Mildred monologue from The Hairy Ape

Mildred’s monologue

Please do not mock at my attempts to discover how the other half lives. Give me credit for some sort of groping sincerity in that at least. I would like to help them. I would like to be some use in the world. Is it my fault I don't know how? I would like to be sincere, to touch life somewhere.

(With weary bitterness.)

But I'm afraid I have neither the vitality nor integrity. All that was burnt out in our stock before I was born. Grandfather's blast furnaces, flaming to the sky, melting steel, making millions- then father keeping those home fires burning, making more millions- and little me at the tail-end of it all. I'm a waste product in the Bessemer process- like the millions. Or rather, I inherit the acquired trait of the by-product, wealth, but none of the energy, none of the strength of the steel that made it. I am sired by gold and darned by it, as they say at the race track- damned in more ways than one.

Public domain text.