Mildred gives birth to her daughter

Mildred gives birth to a daughter during the period when Philip Carey has devoted himself to her, but the birth does not produce the maternal attachment he expects. Instead, it sharpens the contrast between Mildred’s indifference and Philip’s growing sense of responsibility: he becomes the person arguing that the unwanted infant must be kept safe, even as he remains emotionally bound to the woman who intends to leave her behind.

The Birth and Its Circumstances

By the time Mildred is moved to a nursing home for the delivery, Philip can visit only in the afternoons. To explain her situation to the establishment’s mistress, Mildred invents a story: she presents herself as the wife of a soldier serving in India and introduces Philip as her brother-in-law. The fiction extends the concealment surrounding her pregnancy, while Philip accepts his assigned part in it. His joking response to her concern about another resident’s husband briefly exposes the story’s fragility without openly challenging it.

Mildred is safely delivered of a daughter. When Philip is allowed to see her, the baby lies beside her; Mildred is weak but relieved that the ordeal is over. She looks at the child with curiosity and remarks on its strange appearance, unable to believe it is hers. Philip smiles, though he does not know what to say. The nurse’s presence makes the moment awkward: from the way she looks at him, he suspects she disbelieves Mildred’s story and thinks he is the father.

Philip’s Expectations and Mildred’s Indifference

Philip has imagined that childbirth might awaken Mildred’s maternal feeling and help persuade her to keep the baby. In the weeks after the birth, that hoped-for change does not come. Mildred recovers quickly, and she performs the necessary care, talks about the infant, and is sometimes amused by it; nevertheless, she remains inwardly detached. She thinks the child already resembles its father and resents having had it, while worrying about how she will manage as it grows.

Three weeks after the delivery, Philip sees Mildred and the baby off to Brighton. Mildred plans to stay at a boarding house where she had spent weekends with Emil Miller. She has made up another explanation for her arrival, saying that her husband has gone to Germany on business, and intends to find a woman in Brighton to take charge of the child. Her ingenuity in constructing these stories is part of the practical arrangement, but it also keeps her at a distance from the consequences of her choices.

The Child’s Care and the Reversal of Responsibility

Philip is startled by how readily Mildred wants to separate from the baby. She argues that it is better to place the child somewhere before it becomes accustomed to her. Philip had counted on the maternal instinct emerging after the birth; its absence forces him to confront a less consoling reality. Mildred is not cruel in the ordinary care she gives, but she does not experience the infant as part of herself.

Fearing that an arrangement with a careless caretaker could expose the child to neglect, Philip insists that Mildred choose people with no children of their own who will promise to take no other. He tells her not to haggle over the fee and would rather pay half a guinea a week than risk the baby being starved or beaten. His concern is concrete: the child’s food, shelter, and safety matter more to him than the cost. In this negotiation, his earlier devotion to Mildred becomes responsibility for someone wholly dependent on him, although he is not the child’s father.

The infant appears to him small, ugly, and querulous, but her helplessness moves him. She has been awaited with shame and anguish, is wanted by neither parent, and depends on a stranger for food, shelter, and clothes. That recognition changes the emotional balance of the episode. Philip’s tenderness is no longer only an extension of romantic hope or self-sacrifice for Mildred; it is directed toward the vulnerable child herself.

Departure and Significance

At the train, Philip kisses Mildred. He wants to kiss the baby too, but fears Mildred will laugh at him. The hesitation captures the limits of his position: he feels responsible and affectionate, yet remains exposed to Mildred’s judgment and cannot claim an uncomplicated parental role. He asks her to write and says he will look forward impatiently to her return, still expressing attachment to her even as his attention has shifted decisively toward the infant’s welfare.

The birth therefore brings no reconciliation or domestic resolution. It makes visible the difference between biological motherhood and felt responsibility, while giving Philip a new object of care amid his continuing entanglement with Mildred. The child’s future depends on arrangements he presses for, not on a maternal bond he had expected to appear. The scene’s understated reversal is that the person who is not the parent becomes the baby’s strongest advocate.