Jenny Fields and Roberta Muldoon

Jenny Fields and Roberta Muldoon share a lasting alliance whose meaning is clearest in what they do for one another: they care for family, work together in public life, and stand together in crisis. Roberta’s protection of Jenny at the moment of her assassination gives that bond its most consequential expression, while Jenny’s example of practical care continues beyond her death.

A partnership grounded in care

Their relationship takes shape through acts of support rather than an account of formal promises. During the family’s recovery at Dog’s Head Harbor, Helen hopes Jenny can nurse Garp, while she herself calms herself by caring for Duncan. This places Jenny within a wider network of care after the family’s ordeal, and shows that her role is not limited to her own son: the habits that defined her life are also relied upon by those close to him.

The contrast between the women’s circumstances makes their mutual support visible. Roberta’s large frame dwarfs Jenny, who appears small and suddenly gray beside her, but the difference in stature does not diminish Jenny’s authority or Roberta’s loyalty. Roberta tells Garp she will look after Jenny while he is away. The promise is practical and immediate: Roberta accepts responsibility for Jenny’s well-being, and Garp can leave knowing his mother is not alone.

Shared political work

Jenny’s public commitments draw Roberta into sustained collaboration. Jenny writes that she is becoming involved in New Hampshire politics. In the campaign against a popular but dishonest governor, she and Roberta work alongside teams of New York divorcees to support the woman running against him. The campaign is more than a passing appearance in their relationship: it shows their alliance operating in public, where Jenny’s political involvement and Roberta’s solidarity become joint work.

That work places the women in a contested political climate. The incumbent invokes venereal disease as a supposed problem among women’s liberation supporters, a claim the narration identifies as a lie. Against that smear, Jenny and Roberta help organize support for a female candidate. Their partnership thus connects private loyalty with collective action, although the evidence does not specify Roberta’s particular campaign duties or the election’s outcome.

Protection at the moment of Jenny’s death

Their alliance reaches its defining crisis at a campaign gathering. Jenny identifies herself before the crowd, amid cheers, whistles, hoots, and pickup trucks circling the parking lot. A gunshot follows. No one sees where it came from, but Jenny is struck and Roberta catches her before she falls. Roberta later assures Garp that Jenny never hit the ground and never knew what had happened.

Roberta then carries Jenny through the breaking crowd toward a police car. The account likens her movement to that of an old tight end carrying the ball through a difficult play, turning a familiar image of athletic strength into an act of urgent protection. She holds Jenny’s body out to the officers, who help Roberta into the car with her. The scene makes Roberta not merely a witness to the assassination but Jenny’s immediate protector and the person who brings her from the crowd into police care.

Care carried forward

Jenny’s death does not end the influence of her example on the people around her. After the funeral, Garp recognizes that he is playing nurse to someone and begins to understand Jenny’s talent as an instinct for doing what was right. On the drive north to Steering with Ellen James asleep in his care, he decides to try to be more like his mother. This is not a further action by Roberta, but it clarifies the larger circle of care in which the women’s alliance mattered: Jenny’s practice passes to Garp, while Roberta’s protection helped sustain Jenny through her final public appearance.

Later, Garp increasingly refuses to meet at the Dog’s Head Harbor estate because its residents remind him of earlier times. He instead meets Roberta at the Steering family mansion, where he feels somewhat more comfortable among the women. The change of meeting place records grief and avoidance without undoing the connection: Roberta remains part of Garp’s life after Jenny’s death, and their shared history continues to shape where and how they meet.

The relation also persists through remembrance. In Duncan’s Family Album paintings, Jenny appears in photographs reworked into images of family life, including a portrait of his mother swimming at Dog’s Head Harbor. The evidence does not describe a particular image of Roberta in relation to Jenny, but the series places both women within Duncan’s larger record of the family. Across care, political work, crisis, and later memory, their alliance is defined by concrete acts of presence rather than by a formal declaration.