Editing Mildred Pierce (section)

==Theme==

The theme of the novel derives from Cain’s female protagonist, Mildred Pierce, a housewife who “uses men to gain her ends”, in achieving financial success as a restaurateur. Mildred’s daughter Veda, in turn, manipulates her mother to advance her musical ambitions. The elements of “food, finance and mothering” appear forcefully, as they did in earlier works, especially Cain’s 1937 novel [[Serenade (novel)|Serenade]].<ref>Skenazy, 1989 p. 67</ref><ref>Madden, 1970 p. 73, p.88: “With the help of sex, housewife Mildred invades the male world and proves audacious in business…”</ref>

The social  and economic hardships of the depression era are co-mingled with Cain’s “obsessive concern with power within heterosexual relationships.” Though never a “social” novelist in the tradition of [[Theodore Dreiser]], Cain’s descriptions of the working class experience are “bitter, incisive and unquestionably authentic.”<ref>Skenazy, 1989 p. 21: “...Mildred Pierce offers a broader social landscape and a more penetrating insight into obsession…” And: p. 68: “...bitter, incisive” quote is from [[Stanley Edgar Hyman]].</ref> Critic Paul Skenazy writes:

{{blockquote | For Cain, the most impressive elements of the Depression are not alterations in the job market, or class inequities, but the obsession with money that the economic crisis creates, and the way the economic collapse affects relations between the sexes. Because all of the men in the novel are out of work and financially dependent on women, the power structure of personal relations have been inverted.<ref>Skenazy, 1989 p. 69:</ref>}}

Cain signaled his intention to treat the larger social landscape of the period when he chose to write Mildred Pierce in the [[Narration|third-person]] “as against the narrowly defined [[Narration|first-person]] focused on erotic obsessiveness…” This point-of-view allowed the author to more convincingly “convey a sense of a woman’s perspective.”<ref>Madden, 1970 p. 133: “...woman’s perspective…” p. 130: “...the long time-span [of the depression era] give the novel as epic dimension.”</ref><ref>Skenazy, 1989 p. 66-67</ref Mildred’s overweening “mothering instinct” directed toward her eldest daughter Veda, almost of a sexual nature, contrasts with her ambivalence towards her husband Monty and men in general. Veda, emulating Mildred, seeks to displace her mother as the dominant female in the relationship, eventually seducing her stepfather. Mildred lives vicariously through her daughter's success as a coloratura opera soprano, despite Veda being “absolutely selfish, deceitful, guileful [and] snobbish.” And p. 65: “...the other face of Cain’s portraits of deception is [a] mothering instinct...most terrifyingly posed in Mildred Pierce’s love for her daughter Veda in Mildred Pierce…” And: p. 66: “...a brilliant and brutal depiction of the underside of domestic affection.” And p. 72-73: See here for nature of the Mildred/Veda relationship.<br>Madden, 1970 p. 74: Veda portrayed as “a through-going bitch…Cain is a masterful creator of bitches”, among them Veda Pierce. See p. 74 for “absolutely selfish…” quote.<br>Hoopes, 1982 p. 373: See here for critical response to Cain’s creation of unsavory characters, “monster-monger.”</ref> Biographer David Madden observes:

{{blockquote |Cain depicts ways in which certain aspects of the American character and the dream produce grotesque women like Veda…in the [[Great Depression|depression]] when everything is suddenly taken from her…Veda alone holds on desperately and arrogantly to all the dreams of affluence…she is the flowering of the seed of corruption in the [[American Dream]]...<ref>Madden, 1970 p. 74</ref>}}