The Dear Debbie Advice Column as a Trojan Horse
What Is the Dear Debbie Advice Column?
The Dear Debbie advice column is a recurring feature in the fictional Hingham Household newspaper, where protagonist Debbie Mullen dispenses tips to local readers. On its surface, the column is a mundane fixture of suburban life, offering guidance on domestic challenges such as getting children to eat breakfast or managing household routines. Debbie’s drafts, which appear as interstitial chapters throughout the novel, reveal that this wholesome facade conceals something far more sinister. The column functions as what the narrative context describes as a Trojan horse: outwardly presenting helpful household tips while covertly normalizing violent solutions, including murder.
The literal column appears in multiple forms. Some drafts are never submitted, living only on Debbie’s computer as private fantasies. One such draft responds to a wife enduring financial abuse by advising her to “slip poison into his wine at dinner” before the text corrects itself to the more conventional “speak to a divorce lawyer.” Another published column, addressing a mother whose family refuses breakfast, begins with nutritional guidance before abruptly recommending padlocks on every door and a threat to swallow the key. This pattern—wholesome advice giving way to menacing ultimatums—defines the column’s dual nature and establishes it as the novel’s central symbol of Debbie Mullen’s fractured identity.
Where the Column Recurs
The column appears at multiple critical junctures in the narrative. An early chapter presents a draft where Debbie counsels Hungry in Hingham with the padlock scheme, immediately signaling that her public persona as a helpful homemaker masks a controlling, unhinged interior. A later draft responds to Rich But Broke, a woman trapped in financial abuse, with the crossed-out poison suggestion—a moment where Debbie’s violent instinct breaks through her editorial filter. Still another addresses Worried Wife, a woman suspecting infidelity, and after suggesting a private investigator or divorce lawyer, casually adds “Or a hit man” to the list of options.
These drafts do not remain purely private. One column—advising a woman to leave her financially abusive husband—makes it into print, triggering the lawsuit that gets Debbie fired. In her meeting with editor Garrett Meers, he explodes: “You can’t tell complete strangers to leave their husbands.” Debbie defends herself by insisting the husband was “so clearly abusive,” listing his refusal to allow a credit card, placing his wife on an allowance, and forbidding her to work. The firing crystallizes the column’s real-world consequences. What began as a creative outlet for Debbie’s repressed anger becomes the catalyst that strips away her professional identity and pushes her toward more direct action.
The column’s final transformation occurs in the Epilogue, where husband Cooper Mullen explains that Debbie—now in therapy—has rewritten her advice and privately counsels women through email. This evolution from public threat to private counsel traces Debbie’s entire character arc, from hidden rage to more integrated, if still morally ambiguous, purpose.
How Its Meaning Changes
Initially, the column operates as a pressure-release valve. Debbie’s drafts reveal a woman who knows exactly what violent action each situation demands but consciously edits those thoughts into socially acceptable advice. The strikethrough in the Rich But Broke response—poison crossed out, divorce lawyer inserted—visually enacts this internal censorship. However, as Debbie’s control over her life erodes—her daughters grow distant, her husband Cooper conceals secrets, neighbor Brett Carlson accuses her of sabotage—the boundary between draft and action dissolves.
The column’s meaning shifts from fantasy to practice. After her firing, Debbie reflects: “My own life has felt like a mess, but when it came to other people, I always seemed to know exactly what they should do. It’s time to start taking my own advice.” This pivot marks the moment the column’s hidden curriculum—that some problems demand terminal solutions—leaps from the page into her life. The advice she once reserved for fictional letter-writers she now applies to her own circumstances, transforming from a suburban columnist into a vigilante.
By the novel’s end, the column has morphed again. Cooper notes that Debbie sold an app called Punish Your Husband, where wives assign humorous chores as consequences for spousal misdeeds. This commercial success repackages the column’s underlying impulse—control disguised as helpfulness—into a socially acceptable product. The violent subtext is laundered through humor, just as Debbie’s crimes are laundered through the framing of Jesse Hutchinson.
