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Valencia Merble is Billy’s unattractive wife, through whom he secures inherited wealth and a cushy career in optometry. Valencia adores Billy because, as a homely young woman, she worried no one would marry her. Although Billy is inwardly somewhat apathetic toward his wife, Valencia loves him because she believes she’s found someone who finds her beautiful and worthy of partnership despite her physical flaws.
Like many veterans post-war, Billy finds it difficult to share anything meaningful about his experience in WWII with other people in his life. While Valencia does ask Billy about the war, her interest is misguided, as she has a romanticized perception of war. Billy avoids discussing traumatic memories from the war with her, even escaping to the bathroom when she prompts him to recall the execution of Edgar Derby. Billy is emotionally distanced from Valencia in the same way that he is distanced from his children. While he does love all of them, he isn’t intimate or close with any of them. This emotional isolation only deepens his loneliness and exacerbates his mental health crisis.
Like many of the characters in Slaughterhouse-Five, Valencia is both absurdly comical and genuinely sympathetic. Playing the comedic role of the ugly, boring wife makes Valencia the target of a little bit of mean-spirited humor, but her devotion to Billy is earnest and sweet. Additionally, while her death by carbon monoxide is funny to a certain degree, it’s also quite sad, because while Valencia gave her life in her desperation to join Billy in the hospital, Billy barely seems to register or care about his wife’s death. While his apathy can be attributed to his mental breakdown, his disinterest in his wife and children was already an issue long before the plane crash.
