The Master of the Mill: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Master of the Mill: Analysis of Major Characters" offers a nuanced exploration of the complex relationships and moral dilemmas faced by key figures within a narrative centered around the industrial legacy of the Clark family. At the forefront is Senator Samuel Clark, a brilliant engineer and millionaire mill owner, who grapples with the implications of his family's wealth and legacy while seeking to balance personal ideals with the harsh realities of industrial capitalism. His character reflects a tension between power and ethical responsibility, especially as he contemplates his life choices and their impact on his workers and family.
Rudyard Clark, Sam's father, embodies the ruthless capitalist mentality of the Victorian era, using unethical means to build his fortune, while his son Edmund represents a new generation obsessed with automation and monopolistic control, ultimately leading to tragic consequences. The narrative is enriched by Maud Dolittle, Sam’s astute business partner, whose understanding of the mill's operations contrasts sharply with Sam's personal struggles, particularly in his relationships with his family, including his aloofness towards his daughter Ruth.
The story also touches on themes of love, loss, and the quest for redemption as characters navigate their intertwined fates against the backdrop of industrial progress. Through its characters, "The Master of the Mill" presents a critical examination of the human costs associated with technological advancement and capitalist ambition, inviting readers to reflect on the broader implications of such narratives.
The Master of the Mill: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Frederick Philip Grove
First published: 1944
Genre: Novel
Locale: Langholm, in Canada
Plot: Family
Time: 1938, with retrospects from the 1880's
Senator Samuel Clark, a brilliant engineer and millionaire mill owner. The senator is making sense of his life and preparing for death. He remembers designing the first great mill. He later learns that his father financed it with money obtained from insurance fraud. Sam, taking over, dispatches his father's blackmailer to England and anonymously reimburses the insurance company. The senator has never loved power, industry, or money but has possessed all three and is forced by his position to become the agent of change in industry, thus increasing his power and fortune. Sam is interested in culture, philanthropy, and the well-being of his workers. Both his father and his son (whom Sam outlives) are apostles of industrial capitalism; between them is Sam the idealist, who is mastered by the mill. Although he is the titular head of the giant monopoly and faceless corporation that the mill engenders, it is in fact self-sustaining. Sam's private life is also marked by defeat. His marriage to Maud Carter was based on shared aesthetic interests, but she despised both mill and miller. Maud Dolittle, Sam's sales manager and vice president, understands both. As a widower, however, Sam realizes his feeling for her too late. He treats his daughter, Ruth, with hostile indifference because his wife died at her birth. His son, Edmund, who is out of sympathy with his father's views, ousts him from control. The old man's only consolation is his rapport with the third Maud, his widowed daughter-in-law. His will leaves her in control of the mill and puts his money into a charitable foundation for the unemployed. In death as in life, Sam's chief concern was for the human victims of the industrial developments he had, however unwillingly, promoted.
Rudyard Clark, Sam's father, a working man and founder of the Clark fortune. A ruthless Victorian capitalist, he paid blackmail for the crime that enabled him to rebuild the mill and then maintained control of it by ensuring that the services on which it depended were provided by his own companies. The profits from the mill thus could be routed from the public company to the private ones. With his money, he built a mansion for his son's wife. Injured by machinery, he dies mysteriously in the company of his blackmailer.
Edmund Clark, the son of Sam Clark and Maud Carter, a flying ace and financier. Edmund returns from the war determined to make the mill a monopoly, a private company, and totally automated. In pursuit of these goals, he eliminates other shareholders, discovers that his grandfather was an arsonist, wrests control from his father, and provokes the strike in which he is killed. Edmund believes that advancing technology will provide a work-free Eden for laborers and power for an elite who will control the machines.
Maud Dolittle, a brilliant businesswoman and Sam's right hand. Edmund's mistress and eventually his wife's friend, she contributes to the narrative.
Ruth Clark, Sam's daughter. She avoids sexual involvement and fortune hunters by marrying a very old French marquis.
Odette Charlebois, Sam's housekeeper. A surrogate mother to his children, she also contributes to the narrative.
Lady Clark, formerly Maud Fanshawe, the beautiful youngest daughter of a poor but brilliant university president. She is the wife (later widow) of Sir Edmund, inheritor of the mansion and the mill, and collector of the Clarks' history. Needing a rich husband, Maud married Edmund because of the understanding they shared and her comprehension of and assistance in his schemes. Now she provides a home for Edmund's dying father, Sam.