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Mildred Douglas
An old woman whom O’Neill describes as “pompous and proud.” Mildred’s aunt is highly critical of her niece, finding her desire to work with poor people utterly absurd. She isn’t afraid to voice her misgivings about Mildred, chastising the young woman for seeking “morbid thrills” and telling her that she might as well embrace the fact that she is “artificial” instead of trying to act “sincere.”
Mildred’s Aunt Quotes in The Hairy Ape
The The Hairy Ape quotes below are all either spoken by Mildred’s Aunt or refer to Mildred’s Aunt. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Scene Two Quotes
The impression to be conveyed by this scene is one of the beautiful, vivid life of the sea all about—sunshine on the deck in a great flood, the fresh sea wind blowing across it. In the midst of this, these two incongruous, artificial figures, inert and disharmonious, the elder like a gray lump of dough touched up with rouge, the younger looking as if the vitality of her stock had been sapped before she was conceived, so that she is the expression not of its life energy but merely of the artificialities that energy had won for itself in the spending.
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This passage appears at the beginning of Scene Two, when O’Neill outlines what the stage should look like as Mildred and her aunt sit on the deck of the ocean liner and look out over the water. Contrasting the “vivid life of the sea” with the “incongruous, artificial” nature of these two women, he emphasizes the ways in which their wealth has removed them from the living world, such that they have trouble experiencing beauty with any kind of real “energy” or vitality. Indeed, Mildred’s aunt is well-dressed, but she resembles “a gray lump of dough touched up with rouge,” Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium
After exhausting the morbid thrills of social service work on New York’s East Side—how they must have hated you, by the way, the poor that you made so much poorer in their own eyes!—you are now bent on making your slumming international.
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Mildred’s aunt says this to her in a conversation about the fact that Mildred is on her way to London, where she plans to volunteer to help poor people in the Whitechapel district. Her aunt finds her “social service work” appalling, suggesting that Mildred only engages in such activities because she wants the “morbid thrill” of seeing how “the other half lives.” Despite the old woman’s bitterness, it’s worth pointing out that she is—in many regards—correct to point out the grotesquerie of Mildred’s supposedly philanthropic deeds. After all, seeing “how the other half lives” (which is what Mildred says she Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates
Please do not mock at my attempts to discover how the other half lives. Give me credit for some sort of groping sincerity in that at least. I would like to help them. I would like to be some use in the world. Is it my fault I don’t know how? I would like to be sincere, to touch life somewhere. (with weary bitterness) But I’m afraid I have neither the vitality nor integrity. All that was burnt out in our stock before I was born. Grandfather’s blast furnaces, flaming to the sky, melting steel, making millions—then father keeping those home fires burning, making more millions—and little me at the tail-end of it all. I’m a waste product of the Bessemer process—like the millions. Or rather, I inherit the acquired trait of the byproduct, wealth, but none of the energy, none of the strength of the steel that made it.
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In this passage, Mildred defends herself against her aunt’s cynicism. Arguing that she wants to gain a sense of “sincerity” by seeing “how the other half lives,” she tells her aunt that her “social service” efforts are valid because she genuinely wants to be “some use in the world.” However, she admits that she doesn’t “know how” to do this, since she has never had to live life for herself. Indeed, the “millions” that her family has made by producing steel has made her into a “waste product,” somebody who has “none of the energy” that originally inspired her grandfather Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae.
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Mildred’s Aunt Character Timeline in The Hairy Ape
The timeline below shows where the character Mildred’s Aunt appears in The Hairy Ape. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Scene Two
Two days later, Mildred Douglas—the wealthy daughter of a steel tycoon—sits above deck with her aunt. She is “slender” and “delicate” with “a pale, pretty face marred by a self-conscious expression...
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...ocean liner, suggesting that it looks “beautiful” as it “swirls back against the sky.” Her aunt, however, says that she “dislikes smoke of any kind.” As the two women argue with...
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Mildred’s aunt criticizes her for seeking “morbid thrills” by working with the poor. “How they must have...
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Mildred’s aunt mocks her for trying to be “sincere,” saying she ought to be “artificial,” since this...
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...refuses, saying that she has “plenty of white dresses.” As Mildred follows the engineer, her aunt calls after her, calling her a “poser.”
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