Does anyone have sympathy for Mildred? *Spoilers*

Your post is very wise and sensitive- I applaud you for being able to be able to reflect upon what had to be an awful stage of your life with such honesty and level-headedness, I'm sure many in your situation would have allowed themselves to be destroyed by the bitterness and rage such an experience might provoke!

I think while Mildred is a woman of simple thought and education, she's still a complex creature, and I'm glad to see some of these posts that can so perspicaciously acknowledge the destitute circumstances and emotional wasteland from which this woman sadly came.

It's much easier to simply view her as a vulgar, selfish piece of bitter, spiteful white trash. While she is undoubtebly an alarmingly manipulative and greedy woman who consciencously preys upon Phillips' good nature, her world from the start is painfully base and lacking in the bricks and mortar of kind, gentle grooming that makes the soul healthy and crave the mutual joy of respect and love. She knew so little of love that Phillip's seemed probabbly rather alien and amusing. I believe her later tantrums were consequently brought on by her somewhat distorted and newly discovered feelings of affection and appreciation of Phillip once he rescued her for the first time from the streets. However, if one learns hate and degradation before one knows love, it makes it hard to absorb something positive in the natural manner that most of us do. One can only imagination how such foreign acts of respect and kindness felt to a woman who's been used and abused by everyone with whom she comes in contact. Keep in mind too beforfe meeting Phillip, all Mildred had as armor between herself and a cold world was her simple but tenacious pride, and a poignant, unrealistic delusion where all the grandeurs of romance and wealth were hers to be won.
Some Mildreds of the world, no matter how grave their background and hardened their souls, can grow out of their banal existences and become softer, wiser and stonger people who break free from the dark and bleak influences of their lives and find ways to love, feel, connect and succeed. However many don't- and while their hateful projections and selfish acts aren't excused by the indecency they've known, it certainly doesn't make them evil. I did feel sympathy for her too. She was hardly a person whose slick methods and con artistry bettered her in any way- here conquests were trifling in the larger scheme of things, and rather concilliatory considering the inveitable fate that awaited her.


I often do wonder, however, what author Somerset Maugham had in mind when he wrote Mildred's character enigmatically stating that "the baby died last summer".... there's no indication whether the child died of illness or if Mildred left her for dead. I truly want to believe that the child died unintentionally, even if circumstances of neglectful behavior and absentminded care and laziness on behalf of Mildred catalyzed the child's death. However it's sad to say that it's certainly not out of the realm of imagination to consider the possibility that Mildred intentionally did away with the child. That act, despite my empathy towards Mildred's banal and tormented, futile existence, would be nothing short of monstrous and despicable. No situation in humanity, no matter how ugly or grotesque, justifies the murder of a child, and no heart, no matter how simple and deformed, can allow such an act to be executed unless that heart has turned completely black with unforgivable cruelty.


"You're maudlin and full of self-pity. You're magnificent!"
-- George Sanders, All About Eve