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Book 3, Part 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Trust, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
U.S. Foundational Myths
Gender and Subjugation
Wealth
Power and Morality
Self-Interest vs. the Common Good
Summary
Analysis
Mildred’s diary is divided into morning, afternoon, and evening entries. In the first entry, a nurse asks if she can touch Mildred and gives Mildred a massage. In the ensuing days, Mildred receives a shipment of books and relishes the practice in the Swiss sanatorium of warming clothes before one puts them on in the morning. She also analyzes the notes and structure of the music of church bells, which she hears coming from a church she can’t see. Andrew calls from Zürich, where he has gone to conduct business. Mildred knows that he’s genuinely concerned for her.
In her diary, Mildred comes across as intellectually engaged and mentally sharp. She reads through a shipment of books and analyzes musical characteristics of her surroundings, even as she undergoes treatment for an as-yet undisclosed illness in a Swiss sanatorium. That portrayal suggests how different Mildred as a person is from the naïve and childlike character Andrew portrays in his autobiography.
Themes
Mildred is in profound pain, but she doesn’t tell the nurse because she doesn’t want morphine. She reads in the evening, and the next morning, she gets morphine. The sedation of morphine is pleasant, but she isn’t interested in writing about her own “stupor.” Andrew returns from Zürich and looks tired. He presents his questions as statements. Mildred advises him that certain financial positions he’s taken are wrong, and Andrew says he’ll make a phone call in the morning to change those investments. Mildred wonders what her cells would mutate into if they didn’t kill her first.
Mildred reveals that she gives Andrew investment advice. She also suggests that he is too proud to directly ask for that advice, so he instead frames his questions as statements. Mildred seems to be more intellectually capable than Andrew and has an insight into Andrew’s professed area of expertise, investing, which Andrew lacks. That dynamic is essentially the opposite of the one Andrew described in his autobiography.
Themes
Andrew goes to Zürich again, partly to be away from Mildred’s illness, which he hates. Mildred thinks that she made a mistake in telling Andrew about her illness the way she did. She should have steered him, as she has so often done before, into making the right decision while maintaining the belief that he’s in control. Instead, when she found the tumor, she had tests conducted behind his back and then brought him the incontrovertible evidence that there was nothing to be done. And then she insisted they come to this spa in Switzerland. She should have let Andrew help in some way.
In Andrew’s autobiography, he describes telling Mildred about her cancer diagnosis. In Mildred’s diary, though, she reveals that she told him about the diagnosis after having tests conducted on her own. Again, Mildred portrays a dynamic in which she is in control but, because of Andrew’s misogyny and the prevailing sexism of the world at the time, she has to grant Andrew the illusion of control and power in order to appease him.
Themes
Andrew calls from Zürich for advice on a particular question, and Mildred tells him how to approach it. She can hear the gears turn in Andrew’s head as she explains it. Mildred isn’t tired of him so much as she’s sick of the person she becomes when she’s around him. When Andrew returns, he says that he wishes he and Mildred had spent more time at his family’s home in the Hudson Valley. Mildred says that the home is a cathedral of kitsch. It’s an imitation of a Florence villa that is proud of how close it comes to the original. It’s a hallmark of an age in which artifice is the ultimate standard, like a painting of a sunset that one insists is better than the sunset itself. Mildred is ashamed of the vitality she feels when she makes the argument.
Again, Mildred portrays Andrew as unable to keep up with her intellectually. That’s especially telling in terms of business, where it’s clear that Mildred calls the shots, even if Andrew’s ego prevents him from fully accepting that reality. Mildred’s assessment of Andrew’s beloved Hudson Valley home portrays Andrew as the naïve dilettante when it comes to matters of aesthetics, the inverse of Andrew’s description of Mildred in his autobiography.
Themes
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Mildred later apologizes to Andrew for what she said. Andrew says he didn’t know what she was talking about and then gives her a bracelet as a gift. The next day, Mildred is surprised and happy to get letters from friends back home. She didn’t tell any of them where she would be, and she’s happy for once that a secret of hers got out. Harold Vanner writes with gossip from New York. And another person writes asking for business advice. Mildred also received a letter from her mother, which will take all of her strength to respond to.
