Carnegie's Maid

“I saw filth the likes of which I’d never imagined. Black clouds billowing in plumes from tall stacks. Buildings turned ashen from sooty air, outlines of posters in white, like ghosts on their walls. Why didn’t anyone tell me that industrialization would look like biblical hell?”

Clara comes from a rural environment in Ireland, and Pittsburgh is her first taste of an industrialized American city. Post-Civil War America had no plan or policy for the rapid growth of factories in urban areas, nor was it concerned about environmental pollution. Clara’s comparison of factories and hell would also be echoed by those who toiled in them.

“In her gaze, in such close proximity, I saw something familiar. Intelligence. Determination. Even grit perhaps. Something I didn’t expect in a lady [...] I admired that grit. But it didn’t mean I wasn’t scared of it. And it didn’t mean that I wasn’t scared of her.”

Clara has just gotten her first close look at Mrs. Carnegie. Because of her own impoverished upbringing, Mrs. Carnegie learned how to be a survivor. In high society, ladies are not bred to survive. They are intended to be decorative ornaments. In contrast, Mrs. Carnegie asserts herself both in the parlor and in the boardroom. Clara shares this same independent spirit, and both admires and fears others who possess it too.

“What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin grey, an’ a that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; A Man’s a Man for a’ that.”

This is a quote from Scottish poet Robert Burns. In their first encounter, Andrew recites this verse to Clara, and she is moved by it. Minus the Scottish dialect, the title is “A Man’s a Man for All That” and it conveys how arbitrary accoutrements do not make a man a man. It strikes a chord with Andrew’s democratic sentiments as well as Clara’s. However, she never loses sight of her egalitarian principles, while Andrew often does.

“No matter the precariousness of Patrick’s work, their life was inestimably better than what they would have faced in Galway [...] What had I done to deserve a better chance than them? Perhaps more importantly, what would I do with my good fortune beyond ensuring the well-being of my family at home?”

Clara not only describes the wretched state of her cousin’s family, but she emphasizes the point that their hellish existence is still better than life in Ireland. Thus, the reader is given a good idea of how terrible the potato famine was. At the same time, Clara expresses a moral obligation to better the lot of those outside her immediate family and worse off than her. Initially, Andrew lacks this sense of social responsibility until Clara reminds him of it.

“For the education Dad bestowed on me [...] held no purpose other than to sharpen my wits to become the perfect servant. What did it say about society that the best a lowborn, educated girl could hope for was respectable servitude?”

Clara and her sisters were given a more advanced education than farmers’ daughters would customarily receive. While this asset allows her to advance quickly in America, the class system still places undue emphasis on ancestry. Being lowborn is just as much a curse in America as in Europe. Clara’s family status matters more than her innate intelligence. Her statement is a direct indictment of the class system in which she is mired.

“Most days, the war didn’t touch Fairfield. This luxurious cocoon was well-nigh immune to what was transpiring across the country. The war only impacted the Carnegies on their balance sheet.”

This statement highlights wealth put to bad use. It protects those who possess it so that they might distance themselves from the suffering of the rest of the world. No thought is given to using that wealth to relieve the suffering of others. Mrs. Carnegie would see no need to help those who aren’t family. Fortunately, her son learns to look beyond his narrow tribal interest.

“You are used to a world larger than the one in which you now serve my mother. I insist that you broaden it, beginning with this gift. As Mrs. Barrett Browning says, ‘The world of books is still the world.’”

In their early interactions, Andrew is impressed with Clara because he thinks she comes from a middle-class home. Again, The Class System asserts itself. Respect is accorded to those who are well-born. A farmer’s daughter would not be treated with such deference or offered a first-edition book as a present. Superficial judgments of personal worth abound in the world of Gilded Age tycoons.

“I realized then that the affable, kindly man I believed Mr. Ford to be was simply a mask he wore. That none of us were who we appeared to be. ‘We’ve all left people behind, haven’t we?’ he whispered and then bent down to tend to the stove fire.”

Ford has just told Clara that he escaped enslavement with his wife and daughter. Until the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was passed, he wasn’t technically a free man. Furthermore, he has lost track of his family. His private sorrows are hidden under a mask of good humor. Like all the other characters in the novel, he is playing the role that society demands of him.

