The Hairy Ape: Scene Two Summary & Analysis

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 of disdainful superiority.” In line with this, she is “nervous and discontented, bored by her own anemia.” Her aunt, on the other hand, is “pompous and proud,” though she sits like a “gray lump of dough touched up with rouge” while Mildred herself looks like “the vitality of her stock [was] sapped before she was conceived, so that she is the expression not of its life energy but merely of the artificialities that energy ha[s] won for itself in the spending.”

Looking out over the ocean, Mildred comments on the “black smoke” coming from the 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 one another, it becomes clear that they aren’t on good terms—a notion made all the more apparent when Mildred says, “I detest you, Aunt. Do you know what you remind me of? Of a cold pork pudding against a background of linoleum table cloth in the kitchen of a—but the possibilities are wearisome.” Her aunt hardly pays attention to this insult, suggesting that they try to make a “truce” since she has to accompany Mildred to England as her chaperone.

Mildred’s aunt criticizes her for seeking “morbid thrills” by working with the poor. “How they must have hated you, by the way,” she says, “the poor that you made so much poorer in their own eyes!” Now, she says, Mildred is taking her “slumming” abroad to the London district of Whitechapel. “Please do not mock at my attempts to discover how the other half lives,” Mildred says. “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?”

Going on, Mildred says that she wants to be “sincere” and that she’d like to “touch life somewhere,” though she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to do this. “I’m afraid I have neither the vitality nor the integrity,” she admits. “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 in 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.”

Mildred’s aunt mocks her for trying to be “sincere,” saying she ought to be “artificial,” since this would be more “sincere” than anything else she might do. In response, Mildred says she glad she’ll soon be going down to the stokehole. Hearing this, her aunt is quite upset, refusing to believe that she’ll actually go through with her idea to see “how the other half lives.” Nonetheless, Mildred tells her that she convinced the captain and the chief engineer to let her go down. “Oh, they didn’t want to at first,” she says, “in spite of my social service credentials. They didn’t seem a bit anxious that I should investigate how the other half lives and works on a ship. So I had to tell them that my father, the president of Nazareth Steel, chairman of the board of directors of this line, had told me it would be all right.”

When the Second Engineer comes to fetch Mildred, he tries to make small talk while waiting for another engineer to accompany them into the stokehole. He says that it’s nice and hot in the sun, but Mildred says, “Not hot enough for me. I don’t like Nature. I was never athletic.” Smiling, the engineer says, “Well, you’ll find it hot enough where you’re going.” In response, Mildred says, “Do you mean hell?” Beside himself, the engineer forces an awkward laugh and says, “Ho-ho! No, I mean the stokehole.” He then suggests that Mildred change out of her white dress because she’s sure to rub against grease on her way down the many ladders and pathways leading to the stokehole, but Mildred refuses, saying that she has “plenty of white dresses.” As Mildred follows the engineer, her aunt calls after her, calling her a “poser.”