Also, Mildred's other attempt in getting a husband for money is telling for the way she is constantly selling or trying to sell herself, and not only her prettiness, but also her cooking talents. The analogy between her career as a waitress, and then a restaurant manager, trying to sell food and the way Mildred tries to sell herself as a wife to Wally Burgan, using the same cooking talents as a weapon, is striking. It is here that we most clearly detect the parallel between private life and mass economy. Love, like in West's book, is nothing else but a commodity: She cultivated men, as all the girls did, as they were better tippers than women. She thought up little schemes to find out their names, remembered their likes, dislikes, and crotchets, and saw that Archie gave them exactly what they wanted. She had a talent for quiet flirtation, but found that this didn't pay. Serving a man food, apparently, was in itself an ancient intimacy; going beyond it made him uncomfortable, and sounded a trivial note in what was essentially a solemn relationship. Simple friendliness, coupled with exact attention to his wants, seemed to please him most, and on that basis she had frequent invitations to take a ride, have dinner, or see a show." (Cain, 74-75)

Likewise, Faye and Veda are similar figures in their professed chase of artistic fame and material advantages. Veda is selfish and depraved, and apparently devoid of any kind of feelings whatsoever, as she shows through her incestuous relationship with her step-father, Monty. Perhaps what most differentiates the...

She is, at the same time, a manipulator through the theatrical acts she is always staging, therefore a woman who sells her beauty, and does it openly, without dissimulating her intentions. Faye is an actress in everyday life as well as on stage, more than she is a mere pretender. This implies that she thoroughly represents the Hollywood cult: she plays her own life, and the people around her do the same thing.
Similarly, Mildred plays her role as a housewife, mixing up the pragmatism of her business and of her marriage with a share of sentimentalism for her daughter. In both novels, the world of men seems to be displaced by the women who dominate it through selling themselves, their beauty or their cooking talents, thus replacing the emotional exchange or romance, with a sexual, economical exchange.

Works Cited

Cain, James. Mildred Pierce. New York: Alfred A Knopf Inc., 1941

Jurca, Catherine White Diaspora: The Suburb and the Twentieth Century American Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001

West, Nathanael. The Day of the Locust. New York: New Directions, 1950