mildred is unfeeling because society has made her believe that if it doesn’t affect her it doesn’t matter.
Mildred Pierce, by James M. Cain, begins in pre-Depression California, and ends during World War II times, also in California. The main character, Mildred Pierce, is a very attractive housewife of 29, raising two daughters, Ray and Veda. Although Mildred loves both her daughters, Veda is a particular obsession with Mildred. She constantly slaves away throughout the novel to do whatever she can to make Veda happy, despite the constant abuse and deception Veda inflicts upon Mildred. After a divorce from her first husband, Bert, in the opening pages of the novel, Mildred is forced to sacrifice her pride and become a waitress in order to support her family. If Veda were ever to find out, she would be appalled; a constantly recurring theme throughout this story is Veda’s pride and arrogance, and her condemnation of jobs she deems to be menial. Mildred’s main goal is to nurture Veda’s musical talents, and manages to pay for expensive music lessons from her meager salaries as a waitress and pie baker. However, Mildred’s luck is soon to change, as she takes up with an attorney and former partner of Bert, Wally. Mildred is able to use Wally’s business and real estate savvy to build a restaurant out of a deserted model home, and from there create a thriving chain of three food businesses. After becoming bored with Wally, however, Mildred craves a relationship with another man, a prestigious local man named Monty. Veda highly approves of her mother’s choice, as this makes her feel as if she too were more prestigious and affluent, despite having misgivings about her mother still being so low as to have an average, pedestrian job. All seems to be going well; even through Veda’s constant demands and tantrums, she still gets everything she wants, and Mildred and Monty are happy. Monty, however, falls on hard times with the coming of the Great Depression, and he constantly mooches off of Mildred’s affluence, making it a struggle for Mildred to cater to Veda’s every whim. Mildred soon dumps Monty to focus on making Veda a musical prodigy; this fails, however, when Veda is told that her piano is not up to par from a local famous music teacher. After Veda recovers from this shock, she explores the opportunities offered by an acting career, and begins to spin more webs of deception and selfishness. After Veda forces money out of a local rich family, lying and claiming their son got her pregnant, Mildred and Veda have a major argument, and Veda disowns her mother.
This shows how Mildred lacks in thinking and considering the feelings of others.
Last Mildred shows how unfeeling she is. This quote shows how she is unfeeling “ McClellan. Run over by a car. Four days ago.” Mildred acts like a death was normal not a big deal. Beatty had told montag how they only want people to have fun. The government just wants people totally carefree about everything. They basically just want unfeeling people to control. This is crazy that a government would think fun is the only emotion people need.
On the surface, it seems like Mildred Pierce undergoes a positive transformation and develops into an independent woman. At the beginning of Mildred’s first narrated flashback, she describes her life as little more than “cooking and washing and having children.” She works as a housewife. Her attire and environment reflect this: her first interaction in the flashback is with her husband in the kitchen with an apron on. Bert’s departure pressures Mildred to enter to workforce to support her family and their wants. Her wardrobe changes to represent this change, also, since she is usually seen in working clothes. She builds the motivation to start her own restaurant and eventually starts her own successful restaurant chain, and once again, her physical appearance changes in that she is dressed in fancy clothes. Once she understands that her marriage with Bert would hurt her financially, she actively seeks a divorce fr...
