The Women: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-10

Part 1, Chapters 11-19

Part 1, Chapter 20-Part 2, Chapter 27

Part 2, Chapters 28-35

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

Discovering One’s Purpose

From the beginning of The Women, Frankie is reluctant to pursue a socialite’s life as her traditional parents wish. She desires a career and a purpose beyond being a wife and mother. Specifically, she wants to help others through emotional support and healthcare, as reflected in her college major in nursing. Frankie’s mother in particular believes college is optional for women as they await marriage, and thus cannot understand why she desires a career. This opinion speaks to the family’s privilege, but also the time’s downplaying of women’s agency and ambitions in general: In late 1960s America, a woman’s purpose and place were widely accepted to be in the home.

Frankie attempts to align her desire for a life of purpose with her family’s values and beliefs. Knowing veterans are revered by her family, Frankie believes she could become a hero in her own right by joining her soldier brother Finley in Vietnam. In serving as a nurse for American soldiers, she experiences difficulty but successfully hones her skills. Her superiors recognize her resolve and promote her to the OR, then the 71st Evacuation Hospital where she encounters more casualties. Frankie feels fulfilled in her work, knowing she is instrumental in saving lives. When her first tour comes to an end, she feels compelled to reenlist for a second, as she notices how inexperienced her fellow nurses and doctors are in the absence of personnel like Ethel, Barb, and Jamie. She stresses in letters to her mother that she has found her life’s purpose in leading by example.

Frankie’s return to civilian life exemplifies the negative impact that losing one’s sense of purpose can have. At home, she tries to continue nursing, but due to her lack of civilian experience, is only allowed to complete menial tasks. Without meaningful work, her mental health worsens. Frankie obtains work as an OR surgical nurse, but her career ends when she loses her license due to substance misuse. As the novel closes, Frankie finds a new purpose with Ethel, Barb, and her former fiancé Henry’s help: counseling fellow female veterans at a self-made safe haven. It is this role that helps Frankie healthily manage her PTSD and accept that she can achieve her purpose even without others’ or her family’s approval.

Women as Heroes

The fact that women can be heroes, even if they lack the same recognition as men, is one of the novel’s central themes. The first chapter conveys Frankie’s family’s reverence for military service: The family has a heroes’ wall and Frankie’s father in particular takes pride in Finley’s graduation from the Naval Academy. When Rye voices women’s potential to become heroes, Frankie becomes determined to prove him correct. In enlisting in the army as a nurse, she is certain that her parents, her father in particular, will be proud of her. She feels this opportunity will allow her to carry on a family tradition and find her own purpose.

In Vietnam, Frankie and her fellow nurses overcome situations that are physically and mentally taxing, proving their resilience, strength, and bravery. Vietnam’s extreme humidity and monsoons, coupled with mass casualties, are not for the faint of heart. Like the men who face direct combat, Frankie and the other nurses witness the atrocities of war: gunshot wounds, lost limbs, and napalm burns. These scenes are horrific, but the women face them nevertheless. Like their male counterparts, the female nurses learn to endure and navigate bombings and mortar attacks. Frankie in particular proves her ability by completing surgical tasks and leading personnel while under fire. Furthermore, she and other nurses aid Vietnamese civilians in need of medical care—showing heroism has no bounds.

When Frankie returns home, she is confronted by the fact that the women who served as nurses in Vietnam are not afforded the same respect as the men who fought. Frankie is particularly upset by her father and the male veterans’ rejection of her service. She is frequently told there were no women in Vietnam, which former nurses know this to be untrue—that their experiences are just as meaningful and traumatizing as those of their male counterparts. Frankie’s parents lie about her service out of shame over her “male” behavior. By the end of the novel, a decade has passed since the war ended, and female veterans finally receive some of the recognition they deserve. The novel itself acts as an extension of this recognition by telling the story of the nurses and the many heroic acts they performed.

The Emotional Toll of War

Frankie’s experiences upon returning home from her two-year tour in Vietnam illuminate the emotional toll of war. Frankie frequently finds herself angry and anxious, and she experiences depression and finds herself unable to get out of bed. She has difficulty socializing and grows increasingly frustrated when neither her parents nor her peers take an interest in her nursing. Frankie’s experiences illustrate that not only does war negatively impact the mental health of those who live through conflict, but also that the effects on emotional and mental well-being can be highly isolating: Frankie’s challenges with her mental health are heightened because she is forced to face them alone.

Frankie’s nightmares and flashbacks of the war serve to emphasize that, for those who have served, the effects of war often persist even when the fighting is over. When the sound of Fourth of July firecrackers reminds Frankie of mortar fire, she mistakenly believes herself to still be in the middle of the fighting. For Frankie, the emotional and mental toll is worsened by the immediacy of the perceived threat: In these moments, Frankie is not dealing with troubling memories, she is instead living through the dangers of war. For Frankie, war has affected her mental health to the point where the past and present blur, so she cannot treat the conflict like a discrete past event; for her it is omnipresent.

The inability of society and medical practitioners to understand PTSD, which wasn’t widely recognized as a diagnosis during the period in which the novel is set, compounds the emotional and mental toll of war. Although Frankie repeatedly seeks help from veterans’ facilities, she is told she is healthy because she lacks physical wounds. Thus, Frankie’s symptoms remain, worsen, and affect her work and relationships. She turns to alcohol and then Valium to cope, but these are unhealthy, short-term solutions that lead to use disorder. It is former fiancé Henry who ultimately recognizes Frankie’s PTSD. He explains the diagnosis is controversial, and that medical professionals are still researching it. It is at his rehabilitation facility that Frankie is finally able to recover: She is encouraged to confront her painful memories, whether through counseling or journaling. These methods help diminish her symptoms, as does sharing experiences with fellow female veterans. As these women are acknowledged, by both family and society, some of their internalized shame is lessened, and they can better cope with the emotional and mental impacts of war.