50 pages • 1 hour read
Janice Y. K. LeeThe Expatriates
Janice Y. K. LeeFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Search for Identity and Belonging
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child loss and kidnapping.
Through Mercy and Hilary, Lee explores the search for identity and belonging. Mercy struggles to find her footing after college, affected by her class status and, later, her grief and shame over losing G. In school, she is a fish out of water at Columbia University, where most of her peers are wealthy, and this results in a sense of aimlessness. This extends into her adult life; she feels left behind when her wealthier friends land glamorous jobs and apartments, and though Hong Kong offers a new start, she finds herself similarly alienated by the wealthier expat community. Mercy also grapples with the prophecy from her childhood that predicted she would be unlucky life: “A crow cannot soar like an eagle” (14). She internalizes this message and worries that her bad luck is a result of trying to fit in “above her station” (14). Unsure of herself and without a community, Mercy withdraws when the tragedy happens with G, unable to forgive herself or move on with her life. Adrift, she makes choices that are bad for her like sleeping with David, who is unreliable. Without a strong identity, she struggles to advocate for herself, and she has no loved ones to back her up.
Eventually, Mercy finds stability and a path forward through her pregnancy. Her forthcoming motherhood gives her a sense of purpose, giving her the strength to heal her relationships with her mother and Margaret. Her mother reminds her “You can change your destiny” (304), emphasizing that identity is created rather than simply inherited or inborn. Her love and confidence allow Mercy to see herself as lovable and start making better choices. She also finds deep meaning in her pregnancy, thinking that: “This good person, this figure who is selfless and forgiving: This is who she needs to become” (319). Giving birth enables Mercy to find a new identity, and she finds belonging through the community of women and fellow mothers at the end of the novel. The shared experience of motherhood creates a support network for Mercy, allowing her to work through the early difficulties of exhaustion and nursing and enjoy the positive aspects of having a child.
Hilary also struggles with finding an identity and a sense of belonging, though her journey occurs at the opposite end of the class spectrum. Like many expat women, she does not work and struggles to fill her days. She oversees the hired help as they clean her home and cook for her parties, but she herself does very little. She thinks, “[S]he feels as if she’s in an echo chamber, apart from everyone else” (72). This aimlessness contrasts sharply with her younger self, who is described as determined. This lack of ambition shows that Hilary has lost sight of herself, reinforced by her meek nature around her husband. Unsure of herself, she is likewise frozen when forced to make decisions—namely, she cannot decide whether to adopt Julian for most of the story.
In place of an authentic identity, Hilary tries to build one for herself in online forums, taking on an anonymous avatar who is happier than Hilary is in real life. This is only a temporary salve, however, as Hilary is hurt when people attack her online. When she confides in Olivia, her friend tells her to ignore the comments: “What do you care what some anonymous coward says about you? […] The best thing about getting older, […] the absolute best thing, is that I don’t give two hoots what anyone thinks about me” (252). Gradually, Hilary can leave this judgment behind—determined to make choices for herself without worrying about other people’s perceptions, she moves forward with her adoption and away from her dead marriage. After making these choices for herself, she realizes that she no longer wants to stay in Hong Kong because she has no real community there; and is only there because of David. She contemplates moving to the US and thinks “[I]f she moves back home, she’ll start her life again, her new life with Julian” (321). She creates her own nontraditional family, and through it, she finds her purpose again.
The Role of Forgiveness in Navigating Loss
In The Expatriates, forgiveness becomes a key component in navigating loss. When the novel begins, Margaret is trapped in a state of deep devastation, disconnected from her life and those around her as she grieves the loss of her son. Alongside her pain and regret, she deeply resents Mercy for losing G and imagines trading her for him: “Most of all, she wanted to erase Mercy from her life. To absent the girl and get her boy back” (56). This bargain is impossible, and so Margaret’s fixation keeps her deep in her trauma. Another way Margaret fails to heal is through escape. She uses work as a distraction to stop thinking about G, and she runs away to her secret apartment to separate herself from her family. While she feels this apartment is a sanctuary, it cannot heal her pain because it offers a way for Margaret to avoid confronting her thoughts and feelings.
