Heartburn

Mark Feldman is Rachel’s second husband, a syndicated columnist who serves as the novel’s antagonist. His affair with Thelma Rice provides the central conflict, and his character embodies the destructive nature of betrayal. On the surface, Mark is charming, intelligent, and capable of profound romantic gestures, such as his attentiveness during the birth of their first son, Sam. However, this charm masks a deep-seated self-centeredness and a tendency toward emotional manipulation. Through her “Jewish Prince Routine” (20), Rachel depicts his entitlement and his expectation that the world should revolve around his comfort and desires, a trait that defines his actions throughout the novel.

Mark’s betrayal lies not merely in his infidelity but in a consistent pattern of deceit that reveals this profound self-absorption. His excuses for his absences, such as frequent dentist appointments and a prolonged search for socks, are almost comically mundane, highlighting the banal reality behind his grand betrayal. When Rachel confronts him, he does not initially express remorse for the pain he has caused. Instead, he declares that he is “in love with Thelma Rice” and expects Rachel to remain in the marriage under his new terms (13). He further manipulates the situation by turning his own emotional turmoil into the central issue, crying to Rachel that he’s “in a lot of pain” in a successful bid for sympathy (87). Mark’s behavior demonstrates his inability to see beyond his own feelings and his assumption that his emotions take precedence over the devastation he has wrought on his family. As a political columnist, he frequently mines his personal life for material, further illustrating his tendency to view the people around him as characters in his own story rather than as individuals with their own needs.

Ultimately, Mark is a static character. While he is complex enough to be both loving and cruel, he does not experience any meaningful growth or change. His desire for Rachel to return home stems not from a genuine change of heart but from a wish to restore a comfortable domestic arrangement while continuing his affair. He learns from their brief separation only that Rachel might be willing to take him back, a miscalculation that leads to the novel’s climax. He remains fundamentally self-centered, unable or unwilling to comprehend the depth of the wound he has inflicted. His actions force Rachel to reevaluate her entire understanding of love, trust, and her own complicity in accepting his charismatic but hollow version of partnership.

Thelma Rice is Mark’s lover and Rachel’s rival. Because the story is told from Rachel’s perspective, Thelma is rendered almost entirely through a lens of animosity and insecurity. Rachel describes her in unflattering physical terms, focusing on her imposing height and sharp features, calling her “a fairly tall person with a neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb” (4). She is also depicted as a “clever giant” whose intelligence and social standing make her a more formidable and humiliating rival than a “little popsy” would have been. This characterization highlights Rachel’s feeling of inadequacy and the sting of betrayal.

Thelma’s primary role in the narrative is to be the embodiment of Mark’s deception. The affair is revealed through an inscription she writes to Mark in a book of children’s songs, an act that corrupts an object of domestic innocence. Her presence in Rachel’s life is a constant reminder of the rewritten past, central to the theme of The Impact of Betrayal on Memory and Identity; she is an acquaintance who attended gatherings in their home, making Rachel feel like a fool for having missed the signs. While Jonathan, Thelma’s husband, portrays her as a “hysteric” and a “hopeless romantic,” the reader never sees this side of her directly. Instead, she remains an offstage presence, a catalyst for the plot whose actions force Rachel to confront the painful truth about her marriage and her own denial.

Arthur and Julie Siegel are Rachel and Mark’s best friends. They serve as both a support system for Rachel and a narrative foil to her and Mark’s disintegrating marriage. Their life is deeply intertwined with the Feldmans’, and this close bond provides social context for Rachel’s marriage. Her fear that the affair may damage her relationship with Arthur and Julie is one of the significant threats that accompanies Mark’s betrayal. When Rachel first tells them about the infidelity, their shock and unwavering support validate her pain and provide her with a crucial anchor in her initial crisis.

Their own marriage, however, is revealed to be as complex and flawed as any other, which prevents them from serving as a simple, idealized contrast. Years earlier, Arthur had an affair, and Julie made the painful choice to “wait the damned thing out” (116). This history provides a potential roadmap for Rachel, but it is one she ultimately rejects. Julie’s candid admission that reconciliation was “horrible and painful and humiliating” and that she sometimes wishes she had left Arthur gives Rachel a nuanced perspective on her options (116). Arthur, a pragmatic and witty law professor, offers staunch moral support while Julie provides empathetic, world-weary advice rooted in her own experience. Together, they reflect the messy reality of long-term relationships and underscore the novel’s message that no marriage is immune to crisis. The Siegels’ friendship is a source of stability, but their history is a cautionary tale that helps Rachel forge her own path.

Vera Maxwell is Rachel’s therapist, an unconventional mentor figure who guides her through the marital crisis. Vera is direct, opinionated, and emotionally engaged. Her immediate reaction to Rachel’s news is to declare Mark “disgusting,” a judgment that provides Rachel with the moral clarity and permission she needs to take her first decisive action and leave for New York. Vera’s narrative role is to empower Rachel to determine her own needs and act on them.

Vera’s personal life serves as a constant, almost mythical, counterpoint to Rachel’s turmoil. Her marriage to her husband, Niccolo, is portrayed as a paradigm of enduring passion and intellectual connection, a relationship so perfect that Rachel tells her, “Your marriage is very hard on the rest of us” (55). This idealized union functions as both an inspiration and a source of frustration, representing a seemingly unattainable standard of marital happiness. Through this vision of happiness as much as through her combination of tough love, Yiddish jokes, and probing questions about what Rachel truly wants, Vera acts as a catalyst for her patient’s growth. She pushes Rachel to move beyond a state of passive suffering and to become the protagonist in her own life rather than a secondary character in her husband’s.

As Thelma’s husband, Jonathan is Rachel’s “partner in cuckoldom” and serves a crucial narrative function as the messenger of bad news (36). It is Jonathan who provides Rachel with the granular, painful details of Mark and Thelma’s affair, from the hotels they stayed in to the room service they ordered. His meticulous reports retroactively poison Rachel’s memories and deepen her sense of humiliation, making him an agent of the novel’s exploration of betrayal’s impact on memory and identity. His character is rendered with a satirical edge; as an undersecretary of state, he views his personal crisis through a geopolitical lens, asking, “What’s happening to this country?” (36), as if his wife’s affair reflected a national decline.

Jonathan also acts as a foil to Rachel, representing a path of passive endurance that she considers and ultimately rejects. His strategy is to “sit this thing out” (41), hoping that the affair will simply burn itself out. He believes he can reason with Thelma and preserve his marriage through logic and patience. This approach highlights the powerlessness of his position and contrasts sharply with Rachel’s eventual decision to take control. He is a pathetic figure, spying on his own wife from the bushes, yet his willingness to share information makes him an unlikely and indispensable ally in Rachel’s search for the truth.