Fay Doyle’s name suggests a combination of lightness and crudity, the lightness paralleling her delusions of her girlish charm, and the crudity corresponding to her muscular build, sexual aggressiveness, and her disregard for the feelings of others. Like the novel’s other women, she is always acting a role of which she seems unaware. She pretends to be the injured wife and concerned mother but, in actuality, she despises her husband and she patronizes her daughter. She asks Miss Lonelyhearts for help with her family situation but quickly makes it evident that she wants only instant sexual gratification. West’s grotesque description of her makes it apparent that she is exactly the kind of person from whom Miss Lonelyhearts should have fled the moment he saw her. Miss Lonelyhearts’ “field trip” presents him with a mean slut, not one of the pathetic creatures of his letters. His succumbing to her starts him on the road to ruin.