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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Unlikely Survival
Unlikely survival is a central idea in The Women, where characters are constantly risking their lives for a greater cause against enormous odds. Frankie, the other medics, the Vietnamese civilians and combatants, and the soldiers in the US army face constant danger when living in war-torn Vietnam. Frankie works in several combat zones under constant threat of attack, often operating without power and treating patients by firelight as bombs fall nearby. Despite losing colleagues and friends everywhere she’s deployed, Frankie endures.
When she returns to the US, the odds are once again stacked against Frankie. No structures have been put in place to support Frankie or other women veterans of Vietnam, and when she asks for help from the Veterans Association, she is denied. Frankie’s survival upon returning home turns into a series of guerilla battles against her own trauma. As she fights to recover from the lasting effects of war and create a new life, Frankie has to capture and destroy all the operatives of misery and hopelessness that surround her.
Rye’s “survival” (after faking his death) and Jamie’s reappearance years later—after Frankie herself has survived an accidental overdose—are also important instances of this theme. Frankie has to grieve Rye’s death, as does the reader alongside her. There’s no reason to believe that Rye is still alive, so it seems monumentally unlikely that he could have “survived” when Frankie sees him again. At the end of the novel there’s another surprise survival when Frankie runs into Jamie at the war memorial. Frankie had thought Jamie was dead for years, only to see him living and breathing in front of her. Unlikely survival in all its forms emphasizes how blurred the line between life and death can be in times of both peace and war. For those who do survive, the aftereffects of war bring their own challenges. Frankie’s struggles and the changes she unwillingly endures explore the idea that living through war is not just about staying alive, but about learning how to live well afterward.
The All-Consuming Nature of Love
The Women explores the damage and suffering that love can cause, and how love can cloud the judgement of even the sanest people. For example, Frankie makes irrational choices over and over for the sake of love. When she falls in love with Rye, it’s so totalizing and obsessive that it’s almost pathological. Rye doesn’t just represent a safe place to hide from the horror of war for Frankie; he’s also a piece of home, and a constant reminder of her brother Finley, whom they both loved. Even after learning that Rye has a wife and child, she holds grimly on to her feelings for him and refuses to give him up. His repeated promises to leave his wife keep her emotionally tied to him, and she repeatedly lies to herself, trying to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that their affair will have a happy ending.
Frankie’s attachment to Rye prevents her from seeing the harm it causes her well-being and career. Both times she falls in love with him it has disastrous consequences; first Rye “dies,” and then Frankie overdoses. Her willingness to trust Rye repeatedly despite his past behavior shows how emotions can overpower logic when love is involved. She forgives his actions and believes in his promises, despite the actual and potential consequences of his infidelity. Her fixation on Rye also affects her ability to truly commit to other relationships, including her otherwise healthy and supportive engagement to Henry Acevedo.
Frankie is not the only one who is irrevocably affected by love's consuming nature. When Finley dies, their father Connor is so devastated and grief-stricken that he disengages almost totally from his family. His grief and pride are mixed up with his love for Frankie and his concern for her safety. He doesn’t just dismiss her time in Vietnam because he thinks she shouldn’t be there; he also does not want her to be there because he loves her. It’s easier to ignore reality than to accept the frightening truth that he might lose two children to the Vietnam War.
The Never-Ending Cost of Warfare
In the wake of the Vietnam war, it was a common misconception that the only people substantially affected were combatants, but soldiers were far from the only people on the ground in Vietnam. Vietnamese civilians, as well as international medical staff, journalists, and artists, and all manner of other people were forever scarred by the atrocities they saw when battles raged. Frankie’s life, as the reader learns in The Women, is inexorably shaped by the aftermath of her service in Vietnam. She suffers from PTSD which goes undiagnosed for many harrowing years. She returns home to a society that dismisses her contributions, and turns to alcohol and pharmaceuticals as a substitute for the compassion and understanding that she desperately wants, and doesn't receive, from those around her.
Many events in The Women also serve to highlight the profound effects of war. The US that Frankie returns home to after her second tour is buzzing with anger, frustration, and apathy—and in some cases, hostility—toward soldiers. Barb’s brother Will dies in a police shootout that’s related to his fury with the army after he concludes his service. Ethel loses the man she loves to the war. Rye’s imprisonment in a POW camp leaves psychological wounds in him that will never heal. The people of Vietnam whom Frankie speaks to are also shaken and wounded by the war’s aftereffects. Health problems caused by Agent Orange, burns and scars from bombs and the use of napalm, the vast death toll, and the massive infrastructural and physical damage done to the country had generationally traumatic effects.
In the US, the government’s response to the suffering of its veterans seems weak and insufficient to everyone who speaks about it. Frankie also realises that her miscarriage was likely to have been caused by the Agent Orange she was exposed to during the war. Like the invisible trauma of psychological problems, the damaging effects of Aget Orange were lurking unseen under the surface of Frankie's skin. Frankie’s efforts to rebuild her life, including creating The Last Best Place for women veterans, demonstrate the difficulty of moving forward after trauma. Even as Frankie helps other women to feel heard and to rehabilitate themselves, the pain of her own experiences remains. Moving on, she and the other former nurses realize, doesn't mean letting go of the pain they carry. They must create new memories and experiences, so that life can continue despite the horrors.
