Depicted as a monster, an Irish immigrant Mary Mallon who was a carrier of typhoid had a very troublesome life. People greatly disregarded her decision to return to cooking while still being a threat to the health of the community. However, those who blame her for doing so usually do not look at the situation from her point of view. The woman certainly posed a threat to the health and well-being of other people since typhoid fever is a life-threatening illness. Nonetheless, neither did she decide to be ill nor made her choice to return to her previous job with the purpose of harming people. She just wanted to live in the community and do what she was able to do – cooking.
Mary did indeed do damage to society by unknowingly harming more than fifty people and causing three deaths before realizing that she was a typhoid carrier. Some may think that only a monster can return to a job that may harm people again. However, what should be mentioned is that when Mary got to know that she was a typhoid carrier, “she dropped most of her friends and never revealed the story of her life and origin.” She became almost completely deprived of what she had in her “previous” life – life before the illness. However, instead of providing Mary with the proper education about her disease and its transmission and teaching her some new profitable, yet safe for other people, job, the authorities only isolated the poor woman.
Summing up, to some extent, Mary was both a villain and a victim, but it was not her choice to become a threat to others. Although harming people may be considered as an act of a cruel person, she did it either unknowingly or because of having no other choice. It is completely unjust to blame a person for the consequences of the illness she was not protected from.