55 pages • 1 hour read
Ann LearyThe Foundling
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Mary Engle
Content Warning: This novel discusses eugenics, forced institutionalization, racism, and child sexual abuse. It also uses outdated terminology for discussing mental health and disabilities, which is reproduced in quotation in this guide.
Mary Engle is the narrator and protagonist of The Foundling. The narrative is presented from her first-person point of view and traces her growth from a meek and lonely orphan girl to an empowered woman, friend, and wife. She comes from a poor family, and her father and uncle were both criminals. Her mother died when she was young, and her father put her into St. Catherine’s Orphan Asylum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She stays there until she is 12 years old and is subjected to sexual abuse from her Uncle Teddy, whose death she feels responsible for. She is best friends with Lillian Faust at the orphanage, whom she meets again at Nettleton where Lillian is an inmate. By reuniting with Lillian, Mary comes to see that her worldview is limited, and her journey to self-discovery parallels her work helping Lillian escape Nettleton. She also learns more about the world through Bertie, a nurse at Nettleton, and Jake, a Jewish journalist whom she dates and eventually marries.
Mary aspires to be a cosmopolitan and interesting woman. She loves to read and is well-versed in American and British literature. She is diligent and a fast learner, both at work and in social situations. Throughout the narrative, Mary struggles to reconcile her self-image as an aspiring career woman with her past at the orphanage, her sexual trauma, and her guilt over her abuser’s death. She is a dynamic character who comes to reconcile her past with her present and see through the fantasies by which she has been deluded. She learns to recognize the hypocrisy of powerful people, especially Dr. Vogel, and she finds that the distinctions between the inmates at Nettleton and other women are only a matter of circumstance and class. In the end, as she undermines Dr. Vogel, she thinks to herself, “Dr. Agnes Vogel, I’d thought, as I rifled through the files. American, Protestant, Moron. Walks, talks, records her own crimes” (268), showing how the system that institutionalizes women has the potential to classify and institutionalize any woman.
Dr. Agnes Vogel
Dr. Agnes Vogel is the antagonist. She is the superintendent of Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. While she is a eugenicist and engages in criminal activity—including bootlegging and allowing inmates to be sexually abused—she also represents the complicated history of first-wave feminism. She is one of the first women in the United States to earn a psychiatry degree, is a strong advocate for women's suffrage, and is wealthy and well-connected, with ties to political, industry, and social leaders. Her family had connections both to the original suffrage movement and the abolition movement. She has contempt for her father, who married her mother and attained control of her wealth due to patriarchal laws. As a professional woman, she is initially aspirational for Mary, and she asserts that Mary has opportunities beyond becoming a homemaker. She is motivated by power and is disgusted by the inequality between men and women
Dr. Vogel is elegant, well-dressed, and feminine. She has a blonde bob and aristocratic features. Dr. Vogel is also manipulative, corrupt, and self-righteous; she believes in the superiority of Anglo-Saxon protestants and harbors xenophobic, classist, and racist beliefs. She considers people who are not upper-class Anglo-Saxon protestants disposable, and she uses them to gain power and wealth. As she fights for women like her, she subjects inmates to torture, rape, and enslavement. She also uses inflammatory rhetoric in her speeches to appeal to people's xenophobic, sexist, and racist fears.
Dr. Vogel is a static character who refuses to take responsibility for any of her actions. She blames the atrocities at Nettleton on other staff and uses her connections and image to become head of the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Welfare. As such, her character represents how discriminatory beliefs are perpetuated systemically.
Lillian Faust
Lillian Faust is Mary’s foil and the central catalyst for the plot’s action and Mary's growth. She and Mary grew up together at St. Catherine's Orphan Asylum, but unlike Mary, she has no relatives. Her surname comes from Dr. Faust, who dropped her off at the orphanage when she was a baby. At Nettleton, she is known as Lillian Henning, a surname she gets from her marriage to Tom Henning. Later, she becomes Olivia Moore after Mary and her friends help her escape.
Lillian is beautiful, smart, fearless, and kind. She knows Latin, German, and French and is an excellent dancer and a talented singer. Despite her many talents, Lillian ends up at Nettleton because she has an interracial baby out of wedlock, a crime in the 1920s United States. She is reported by her husband, Tom Henning, whom she married after he raped her at his speakeasy. She decided to marry him to conceal her pregnancy by Graham Carr, a Black jazz musician and her lover. She is sent to Nettleton because she refuses to say she was raped by Graham.
At Nettleton, Lillian is a "dairy girl," a difficult position working outside with the cows that is reserved for the most violent and troublesome inmates, according to Dr. Vogel and the staff at Nettleton. Lillian is friendly with the inmates and many of the staff at Nettleton. Her presence at Nettleton reminds Mary of her own experiences with poverty, violence, and sexual assault. Lillian's situation forces Mary to confront her past and view herself and those around her with clarity and maturity. Lillian's internment at Nettleton and her request for help drives Mary to discover the hypocrisy of Dr. Vogel and Nettleton, as well as reevaluate her assumptions about herself, the people around her, and the impact of circumstance and power on vulnerable populations such as women, laborers, the poor, and immigrants. While widescale change does not occur by the end of the novel, Lillian escapes Nettleton and finds happiness as Olivia with her daughter, Mary, and Graham, ending her story on an optimistic note.
Jake Enright
Jake Enright is Mary's romantic interest. He is tall, lean, and handsome despite a frumpy appearance. He is a recent college graduate and a journalist who reports on corruption and labor disputes. He is Jewish and originally from New York. He comes from a middle-class family, but he knows adversity due to the antisemitism he experienced growing up. He is spending the summer at the college near Nettleton because he is working with a professor to report on a labor dispute at the local steel mill. Like Mary, he is well-read, and they bond over their love of books. His steady moral compass helps Mary on her journey of self-discovery and motivates her to do the right thing.
Jake encourages Mary to be careful with Dr. Vogel and advocates for the inmates at Nettleton. He is wary of corruption and asks Mary to question and investigate what is happening at the institution. He is also instrumental in exposing Dr. Vogel's bootleg operation; he gets documents from Mary and shares them with the local newspaper, which leads to investigation and outrage about Nettleton from the townspeople and the board of trustees. At the end of the novel, Jake and Mary get married and move to New York, where Jake continues to work as a journalist.
