Mary Hatch-Bailey's Wonderful Life

Sometimes the best character is in the supporting role

Fond as I am of an indomitable female protagonist, I may enjoy her qualities even more as the supporting actress. Trite though the saying is, and despite its many sarcastic variations, behind many a great man is a great woman. 

It’s not just great men who need the help. In Little Women, the fictional Marmee March supports her four talented daughters, captivating readers with her gracious, forbearing wisdom. Moreover, in the first half of the book, the boy Laurie serves as a great man behind the four great little women. Less can be said in praise of the adult Laurie, but his example demonstrates that this is not a strictly gendered trope.

For society to thrive, we surely need people who are confident enough to carry someone else’s story as well as their own. 

One of the greatest fictional women in the wings, Mary Hatch, is the real hero of It’s a Wonderful Life. Clarence Oddbody might show George Bailey that he has a wonderful life, but Mary is the reason it is wonderful. 

When George returns home after witnessing the world without him, he finds that Mary has solved the problem of the Building and Loan’s missing funds by sending the word throughout town. While both Mary and George serve their community, only Mary seems to really believe in it, trusting they would help the man who had helped them so much. She is not too proud to seek the help George had spurned. Thanks to her, he will spend Christmas Eve with his family and not in jail. 

This isn’t the first time she saves the Building & Loan. Ten years before the grand finale, she sacrifices her honeymoon funds to cover the account holders’ withdrawals during the run on the bank. The housewife might not officially work for the company, but she evidently loves it as much as George, or possibly more, since she doesn’t resent that it has kept her in Bedford Falls. 

After that initial panic, the Great Depression doesn’t prevent the Building & Loan from breaking ground on new houses. As George welcomes the Martini family to their new, tidy home in Bailey Park, Mary hands them, “Bread, that this house may never know hunger; salt, that life may always have flavor; and wine, that joy and prosperity may reign forever!” This ceremony echoes and embodies George’s speech to Potter earlier that the “rabble,” who did most of the community’s “working and paying and living and dying,” deserved to have “a couple of decent rooms and a bath.” Mr Martini later runs a classy restaurant; living in a shack must have been especially dispiriting for a man of his taste. Mary and George’s sacrifices enable many families to live with hope and dignity. 

Mary’s breezy attitude saves many a fiasco. A fall into a pool couldn’t dampen her good humor at being with George, even if it ruined a silk dress and frizzed out her perfect curls. She turns the dilapidated Old Granville House into a habitable family home, even if we can’t quite believe that she did the more substantial improvements, like fixing the roof, on her own. Perhaps she bartered the labor, or maybe she has hidden talents. That record-player-rotisserie trick on her wedding night has always impressed me. 

Mary provides their four children’s spiritual education. George isn’t deeply religious. In his desperate prayer at Martini’s bar, he says, “I’m not a praying man.” However, earlier that evening, when George storms through the house, his children ask, “Is Daddy in trouble? Should we pray?” Their first impulse in troubled times is to pray. They learned that from their mother, not their father. 

Despite all of these accomplishments, it could be easy to take Mary for granted. While we all wonder what George Bailey could have built or achieved outside of Bedford Falls, we should also realize that the “pretty little wife,” who has more education than her husband and ample leadership experience with the USO during the War,  needn’t have been an insignificant, poor man’s wife. She could have made more of herself in New York, alone or on the arm of the wealthy Sam Wainwright.  

Yes, she would most certainly have made more of herself, had she chosen herself. 

She didn’t. From the beginning, she chose George. 

Mary loves George the way she loves Bedford Falls. She doesn’t ask if he deserves it or even if he receives it well. When eight-year-old Mary whispers her prophetic line, “George Bailey, I’ll love you till the day I die,” the twelve-year-old George literally can’t hear her because he is deaf in that ear. Even when they grow up and he returns her love, abandoning his childhood dreams of “a couple of harems” and his adulthood dreams of “building bridges a mile long,” he doesn’t really hear or understand that she doesn’t want fancy clothes or a wealthy husband: she wants him. 

Finally, in the alternate reality, Mary is the only character to be fundamentally unchanged. The once good-natured bartender Nick is violent, Bert the Cop is trigger-happy, and even sweet Ma Bailey is suspicious and cruel to a stranger. Mary alone is neither coarse nor cruel. Her natural reserve is timidity in Pottersville, and her bud was nipped without George to help her blossom, but Clarence’s worst pejorative is that she’s unmarried. She was evidently too principled to accept Sam Wainwright’s dubious attentions, even without the superior George around to catch her eye. 

The concept of a person being constant and true, even across multiple universes, is not unique to It’s a Wonderful Life. In one life, a person might be content, cheerful, and easy to be around, but in a harder existence they’d be cutthroat and grasping. Hiding inner selfishness and moral vacuity is easier in a softer life. No one could be completely unchanged by different life circumstances, but with self-control and a moral compass, they could still be a force for good.

In a town filled with bars and strip clubs, Mary works in the library, which we know had been George’s favorite haunt before his marriage. In its walls he had read and learned and dreamed of building things. Even in a world without George Bailey, Mary loves and serves people like him. She is making it possible for some other youth to read, learn, and dream, even in Pottersville. 

Mary Bailey gives me hope. 

George sees how much the town needed him, but the climax of the alternate universe comes when he realizes how much he needs Mary. The loss of the town, his brother Harry, his friends’ recognition, and his own mother’s affection don’t frighten him as much as seeing his wife run screaming away from him. 

Mary had by turns comforted him, teased him, and challenged him, but she had always known him and loved him. 

To be known and loved is what each of us needs most deeply. One could reach the pinnacle of a career, gain the admiration of thousands, or even rule the world and still be utterly alone.

When George emerges from the alternate universe, he is euphoric to be alive, to be known. If only we could always be grateful to see every familiar thing, from the drafty old house to our worst enemy, but especially to see the people who have sustained us. Bedford Falls needs George Bailey, and George Bailey, much to his surprise, needs Bedford Falls. 

May we, with George and Mary, remember that we are not the only smart, talented people to have sacrificed and served. 

Should we find ourselves in the wings, carrying another story, may we rejoice that at last we are living a truly wonderful life.