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She scrolled through her memories; what she found was this: I’m afraid I’ll love you till I die. At the time, she’d seen it as romantic, sweeping, epic. Now she saw the sentiment for what it was. The dark side of love. What he’d really been saying was, I don’t want to love you...Worst of all, his lies had exposed an immorality in her that she could have sworn hadn’t existed before him. She’d begun by believing she was stupid and learned slowly that she was just human.
In this quote from Chapter 34, Frankie reflects on how love blinded her to Rye’s true nature as a liar and a bigamist. At first, she interpreted his declaration—“I’m afraid I’ll love you till I die”—as grand and meaningful. It felt like a big, almost operatic gesture of commitment. However, with time she comes to recognize the “darkness” underneath his words. He’s “afraid” that he cannot stop loving her, because he knows he shouldn’t. Frankie realizes here that loving Rye has also shown her a side of herself that she doesn’t like. She would not have thought of herself as someone who could break up a marriage before, but Rye “exposed an immorality in her” that she finds frightening. Where she once blamed herself for being “stupid” to have loved him, she now sees that fighting through the confusion of loving Rye allowed her to ignore her own needs. She’s trying to forgive herself for the “human” condition of being so consumed by love that she’s blinded to reality.
Life was like that, she guessed; it was all wrong until suddenly it was right, and you didn’t really know how to react in either instance. But she knew love when she saw it, and it filled her.
In this quote from Chapter 35, Frankie feels the weight of her past and the excitement of her future. Seeing Jamie at the war memorial and having her father apologize to her has healed some of the psychological wounds she’s been carrying for years. When she says “it was all wrong until suddenly it was right” she’s suggesting how quickly circumstances—and emotions—can change. Previously to this Frankie had been blinded by love, unable to see Rye’s flaws through the smokescreen of her dreams and hopes. Now, at the end of the novel with Jamie, her statement “she knew love when she saw it” shows how determined she is to recognize authentic love. Her ability to feel “filled” by love also suggests that, with Jamie, she feels a renewed connection to her true feelings once again. Rather than being “empty” and lonely, she is “filled” with love.
Sit-ins. Protests. Raised fists. Believe you me, more than a few of these free love girls are going to wake up in trouble, and where will their dirty-footed lovers be then? The world changes for men, Frances. For women, it stays pretty much the same.
In this quote from the opening of Chapter 8, Bette’s letter to Frankie in Vietnam explains how concerned she is with how the societal changes happening all around her are going to affect women. Bette is a pessimist when it comes to gender and power. She believes that men are highly unlikely to give up power unless it benefits them, and that any power women gain will soon be taken back. Her dismissal of “free love girls” and protests is a comment on how worried she is that the “dirty-footed lovers” of the world will take advantage of naïve, idealistic young women. She also implies that if pregnancies occur from sex between these couples the men will face fewer consequences for their actions. She fears a future where a generation of young women “wake up in trouble” and must bear the fallout alone. Bette’s words in her letter are meant to update Frankie on the news from home, but also to caution Frankie against giving up the conservative sexual rules she was raised with.