Character and Theme Connections
The column directly mirrors Debbie’s own dual life. To the Hingham community, she is a cheerful columnist and devoted mother. Her drafts expose the calculating mind beneath this facade, one that reaches for extreme solutions with unsettling ease. This duality connects to the theme of suburban hypocrisy: the paper fires Debbie not because her advice was wrong, but because it violated the “family-oriented” image advertisers demanded. Secretary Sierra justifies the firing by invoking “the sanctity of marriage,” parroting the very rhetoric used to trap women like Rich But Broke in abusive situations.
The column also illuminates Debbie’s relationship with control and manipulation. Each draft positions Debbie as the omniscient problem-solver, diagnosing letter-writers’ dilemmas with authority that crosses into authoritarianism. The Hungry in Hingham response literalizes this: padlocking doors and threatening to swallow keys is pure control fantasy. The column becomes a laboratory where Debbie refines her philosophy that direct, often brutal intervention is the only reliable solution—a philosophy she ultimately applies to Ken Bryant and Harley Sibbern.
For Cooper, the column’s true nature remains hidden. In the Epilogue, he describes Debbie’s threatening drafts as “a way for her to deal with the trauma,” accepting the therapeutic framing without grasping how thoroughly the column’s logic shaped her actions. His ignorance preserves their marriage and underscores the novel’s theme of deception within intimacy.
The column also connects to Lexi Mullen and Izzy Mullen. Debbie’s real family resists the breakfast she prepares—a daily rejection that surely fuels the fantasy of forced compliance in her Hungry in Hingham draft. The gap between Debbie’s column wisdom and her own family chaos highlights her inability to apply the control she craves to those closest to her.
Finally, the column ties to Cindy Bryant and the theme of trauma’s long shadow. Debbie’s experience of sexual assault—revealed in the Epilogue—shapes her advice to abused women. When she tells Rich But Broke “he deserves to suffer,” she is channeling long-suppressed rage at her own attacker. The column gives voice to a fury society demands she silence, making her eventual alliance with Cindy—an abused wife who helps frame Jesse—the logical endpoint of the column’s philosophy.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the physical format of Debbie’s draft columns reinforce the theme of repression and revelation?
The drafts use strikethrough text to show Debbie’s self-editing process. The violent suggestion remains visible beneath the socially acceptable correction, creating a literal palimpsest of her true thoughts. This visual device mirrors her daily life: she presents a polished, cheerful surface while her authentic, vengeful self remains legible just beneath. Readers see both versions simultaneously, understanding that the “corrected” advice is the performance and the crossed-out brutality is the reality.
2. Why is it significant that Debbie gets fired for a column that actually helped a woman, rather than for her most violent drafts?
The firing exposes hypocrisy at the heart of the “family-oriented” community. Debbie’s most extreme drafts—poison, hit men, padlocks—remained private. The column that caused trouble advised nothing more radical than consulting a divorce lawyer. The threat to the newspaper came not from violent fantasy but from challenging male financial control. This irony reinforces the novel’s critique of a culture that tolerates abuse as long as it stays quiet but punishes those who name it publicly. Garrett and the litigious husband enforce a system where women’s autonomy is the real offense.
3. How does Debbie’s response to Worried Wife about infidelity preview her later actions regarding Harley Sibbern?
The Worried Wife draft suggests hiring a private investigator and, if infidelity is confirmed, “a hit man.” Though framed as dark humor, this progression maps directly onto Debbie’s real-world behavior. She investigates Harley’s connection to Jesse, inserts herself into the situation, and ultimately frames Jesse for Harley’s murder. The column’s escalation from surveillance to elimination becomes a template she follows in life. The casual equation of infidelity with death as a proportional response reveals the moral calculus Debbie has refined through years of writing these drafts.
4. What does the transformation of the column into the Punish Your Husband app signify about Debbie’s character arc?
The app commercializes the column’s core dynamic—women exercising control over men under a guise of playfulness—while stripping away the murderous subtext. This represents Debbie’s partial reintegration into society. She has not renounced her belief that men deserve consequences for mistreating women, but she has channeled that belief into a socially sanctioned form. The app succeeds precisely because it makes acceptable what the column rendered explicit: women’s desire for power in relationships. Yet the Epilogue also reveals that Debbie’s most consequential punishments—killing Ken, framing Jesse—remain hidden from Cooper, suggesting that the transformation is incomplete and that the column’s darkest logic still operates beneath the surface.