Mildred as a Fatal Woman

  In our discussion we noted Veda seems to fit the femme fatale role in Mildred Pierce. It's her “dangerous” sexuality that leads to the fatality in the film. Mildred fatal flaw is her inability to be a “proper” mother to her daughters. The overt problem is her indulgent attitude and favoritism toward Veda, but the more subtle criticism insinuated in the film is Mildred's inability to be a “proper woman.”

Unlike the usual femme fatale whose dangerous attitude toward sex endangers normality (i.e., the family—Kathie in Out of the Past vs. Ann and the implied future family life she and Jeff would have had), Mildred endangers her family through her devotion to work and success, to her career.

   Part of the appearance of noir and the centrality of the femme fatale has always been attributed to the shifting place of women in American society during WWII. The time frame of the novel was the thirties. In the film, it's left much less definite, though Monty's offhanded reference to the scarcity of nylons for “the duration” (another term for wartime, which was now in its fourth year). Mildred, like many other women of the era, then, moves out of the home and into the workplace. Mildred, significantly, doesn't take up a factory job producing munitions or airplanes (as Bert eventually does), but adapts her womanly skills as a homemaker to serving others meals into a business, Mildred, Inc., the name of her company that she eventually loses control (much as she loses control of her family through her indulgence of Veda).

Dominant Breadwinner

Smoking, hard-drinking Executive of Mildred, Inc.

  In other words, for the film, the threat Mildred poses to the family derives from her perversion of the family through her warping of her proper familial role as homemaker. By the time she's become an obsessed, hard-working, executive overseeing her empire of Mildred, Inc. the “problem” is obvious, but, as Bert tellingly points out, she's been headed toward trouble even earlier in usurping his proper place as family breadwinner. Mildred had already been supporting her family through her pie business which she had started in her own kitchen. The income from her domestic business, a nascent form of Mildred, Inc., is what enables her independence from Bert and leads her to realize she can support her family on her own. From our view, this criticism directed toward Mildred looks unfair—and ignores the obvious need her income fulfills (somewhat in the way Veda eventually accepts her mother's money, but disapproves of its “greasy” origins in the restaurant). However, clearly the film see the bigger picture (again in its terms anwyay), Mildred's problem all along has been her pursuit of outside income, an improper feminine pursuit that will destroy the family. Not accidentally, once Mildred has lost the business (and her monstrous, uncontrollable daughter), the path is cleared for her to regain her proper place at the now properly employed Bert Pierce's side. The implication is that she had never given Bert the chance he needed—as a husband or as a breadwinner. Bert told her from the beginning when the time comes, he'll get a job. Her impatience (not financial need), the implication seems, has undermined his masculinity and made him unable to fulfill his proper role as family provider. When Bert and Mildred walk into the sunset of their restored world, notice the seemingly superfluous washerwomen prominently displayed in the corner of the frame, emphasizing Mildred's own restoration to her proper (subordinate) place.