A Letter to Three Wives

It's the first weekend in May, which means the first country club dinner and dance of the season is taking place this evening. Before attending the dance, friends Deborah Bishop, Rita Phipps and Lora Mae Hollingsway are acting as chaperon's at the children's annual picnic. The one of their "friends" who doesn't show up at the picnic is Addie Ross, who pervades their social set and their discussion when she isn't around. Just before embarking on the boat ride to the island where the picnic will be held, the three friends receive a joint letter from Addie, who states not only that she has left town for good, but that but she has run off with one of their husbands. None of the three women wants to seem concerned in making no immediate effort to discover if what Addie said is either true or if it her husband with who she has run off. During the course of the picnic, each woman also does not only reflect on the events of the morning which makes it very possible that it could be her husband, but the course of her less than perfect marriage. Deborah, who met her husband Brad Bishop when he was in the navy during the war, is the unsophisticated country girl outsider whose insecurities always make her feel like she is neither good enough for Brad or for his friends. Rita, married to English teacher George Phipps, has started working, writing for a radio program. In what she sees as the absence of George's ambition, he content in his teaching job and its accompanying low wages, she has focused on doing whatever to show her snobbish employer that she and George are upwardly mobile, George being sacrificed in the process. And Lora Mae, who grew up literally and figuratively on the wrong side of the tracks, is married to wealthy but rough around the edges and older store owner Porter Hollingsway. Their relationship has always been characterized by manipulation, mostly on Lora Mae's part, to get what each wants. Love may or may not be a part of their marriage as neither has said the word to the other. As afternoon turns into dusk and each woman goes home, she may find out her fate with regard to Addie's letter.