Norma Jeane and Edith Mittelstadt’s relationship

Norma Jeane Baker and Edith Mittelstadt’s relationship is one of the girl’s earliest experiences of sustained adult tenderness inside the orphanage. As a caregiver who offers a treasured book, prayer, and a possible route into foster care, Edith gives Norma Jeane a form of attention she can trust. Yet the relationship is shaped by limits: Edith’s faith cannot change Gladys Mortensen’s decision about adoption, and Edith’s efforts to console Norma Jeane sometimes require her to discipline the very grief she has helped the girl express.

Care in the orphanage

Edith Mittelstadt, addressed as Doctor Mittelstadt, is both a caregiver and a devout Christian Scientist. Her religious belief is not imposed indiscriminately: the narrative describes her as sharing it gently with children she especially favors. With Norma Jeane, care takes the form of personal attention rather than grand gestures. Edith invites the child to pray with her while they await a decision about adoption, presenting prayer as company and consolation in an uncertain moment. Four months before that conversation, on Norma Jeane’s eleventh birthday, Edith had called her into the office and given her a copy of Science and Health. She inscribed the book with a birthday dedication and a biblical passage, and described it as a source of wisdom that had changed her own life. The gift became far more than a book: Norma Jeane read it every night before sleep and repeated Edith’s dedication softly to herself. She would remember it as the first genuine gift of her life and that birthday as her happiest day since entering the orphanage. The repeated reading made Edith’s gesture a private ritual of attachment, one that continued even when the adult who gave the book was not beside her. The story also marks a distance between Edith’s affection and physical reassurance. As Edith leads the prayer, the narration asks whether she whispered the words Norma Jeane longed to hear or hugged and kissed the girl; neither happened. Instead, Edith leans forward in her creaking chair to guide Norma Jeane through a Christian Science prayer. Her care is real, but it is expressed through religious practice and attention rather than an embrace. The distinction gives their closeness a particular tenderness: Norma Jeane receives something sustaining, while the desired bodily reassurance remains absent.

Faith, adoption, and disappointment

Their bond deepens around the possibility that Norma Jeane might be adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Mount. It is the third time a couple has sought to adopt her. Edith has spoken with the head of Norwalk and understands that Gladys Mortensen may now be more likely to give permission. She tells Norma Jeane that her mother loves her and wants her happiness, then proposes that they pray together for Gladys to decide wisely and for strength to accept the outcome. The reassurance depends on a hopeful interpretation of a mother whose earlier actions have already made Norma Jeane’s future feel precarious. That hope fails. After Gladys refuses to sign the adoption permission, she stops writing to Norma Jeane; the child continues to send the customary Christmas and birthday cards without receiving replies. When Norma Jeane breaks down in anger and tears, she tells Edith that she had followed her advice and prayed repeatedly. The moment exposes a painful mismatch between the child’s expectation and the religious framework Edith has offered. Edith responds sternly, reproaching Norma Jeane’s distress as blind and selfish and explaining that prayer cannot change the underlying order of being; it can only help a person live in greater harmony with it. To a child who has prayed for a concrete change and lost it, this teaching does not answer the immediate question of why prayer should matter. The episode therefore complicates the comfort Edith provides: she is attentive to Norma Jeane’s suffering, yet her faith also gives her a reason to correct the form that suffering takes. The adoption disappointment occurs within a wider institutional reality. Norma Jeane is already unusual among the older girls in having attracted three prospective couples, while many children who had been returned from foster placements were expected to remain at the orphanage until sixteen. Her mother’s hospitalization and psychiatric diagnosis also complicate the adoption process. Edith had been given reason to think Gladys might consent, but the final decision is not hers to make. The limits are emotional as well as legal: Edith cannot make Norma Jeane’s mother write, approve the adoption, or provide the uncomplicated maternal affection the child longs for.

A promise of another home

After acknowledging the disappointment, Edith offers a practical alternative. Norma Jeane can be placed with one of the orphanage’s Christian Scientist families, she explains, because this foster placement does not require her mother’s permission. Edith promises to find a family the girl will like. Norma Jeane answers with a quiet expression of thanks, while the prospect itself registers as a modest hope rather than a settled resolution. Edith is not simply offering spiritual consolation now; she is using her position to identify another possible arrangement for the child. This offer matters because it follows the collapse of the adoption plan without pretending that the loss has been repaired. Edith’s promise cannot restore the Mounts’ proposed adoption, nor does the account establish that the family she finds will fulfill the child’s hopes. What it does show is a caregiver trying to act within the boundaries she has: when Gladys’s consent blocks one path, Edith points toward a placement for which that consent is unnecessary. Her concern joins personal affection to institutional responsibility, though neither can guarantee Norma Jeane a permanent home.

The relationship’s lasting meaning

Norma Jeane’s attachment to Edith is recorded most firmly through what she keeps and repeats: the birthday book, its dedication, and the nightly reading before sleep. Her recollection of Edith also carries the image of an older woman whose eyes hold tenderness and hope, and whose presence reminds her of Nonna Della. The resemblance is not a claim that Edith replaces her grandmother or mother; rather, it places Edith among the older women through whom Norma Jeane encounters a possible, if imperfect, form of care. The relationship’s emotional pattern holds affection and disappointment together. Edith recognizes Norma Jeane as a child deserving attention, gives her a gift that becomes a durable source of comfort, prays beside her, and promises to help find a foster home. But when the hoped-for adoption fails, her response includes moral instruction that leaves Norma Jeane’s immediate anguish unresolved. The bond is therefore neither a simple rescue nor a purely institutional one. It shows how a caregiver can matter deeply without possessing the power to determine a child’s fate—and how a small, repeated act of care can endure even when the larger promise of belonging remains uncertain.