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What happens when Yank encounters Mildred in The Hairy Ape?

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When Yank encounters Mildred in "The Hairy Ape," he is working in the stokehole of a ship when she visits. Mildred, dressed in white, is shocked by the harsh environment and Yank's appearance, whom she perceives as a "filthy beast." Her reaction, a faint and derogatory comment, deeply offends Yank, sparking his anger and fueling his resentment towards the upper class, which becomes a central theme in the play.

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We first meet Mildred Douglas in scene 2 of Eugene O'Neill's 1922 play The Hairy Ape. She's reclining in a deck chair on the promenade deck of a transatlantic ocean liner enjoying the sunshine and the sea.

O'Neill describes her in the stage notes as:

a girl of twenty, slender, delicate, with a pale, pretty face marred by a self-conscious expression of disdainful superiority. She looks fretful, nervous and discontented, bored by her own anemia.

Sitting with Mildred is her pretentious, pompous, prideful, "and fat" Aunt—"a gray lump of dough touched up with rouge"—who has a double chin, carries a lorgnette, and is disdainful of everything and everyone around her.

Mildred has arranged with the Captain of the ship and the Chief Engineer to visit the stokehole, and she's waiting for the Second Engineer to arrive to escort her below decks.

While she's waiting, Mildred discusses with her...

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Aunt her newfound interest in "how the other half lives and works on a ship," which is her reason for visiting the stokehole. Her Aunt is dismayed and annoyed at the very idea of "how the other half lives" and calls Mildred a "poser" for what she believes is her insincerity, and she mocks Mildred's recent "slumming" with the poor on New York's East Side.

The Second Engineer arrives and expresses his concern for Mildred's safety and for her white dress. Mildred dismisses both of his concerns:

MILDRED:
My grandfather was a puddler. He played with boiling steel....I have fifty dresses like this. I will throw this one into the sea when I come back.

The Fourth Engineer joins Mildred and the Second Engineer, and with a scornful "Poser!" from her Aunt and an "Old hag!" and a slap across the face for her Aunt in return, Mildred and her escorts proceed across the deck and down to the stokehole.

Scene 3 opens with the men in the dark, dirty, and oppressively-overheated stokehole taking a break from shoveling coal into the furnaces that fire the ship's boilers. They lean against their shovels, exhausted—swearing and complaining.

A thin, shrill whistle sounds in the darkness, and the men reluctantly go back to work. Yank throws open a furnace door, and the others follow his lead, swearing and shoveling coal into the furnaces:

At this instant the SECOND and FOURTH ENGINEERS enter from the darkness on the left with MILDRED between them. She starts, turns paler, her pose is crumbling, she shivers with fright in spite of the blazing heat, but forces herself to leave the ENGINEERS and take a few steps nearer the men. She is right behind YANK. All this happens quickly while the men have their backs turned.

The men become aware of Mildred's presence and turn to look at her, "dumfounded by the spectacle of MILDRED standing there in her white dress." Yank has his back to Mildred and is still swearing and shoveling coal when he realizes that the other men have stopped working and are staring at something behind him.

Yank whirls around:

with a snarling, murderous growl, crouching to spring, his lips drawn back over his teeth, his small eyes gleaming ferociously

ready to attack or defend himself, and he comes face to face with Mildred looking like "a white apparition in the full light from the open furnace doors."

Yank is stunned and stands speechless, still glaring, as if he had been suddenly turned to stone. Mildred looks into the eyes of the hairy ape, utters a low, choking cry, backs away from him, and covers her eyes to shut out the sight of his face:

MILDRED: [About to faint—to the ENGINEERS, who now have her one by each arm—whimperingly.] Take me away! Oh, the filthy beast!

Mildred faints. The Engineers quickly take her away, and an iron door clangs shut behind them.

Yank recovers his senses, and in his rage and fury, he throws his shovel at the door through which Mildred was just carried:

YANK: God damn yuh!

Mildred does not appear again in the play but becomes the focal point of Yank's rage against the ruling class and the motivation to destroy his oppressors.

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