‘ Don’t let’s talk any more about him- its too depressing.’
Millie seems to create an image by dressing ‘ rather smartly’, as if she’s trying to be something else. When Millie first enters in the play, the stage directions describe her as ‘more smartly’ dressed than the other schoolmasters wives, perhaps stating that she believes that the more pleasing her appearance, then the more people will think highly of her. For example when the headmaster, ( Dr Frobisher) comes to visit Andrew, she has, ‘tidied herself up’ for him, even though she had been cooking.
You get the impression that Millie comes across as a rather polite, yet fake person, who likes to gossip behind people’s backs. When she is talking to Frank at the beginning of the play, she is talking to him about her saying, ‘fond farewells’ to the other master’s wives. However she then states that she’s, ‘worked off twelve’ and has, ‘another seven’ to do tomorrow, as if she has no feelings towards the other wives and that its a burden saying goodbye. Millie then says that it is the housemasters’ wives that are the ‘worst’ because, ‘they’re all so damn patronizing.’
Once again, when Dr Frobisher comes round, you get the impression that Millie seems to put on a false act in front of the headmaster from the stage directions, ‘in her social manner’. Then as soon as Frobisher leaves, the ‘social’ act disappears and calls him an ‘old phoney of a headmaster.’ She also behaves appallingly towards Andrew by saying that she could of got the pension if it had been left to her, however as she says, ‘But then of course, I’m not a man.’
Most of the time when Millie and Andrew are together, or have company, Millie seems to interrupt people a lot and is rude to Andrew,
‘...as there isn’t a Mrs Fletcher to make me look a fool, I didn’t give two hoots.’
Even when young Taplow is around, Millie talks down to Andrew and states, ‘you were late yourself’, deliberately pointing out Andrew’s fault and probably making him feel a little embarrassed.
Then when the Gilberts, (Andrew’s successor of the lower fifth.) come round, Millie once more makes Andrew feel insignificant by saying, ‘men have no souls, my husband is just as bad.’ In this quote I feel that there is a hidden message of irony, that perhaps Andrew’s soul has been destroyed, by Millie herself.
Finally near the end of the play, when Frank is telling off Millie for acting in such an ‘evil’ way towards Andrew about the gift he has received, Frank says that she has ‘hurt’ Andrew’s feelings. However, Millie ‘scornfully’ replies,
‘Andrew hurt? You can’t hurt Andrew. He’s dead.’
Therefore proving that Andrew has been ‘killed’, although she doesn’t realise that its her who’s the one that ‘killed him’.