Is Mildred selling herself to the people in her life in order to maintain the life she has created for herself and Veda? She is constantly working and making money for her family but she gets no fulfilment out of it. Towards the end of the film, Mildred is back with Bert and is contempt to go back to the lifestyle she once lived, but that her daughter Veda despises. Does Mildred feel self-accomplished or does she feel powerless? “Mildred walks out of the police station into the morning sunshine with the man who was her first husband and the father of her children. However, since he was an unreliable breadwinner and she had to go to work baking pies to support the family in the first place, one might wonder just how happy this ending is supposed to seem” (Basinger,
Despite the Great Depression being an overarching constant throughout the novel, they are surprisingly more financially stable than most. However, this is not enough for Mildred, as evidenced by her initial relationship with her husband Herbert Pierce. When Bert is accused of adultery by Mildred, Cain writes that “ He broke in frequently, making excuses for himself, and repeating that there was no work, and insisting bitterly that if Mrs Biederhof had come into his life, a guy was entitled to some peace, instead of a constant nagging over things that lay beyond his control (Cain 4).”His adultery is a symptom of dissatisfaction, of being disappointed in how far one has fallen from grace; Cain later confirms Bert’s complaints, describing the downward spiral as a combination of short-sighted business choices and the uncompromising hammer of the Great Depression beating down on the Pierces just as much as everyone else. Especially important is how he highlights peace as his primary motivation for the affair. His mistress, Mrs. Biederhof, is not especially attractive; what is really driving him away is Mildred’s impatient exaggerated expectations still present from the now-shattered promise of grandeur. Bert is not the only, or even primary factor responsible for the dashing of dreams. He is, however, the only tangible physical proof
Mildred sounded the book alarm in her home, avenging Montag for not loving her and for putting her in danger (page 108). While Montag was hiding his secret library, he showed it to his wife, Mildred. Since libraries and books are illegal, Mildred felt unsafe. One day while Montag was at work, Mildred rang the alarm in their house, which called the firemen. Montag and the firemen came rushing to the house, not knowing it was Montag’s. Montag ended up burning his own house down, piece by piece, with a flamethrower.
First, Mildred could be described as unfeeling. She does not care and is emotionless to everything that happens no matter what it is. In the novel, a woman kills herself in front of Montag, and because of this he is upset. Mildred’s response to this included, “She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have books, it was her responsibility, she should have thought of that.” She does not care that her husband is upset, and she doesn’t feel sorry or sad that someone died. Based on Captain
Mildred is not just self-centered, she is also unfeeling. For example she forgot to tell Montag that clarisse had died, and didn’t seem fazed at all. She is also robotic. When captain Beatty came to talk to Montag, Montag had asked her to leave the room. She did angrily, but she still did as she was told.
Montag defines, “her face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their moving shadows, but she felt no shadow” (13). Montag is describing how Mildred appears to him every day. This quotation proves that without books and knowledge (guidance) people in the society are unhappy, but they believe technology such as “parlor families” have the ability to keep them happy. Mildred symbolizes her society. This quotation supports depression in the society because the story clearly shows that the people are not pleased. Evidence is the fact that Mildred tried to commit suicide. If she were happy with her life and their society she would not have thought about committing suicide. “You took all the pills in your bottle last night” (19). Books not being a part of the society created a society in which everything is bad, a frightening place in the world. Mildred’s society is a dystopian society where everyone who does not have knowledge is suffering depression, they are devastating. Another example that proves that citizens in the society are depressed is when Montag feels that Captain Beatty wanted to die because he did not even try to move and purposely let Montag kill him. Evidence for the text is “he lay where he had fallen and sobbed, his legs folded, his face pressed blindly to
...iety too, as seen in Mildred’s friends. Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles are similar to Mildred, they say they voted on the last president simply for his looks. They don’t care about any of the important qualities only the superficial ones. Montag is further shocked when they talk so nonchalant about the war and their family’s, saying “(Insert quote here” (Bradbury ). This in addition, proves that not only is television addictive but can desensitize you from earthly troubles. Television allows you to step into a different world, and when Mildred’s friends are forced to come back from it, they cry and are angry. Montag forced them to comfort their disgraceful dismal of family ethics, decline of the upcoming war, and neglect of the high rates of suicide in their society.
Of all characters, Bradbury uses Mildred Montag to effectively portray the idea that the majority of society has taken happiness as a refuge in nothing but passive, addictive entertainment. She immediately reveals her character early in the book, by saying, “My family is people. They tell me things: I laugh. They laugh! And the colors!” (73). Mildred is describing her parlors, or gigantic wall televisions, in this quote. Visual technological entertainment is so important in her life that she refers them to as “family,” implying the television characters as her loved ones. By immersing herself in an imaginary world, Mildred finds herself able to relate to fake characters and plots, giving her a phony sense of security. This is necessary for her to achieve her shallow happiness, or senseless plain fun, as she lifelessly watches other people in her walls with a senseless mind. Her family in real life only consists of Guy Montag, her husband, whom she has no fond feelings about. Montag is so frustrated with Mildred because of her inability to express feelings for ...