Absolution by Alice McDermott
When is helping others causing harm? And when harm is inflicted, even if the intention is benign, can individuals or nations admit their error? Alice McDermott’s beautiful new book Absolution explores the role of American women during the Vietnam War and America’s entanglement in that conflict. Elegant and insightful, McDermott explores the dynamic of paternalism as it relates to gender roles and countries.
Tricia Kelly, now in her 80s, is writing to her best friend’s daughter about their lives in Vietnam beginning in 1963. She states in the third sentence, “You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.”
Tricia describes cocktail parties, garden parties, and the elaborate machinations required of women to dress properly as “helpmates” to their husbands. Like the other American wives, Tricia had come to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) with her engineer and attorney husband Peter. More than likely, Peter worked for the CIA, though Tricia did not know for sure. Like most wives in their social circle in Vietnam, Tricia was a capable college graduate, yet subservient to her husband. The wives didn’t question their marriage roles or the reasons their husbands had brought them to Vietnam.
Tricia is rapidly befriended by a charismatic woman named Charlene. Charlene is as boisterous and bold as Tricia is quiet and shy. “Charlene had her fingers in everyone’s lives.” She, too, is treated as the charge of her husband, but she is determined to use her abilities to help Vietnamese in need. Charlene believes she is helping Tricia when she asks Tricia to join her in a charitable activity. Tricia didn’t seek Charlene’s help nor did Tricia wish to participate in Charlene’s philanthropy. And yet Tricia helps Charlene. This power dynamic in their friendship echoes the relationship between the United States and Vietnam.
Tricia acknowledges, in hindsight, the tragedy of America’s involvement in Vietnam and even feels a bit of humiliation for being a “helpmate” to a husband who contributed to the horrific violence that dominated Vietnam for years. Thanks to the passing of time and the writing of this letter, Tricia better understands what happened there and feels a kind of absolution by writing about that time.
Alice McDermott’s prose is steady and clear. She touches deftly on multiple themes, including history, hubris, religion, and righteousness. The Vietnam War is on the periphery of the story while the central theme is how the men in the 1960s infantilized their wives, and their wives acquiesced to this dynamic because the broader culture reinforced it. Absolution adds an important new dimension to the literature of the Vietnam War. 4/5