The fact that Harold Vanner is one of the people who finds out Mildred’s secret and writes her a letter suggests that he and Mildred are more than acquaintances and are most likely close friends, contradicting what Andrew tells Ida during their meetings. Mildred’s relationship with her mother also seems to be difficult in a way that is similar to Helen’s relationship with Catherine in Bonds, suggesting that Harold is close enough to Mildred to have insight into the dynamic between Mildred and her mother.
Themes
Mildred eats dinner at the spa’s restaurant. During dinner, several patients perform musical acts, and Mildred grows increasingly frustrated at the lack of talent on stage and at the audience’s fawning response. She gets up to leave and realizes that her response is triggered by painful childhood memories, which she’s never told anyone about in full. When Mildred was 11, her mother forced her to perform difficult math equations in front of party guests, something Mildred hated to do. It went on for a year and stopped when Mildred no longer looked like a child.
A scene similar to the one Mildred describes—in which her mother forced her to perform intellectual feats in front of crowds—appears in Bonds, despite Mildred saying that she never told anyone about it in full. That suggests that either Harold Vanner has access to Mildred’s diary when writing Bonds or, perhaps, Mildred shares the information in a future letter. Both possibilities suggest that Harold and Mildred are close.
Themes
Mildred writes that some diaries are written with the hope that one day they’ll be discovered and read. Others are written with the understanding that no one will ever see the words. Her diary oscillates between those two categories. She continues to go through her daily regimen of procedures and massages. When Andrew comes back from Zürich, he’s happy with how his business dealings have turned out. As usual, he ascribes his success to his “intuition,” and Mildred has to stop herself from snapping at him.
Andrew attributes his success to intuition when the credit really belongs to Mildred’s business acumen and insight. Andrew’s willingness to take credit for the work of others is similar to how he plagiarizes Ida’s memories when talking to her about his autobiography, showing that he has a longstanding pattern of fraudulence.
Themes
Andrew arranges for a string quartet to come to play in the spa’s library, and Mildred is touched by the gesture. She’s unimpressed by the quartet’s selections but thinks the musicians themselves are exceptional. The members met in Berlin but left Germany when Hitler came to power. Mildred tells them they can come to her with whatever they need. When the cellist hesitantly says they could benefit from flights to the U.S. and visas, Mildred says they should consider it done.
The comparison between Andrew’s gesture toward Mildred and Mildred’s gesture toward the musicians is telling. Namely, while Andrew seems to have genuine affection for Mildred and expresses his concern for her by doing something nice for her, Mildred seems to have a similar kind of concern for humanity in general, as she seeks to secure safe passage for musicians who she has just met.
Themes
A few days later, Andrew calls from Zürich again, looking for financial advice. Mildred is perturbed and doesn’t respond. She is frustrated with Andrew. As usual, she thinks, he mistakes his reservation and uncertainty for insight and evaluation. Andrew says that Mildred lives for this sort of thing but immediately regrets his wording. Mildred responds that that’s exactly the point; she lived for it, and now it’s over. After the phone call, Mildred recalls how her role in Andrew’s finances changed. It started in the early 1920s when Andrew saw that the small amount of money he gave Mildred for the philharmonic performed better than his own investments.
Andrew often deceives himself so he can maintain his self-image as the kind of financial virtuoso who is a “Great American Man.” In reality, though, Andrew seems to be deluded to the point that he confuses his lack of insight as a part of his decision-making process. Mildred, on the other hand, has the business acumen and insight to see clearly through complications and analyze various factors to make the best financial decisions.