“‘His place comes before all else, because it is on his position that our family rises.’ For the first time, I realized how alike my situation was to that of Mr. Carnegie. Although the scale was quite different, the stakes were not. The well-being of both our families rested on our success.”

Mrs. Carnegie has just told Clara that she must be presentable for her son’s sake. Her fortunes and Tom’s are tied to Andrew’s success. Clara is quick to see the parallel to her own plight. In making this statement, Mrs. Carnegie is articulating her own role. She must be a fashionable society matron who brings credit to her family. She is yet another masked player in Clara’s world.

“I belonged nowhere in this house. Not with the Carnegies. Not with the other servants. Even my own family members who resided in this city felt foreign to me. I was as utterly alone as the first day I landed on the American shore.”

Clara is explaining the nuances of the class system. She doesn’t report to either the butler or housekeeper. Her orders come directly from Mrs. Carnegie. This creates a sense of resentment among lower-tier servants. Apparently, class hierarchies extend to those below stairs as well as those above. Clara doesn’t feel proud of her preeminent position as a pettier individual might. She simply feels alienated because she can’t associate with either those above her on the social scale or below.

“I’d overheard Mr. Holyrod lecture the rest of the staff about the dignity of service, but I couldn’t see any dignity in invisibility. Where was the dignity in constantly suppressing your own needs, views, and rights for others?”

Because Clara doesn’t come from a servant family, she isn’t used to subordinating herself for the benefit of others. Ironically, she keys on the trait of invisibility and equates it with self-effacement. At a later point in the book, she will find invisibility to be quite useful. This is because she learns how to exploit it for her own ends.

“Indispensability. The very quality that I wanted Mrs. Carnegie to see in me. Again, how alike Mr. Carnegie and I were in our desires, although I hoped we did not share our ethical boundaries. He seemed not to comprehend the questionable morality in his youthful sharing of others’ personal telegraph information or in his deception of his brother and mother today.”

Andrew has just told Clara about his early years and attributes his success to his ability to make himself indispensable to his employers. From her first day as a lady’s maid, Clara came to the same conclusion. Although Clara sees a close parallel between her motivation and Andrew’s, she recognizes that there are ethical boundaries that ought not to be crossed in serving one’s employer. He has yet to learn that lesson.

“‘The specimens you’ve so perfectly described tell the “reader,” or guest, that the family residing in this home is well and widely traveled.’ [...] I understood how this ‘word’ worked in the room’s narrative and how a family might manipulate those ‘words’ to send particular messages to their guests.”

Clara has just described the antiques and furnishings of the Carnegie parlor, and Andrew refers to them as specimens. His parlor sends visual signals to guests regarding the owners of the home. Clara astutely notes that those specimens may not accurately reflect the owners but merely the image they want to create in the minds of visitors. Like its human inhabitants, the room itself is acting a role.

“Did I dare to speak authentically? I was sick of lies and pretending and burying my feelings, and I wanted to admit the truth. Just once.”

Clara has been trying to maintain a delicate balancing act in her interactions with Andrew. She never forgets that he is her employer and could cut off the livelihood that she needs to support her family. At the same time, she feels personally drawn to him but fears the consequences of admitting that attraction. Although she is more honest with Andrew than with anyone else, she is still playing the role of lady’s maid and wants the relief of telling the truth for a change.

“How unexpectedly advanced they were. This visit to Pompeii made us all reflective—history seemed alive and close to us—and the boys were uncharacteristically quiet on the train ride back to Naples. It seems we were all wondering how history would view us.”

This quote comes from one of Andrew’s letters while he is abroad. Visiting the ruins of Pompeii has made him consider his own place in history. This is the first glimmer of social responsibility he shows in the novel. Prior to this point, he is satisfied with his success no matter who gets hurt in his rise to fame and fortune.

“‘Why did they fill their letters with lies instead?’ Lies about the farm and why it was taken away. Lies about who Dad was. Maeve put the baby down on a blanket and wrapped her arms around me. ‘We all tell tales, Clara. Sometimes for ourselves, and sometimes for others.’”