Margaret focuses on her pain but does not think about how the disappearance affects others, including Mercy. Eventually, she realizes that she needs to forgive Mercy for her role in the trauma. She also thinks: “If life is a continuum, and Daisy is at the beginning of an adult life and Margaret is the midpoint, where, what, is someone like Mercy?” (308). When she acknowledges Mercy’s youth, she also comes to think “Mercy has […] a family, a history, a background. All she saw before was someone in relation to herself, how Mercy could be helpful to her family, to her, for her. What Mercy did to her” (308). Margaret comes to see Mercy as a person rather than a prop for her anger, which helps her forgive her for the accident. This forgiveness also enables her to forgive herself. She comes to realize, as her therapist tells her, that she is allowed to experience moments of happiness and does not have to punish herself forever. Experiencing joy does not negate the love she has for her son.
Mercy is also traumatized by her role in G’s disappearance. She searches for a narrative about how to cope with her guilt, but she cannot find any. She notes that perpetrators are “the invisible. She’s the one not mentioned in the magazine pieces and newspaper articles. She is the unforgiven, the unforgivable” (266). She emphasizes forgiveness here, insinuating that she can neither be forgiven by the Reades nor herself. Mercy’s guilt results in her becoming “invisible” in other areas of her life—she does not work a steady job, and she has no deep relationships. She is only able to rejoin the world when she sees herself as someone worthy of love and forgiveness. This begins with Margaret’s gesture of kindness toward her and culminates in Mercy resolving to be a more selfless person, prioritizing her unborn child over her desires. She thinks, “That’s what a mother is, she remembers thinking, someone who puts others’ needs in front of hers, who takes the pain from others and swallows it herself” (319). Mercy begins to visualize a way to move past her mistakes and to forgive herself for the past, leading to the novel’s hopeful ending, her new daughter in her arms.
The Complexities of Motherhood
Each of the three viewpoint characters wrestles with the complexities of motherhood. For Margaret, motherhood is a deeply satisfying experience that transforms her life. However, she also recognizes the messier side of it, saying of her own postpartum days that “it really, really sucked. A lot” (50). Losing G also reveals the darker price of motherly love—the loss is devastating, and Margaret knows that she will never fully recover from it. Motherhood provides her with her greatest happiness and worst sorrow, highlighting its intense and complex role.
Hilary also enters motherhood contemplating both the positive and the negative. She spends much of the novel trapped between wanting to adopt Julian and fearing that she is not fit to be a mother. She worries, “paralyzed by the notion that [adoption] might be a mistake from which they would never recover” (70). Essentially, Hilary’s doubts highlight parenthood as a state where each choice affects the child instead of just the parents. Trapped in a cycle of people pleasing and fear, these consequences are too enormous for Hilary to bear. When she finally commits to Julian, she is “filled […] with an aching contentment” and realizes that she is happier than she has been in years (321). Choosing motherhood represents bravery for her—the freedom to make choices and mistakes. Even if things aren’t perfect, being a mother allows her to love deeply and unconditionally.
Mercy’s pregnancy is a surprise, but her commitment to her child is immediate. She sees the pregnancy as a way of reinventing herself and believes that it will give her the purpose she has been lacking. While childbirth and the postpartum stages are difficult for her, she pushes through thanks to the community of fellow mothers around her. As such, the novel closes with Mercy thinking of motherhood as a kind of universal experience: “They are all of them women. They are all of them mothers. They know who she is” (330). This moment uses motherhood as a bond that aids in the women’s reconciliation. Margaret, Hilary, and Mercy come to experience motherhood as “the only thing that matters” (277). For them, a mother’s love truly trumps all.
However, there is also a subtler depiction of motherhood in the novel that questions this perspective. Lee’s opening Prologue emphasizes the diversity of the human experience, introducing a chorus of voices who have wildly different motivations and reasons for coming to Hong Kong. This lens gestures toward characters who might be excluded from the main characters’ views. For example, Hilary does not think about Julian’s birth mother, only mentioning her in passing as a teenager who gave him up. She also remains incurious about Puri’s desires, ignoring her stories about the Philippines and thinking of her as histrionic: “Their lives in that country are operatic” (69). However, Puri understands immediately what kind of food Julian might like to eat and makes sure that he is nourished. She initially has a stronger connection to Julian than Hilary and worries about his needs. These women at the margins of Lee’s novel illuminate how motherhood, like other experiences, is mediated by class and privilege, and the novel’s main characters do not necessarily represent all women.
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