Themes
At that time, Mildred showed Andrew her books and her investment methods. She taught him how to see outside of the confines of the market. She and Andrew then started collaborating on investments. When Mildred had access to Andrew’s full funds, the results were almost instantaneous, and Andrew’s reputation grew. Andrew knew he couldn’t sustain his newfound success without Mildred, and Mildred knew she wouldn’t be able to operate in the way she did without him. But soon it became clear that there was a power imbalance. Andrew ran out of things to teach Mildred about the market, while Mildred’s methods continued to be valuable. Mildred thought that imbalance would lead to the end of their marriage, but she later came to think it represented the true beginning of their marriage, which only started once she became more committed to her vows than to Andrew as a person.
This passage makes it clear that Mildred was the mastermind behind Andrew’s most successful business transactions. With that in mind, Andrew’s reputation as a financial genius should actually belong to Mildred. But the culture of misogyny makes it impossible for Mildred to take part in that kind of financial business without the figurehead of a man to present to the public. Mildred’s description makes clear the true fraudulence of the image of the “Great Man” that Andrew tries to portray in his autobiography. Instead of being a “Great Man,” he routinely takes credit for successes that rightfully belong to others.
Themes
From 1922 to 1926, Mildred’s methods, which involve a “cobweb architecture” and “stickiness in math,” caused Andrew’s fortune to grow exponentially. She tried to explain her methods to Andrew, but he couldn’t follow them, which led him to resent her. Mildred devised a method of taking advantage of the lags in the ticker tape processing. She offhandedly said to Andrew that the whole financial system rests on the keyboard operators at the stock exchange. If someone bribed one of those operators to give them information before they typed it, they could make a fortune. Andrew did just that. The scheme lasted a few weeks, and Andrew made an exorbitant amount of money. Mildred found out about it and called him a criminal. The two didn’t speak after that for about two years.
Again, while Andrew ascribed his success to mathematical formulas and algorithms he began developing in college, Mildred makes it clear that the math behind Andrew’s success came from her. And in fact, Andrew was unable to understand that math. Not only is Andrew fraudulent for unrightfully taking credit for Mildred’s successes, but he also commits outright fraud, making it clear that his credo that self-interest can go hand-in-hand with the common good is nothing but posturing. He’s willing to defraud the general public as long as he makes a profit.
Themes
In the sanatorium, Mildred is ill over the next few days. She continues reading books while she feels up to it and asks her nurse to give her a haircut. Andrew travels between Zürich and the sanatorium. After 1926, Mildred and Andrew remained distant from each other, but then Mildred was struck by an overwhelming exhaustion. She stayed in bed, and Andrew would check on her. Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. But then, in early 1929, she was diagnosed with cancer. That was around the same time that she realized that the market would crash before the end of the year.
Mildred’s description of her illness shares similarities with Harold’s description of that illness in Bonds, but she has cancer, as Andrew says, not schizophrenia, as Harold intimated. That discrepancy between the story Harold told and reality calls to mind Ida’s comments, in which she believes Harold changed Mildred’s cancer diagnosis to mental illness to portray her using sexist and misogynist tropes of the damsel in distress who is beyond saving.
Themes
In 1929, Mildred didn’t immediately tell Andrew about her cancer diagnosis, but she started giving him financial advice again. She gave him that advice surreptitiously, so he could think he came up with the ideas on his own. Andrew didn’t believe the market would crash, but Mildred started taking out short positions. She viewed the stock market as a kind of song or orchestral piece. She could listen to the notes and understand what notes would come next. After the crash, Mildred tried to put together a comprehensive recovery plan. Andrew gave small donations in Mildred’s name, but she was ashamed to be associated with those “crumbs.” In the sanatorium, Mildred’s health continues to decline. She hears a hum inside her head and drifts in and out of sleep.
Mildred reveals that she was also behind Andrew’s success during the 1929 crash. However, Mildred planned to use the profits they gained from the crash to support those who suffered the most, while Andrew, who held control of the money, only donated paltry sums while hoarding the wealth for himself. Andrew’s decisions reinforce the idea that his refrain that self-interest and the common good go hand-in-hand is a slogan he trots out to try and obscure the reality that his selfishness has always been opposed to the common good.
Themes