Clara is well aware of her own duplicity in lying to get a job. However, she is outraged that her family has concealed the truth about losing their tenancy. Further, her father denied his involvement in radical political movements that drew the anger of his landlord in the first place. But as Maeve rightly points out, everyone is playing a role. Deception and self-deception are everywhere.

“I learned that invisibility had distinct benefits. By playing the part of perfect servant, by definition deaf and blind to the events occurring before me, I was present for the most confidential of conversations. My reward was information to feed my chart and my predictions.”

Clara has finally seen the benefit of invisibility. By now, she has begun to take charge of her future rather than passively taking her cues from her employer. She is no longer merely an actor playing a role in someone else’s drama. She has become the director of her own life.

“Equilibrium was necessary for the delicate balance of the shifting roles I played daily. Roles, I reminded myself, upon which my family depended for their survival [...] With Mr. Carnegie’s changeable nature laid bare [...] I would have to be more cautious on the tightrope I walked, for it could shift on his whim.”

Clara has witnessed various facets of Andrew’s personality, not all of them positive. She still fears drawing his anger because he might be in a position to harm her family as well. Consequently, she doesn’t wish to alienate him, but she can’t afford to encourage his advances either. Her perception of herself walking a tightrope gives the reader a sense of just how tenuous her balance is.

“She did not want to appear anything other than refined on her son’s wedding day [...] Knowing that my mistress was playing a part, I glanced around the room and wondered at what parts all the guests were playing.”

Mrs. Carnegie is worried because the wedding cake wasn’t delivered on time. Ordinarily, she would fly into a rage but can’t afford to appear distressed. Clara recognizes this suppression of true emotion because she practices it herself every day. The scene causes her to raise her sights and speculate about the duplicity being practiced by everyone else at the reception that day. Servants aren’t the only people who must dissemble to survive.

“Who was I to criticize? I was in no position to judge him [...] I helped him further his business interests and served his family while pretending to be someone I was not. Who was the one who had forgotten him or herself? My dependence on his money caused me to forsake my own immigrant story.”

At more than one point, Clara is outraged by Andrew’s lack of a moral compass. However, she quickly reminds herself of her own shortcomings. Unlike other characters in the book who are so immersed in their roles that they identify with them, Clara never completely loses her self-awareness. She recognizes the roles she plays as roles when others do not.

“These old New York society people maintain that all people are not equal, that they are superior to all other classes. I thought you believed in freedom and opportunity for all people. That view is the antithesis of what these people espouse.”

Clara is trying to persuade Andrew to stop courting the favor of the Knickerbockers. In this instance, he has become so identified with his role as a business tycoon that he has forgotten the ideals of his adopted country. In America, all people are presumably created equal. Yet, Andrew’s love of prestige would incline him to ingratiate himself with the social elite just to gain their acceptance. While Clara is right in her assessment, Andrew isn’t ready to recognize his own venal behavior.

“I didn’t care if the other servants, the new Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie, my mistress, or Andrew could hear me. There would be no more stealthy creeping behind the scenes for me. I was done with being invisible. I was done with waiting. And I was angry.”

Clara has just returned from a visit with her impoverished cousins. Patrick has lost his job because of a merger that put iron founders out of work across Pittsburgh. The blame lies solidly with Andrew’s careless business practices. His pursuit of wealth has made him blind to the consequences of his mergers. Profit for him means misfortune for others. Clara’s sense of outrage at this injustice has made her drop her role of submissive lady’s maid. In the book’s early pages, she vowed that she was done waiting. In this quote, she makes good on that vow.

“‘Don’t you want to find out how the people affected are faring? Offer them assistance [...] I bet that the Andrew who first came to this country would have done all those things. I feel like you’ve forgotten they are people, that they are you.’ I paused and asked, ‘Have you forgotten who you are?’”

Andrew likes to think of himself as fair-minded and benevolent. However, he also believes that the end justifies the means. These two traits are in conflict, but his solution is to ignore the contradiction. It falls to Clara to remind Andrew of the ideals that he once held. Even in this conversation, Andrew attempts to excuse his bad behavior. Significantly, it is only Clara’s flight that shocks him into a realization of how far he has fallen from his original ideals.