Miss Mulligan

Miss Mulligan is Carol Pitt’s eighth-grade English teacher and the formative mentor whose attentive encouragement helped shape Carol’s sense of worth and her purpose as a teacher. Though she appears only through Carol’s recollections and a photograph, Miss Mulligan’s influence reaches into Carol’s work with students: she becomes the example Carol hopes to follow when helping a young person feel seen and taken seriously.

Identity and Influence

Carol describes Miss Mulligan as the teacher who opened up more to her than anyone else she had met. The distinction matters against the emotional background Carol recounts: growing up, she felt that her parents cared more about television and newspapers than about her, leaving her feeling invisible and like an intrusion in her own home. At school, Miss Mulligan offered a sharply different experience. She listened, treated Carol as a person whose thoughts mattered, and made her feel valued and important.

That attention was intellectual as well as personal. Miss Mulligan gave Carol books to read, including Whitman and Franny & Zooey, and then asked what Carol thought of them. The invitation to give an opinion affirmed more than Carol’s ability to discuss literature; it communicated that her judgment deserved to be heard. Miss Mulligan also told her she was smart, and Carol says she believed it. The confidence she recalls is thus rooted in a specific relationship: an adult’s sustained attention made an encouraging assessment credible to a young person who had not felt noticed at home.

A Model for Teaching

Miss Mulligan’s influence persists as a professional ideal. Carol says she vowed that if one day she could be a Miss Mulligan for somebody else, she would have done her job. In her account, good teaching means more than delivering subject matter: it includes listening closely enough for a student to feel important, and offering books and questions that take the student’s mind seriously.

That vow helps explain why Carol is so invested in teaching and in an opportunity to chair the English department. When asked why the opportunity matters so much, she answers that it is because of Miss Mulligan. The connection is not presented as a claim that professional advancement alone would fulfill the vow. Rather, the ambition is linked to the example of a teacher whose influence altered Carol’s understanding of what teaching could mean.

Carol has also tried to enact the model in her relationship with Tatum Fox. She arranged tutoring sessions for Tatum and says that she intended to be a Miss Mulligan to her. The intention, however, does not guarantee that Tatum experienced the relationship as Carol hoped. The story keeps the difference between a teacher’s purpose and a student’s actual response in view: Miss Mulligan is Carol’s measure of meaningful care, but Carol cannot simply assume that her own efforts have reproduced it.

The Photograph and Carol’s Memory

A photograph in Carol’s home gives the remembered relationship a concrete form. The framed picture, decorated with little apples and marked “SCHOOL DAYS,” shows Carol at about thirteen, with a small, shy smile and her arm around a woman Carol takes to be her teacher. Miss Mulligan is identified beneath it by the caption “MISS MULLIGAN & ME.” The image preserves a moment of closeness, but its force comes from what Carol reads in the pose: Miss Mulligan holds her with protective pride, an embrace that makes the younger Carol appear cherished rather than overlooked.

Looking closely at the photograph, Carol sees a girl who was rather ordinary-looking and awkward, yet whose spirit seemed to be rising. She understands the smile as one on the verge of opening fully, and connects that visible change to Miss Mulligan’s encouragement. The photograph therefore does not merely establish that the two knew each other; it lets Carol interpret the teacher’s care as something that changed how she felt about herself. In the adult’s memory, the image holds together both the vulnerability of the child and the recognition she received.

Legacy and Narrative Significance

The phrase “I just want to be a Miss Mulligan for someone else” returns to Carol as she reflects on whether she has lived up to her own standard. After leaving midway through an English department chair interview while focused on the crisis involving Tatum and Hadley Fox, she recalls her commitment and fears that she has let Miss Pitt’s interests down. Her regret gives Miss Mulligan’s influence a present consequence: the ideal is not a comforting memory alone, but a measure Carol uses to judge her choices as a colleague and teacher.

Miss Mulligan’s role also clarifies why Carol’s teaching matters to her beyond achievement or recognition. In a household where Carol felt unseen, one teacher’s listening and confidence helped her feel that she counted. Carol wants to extend that experience to others, but the narrative does not make the inheritance automatic or uncomplicated. Her effort to help Tatum, her investment in the department-chair opportunity, and her later self-questioning all show how a formative teacher can become both a source of purpose and a demanding standard. Miss Mulligan’s lasting significance lies in that passage of attention: she made Carol feel valued, and Carol tries to turn that gift into a practice of her own.