The characters in Merchant Ivory movies are rarely satisfied with the roles forced upon them by society, and Cotton Mary is no exception. As a maternity-ward nurse working in 1950s India, Mary (Madhur Jaffrey), the daughter of an Indian mother and a British father, has the coveted task of caring for the newborn baby of an English lady (Greta Scacchi) who cannot produce milk. Every day, Mary sneaks the child away to her sister Blossom, a crippled wet nurse who secretly feeds the baby. When Mary is asked to move into the lady's house to continue caring for the baby, she dreams of being part of the English aristocracy.

Jaffrey is flawless in her portrayal of a woman desperately trying to shed the confines of her culture while knowing full well that the color of her skin makes this an impossibility. Director Ismail Merchant sets Mary's desire for an unattainable caste against her rejection of her own people; but though she's sympathetic she still comes off as a caricature, one that borders on psychotic when Mary dons her mistress's dress to take the baby for a walk. Had Merchant given the character a little more of the ambiguity Scacchi displays as a woman who considers her Indian servant a member of the family but must also smile at her British friends' racist jokes, Cotton Mary would have been the perfect fallen angel.