She’s mostly interpreted as an antagonist and villain type in my class, everyone’s paragraph is on how she’s selfish or inhuman. But I just don’t see it that way if you really try to empathize and see her perspective she’s not just a one dimensional creature. She’s the norm in that society and she’s completely ordinary she reacts like anyone in that dystopian world would react. All she wants is that quick gratification like her and Montag have been having for the 10 years that they have been married with no complaints. but now once a young girl with different opinions comes into the story she just completely changes their life. Lmk if anyone relates or have anything to say ab this I’m js confused on how to look at her character, but I can’t help but feel bad for her.
by Healthy_Citron_9319
4 Comments
A great book, but a product of its times, too. In some ways, science fiction is a wish-fulfillment genre, and most often it is the author’s wishes that are being fulfilled. If you watch movies from the 50s and 60s, you will find them full of boring average wives who are being left behind for some young avant-garde woman, usually much younger than the wife.
This doesn’t always happen in a romantic context, but it happens often.
We don’t really know much about Mildred, because we only see her from her husband’s perspective, which is profoundly one-sided and dismissive. But she certainly seems to be, as you say, an ordinary citizen of the times.
I also strongly encourage people who are interested in *451* to also read *Martian Chronicles.* Honestly it’s not as good of a book (it’s a short story anthology, for starters, instead of a coherent novel), but it contains a ton of context that really gives light to what Bradbury was thinking.
But yeah, that book was more about societal censorship than governmental censorship, and Mildred is meant to help show that.
She represents the “normal” in society. So you can’t label her as the “villain”.
The entire book is about how that society, which values nothing now and has destroyed all it’s citizens’ freedoms, is horrible. So, acting as a pawn of that society, does things that to the average person do seem quite terrible.
It can be argued that yes, she can’t be blamed to much as she’s just another cog in the machine that hasn’t had any independence, so in that way, she isn’t acting out of any personal malice toward Montag or anyone else. But it still doesn’t nullify she betrayed her husband and is about as near homicidal as the rest of that society.
That’s part of the scary thing about Fahrenheit 451, is that betraying your family, beaming constant entertainment into yourself and having no values for anything is commonplace and enforced by that horrible authoritative government’s average citizenry.
Also to say there have been “no complaints” is not very descriptive. There seems to be no communication at all to begin with to have any complains. Also the book has her downing a bottle of pills quite early – not a sign of a healthy marriage. Marriage is treated more as a legal union than anything else.
I don’t think she’s the main antagonist, I think she is meant to personally show how deeply wrong the universe in Bradbury’s book has gotten. I think a bigger antigonist and threat is Cpt. Beatty. Someone who sees the world a little clearer and sees how horrible it is – but simply doesn’t care and would rather keep his head above waves then try to help anything.