American Novelist: Ernest Hemingway, Research Paper Example

Introduction

In the wide arena of noted 20^th century writers, Ernest Hemingway occupies a unique position.  The century was marked by many talents, each contributing to and shaping the evolution of what was becoming an art form unto itself: American fiction.  Women were developing strong voices; in the early years of the era, Edith Wharton would capture New York society as no other writer would, as later Dorothy Parker would more savagely use humor to treat the same subject.  Men revealed multiple styles and individual focuses, as the satire and humor of James Thurber, the exposure of Southern sensibilities of William Faulkner, and the gritty realism of John Steinbeck.  Hemingway’s mark was and is different.  While his actual subjects covered a large range, he is most known for a particular approach in his fiction, which may be termed as a “hyper masculinity.”  In no uncertain terms, Hemingway’s life and work equally reflected a definitive idea of a “man’s man,” exhibiting and surviving on purely traditional and masculine ideals.

This hyper masculinity, however, does not exist in a literary or social vacuum, as it most certainly did not in Hemingway’s own life.  More exactly, this singular style inevitably relies on concepts and practices associated with extreme masculinity, and some of these generated controversy in the author’s lifetime.  Perhaps the most glaring aspect that has been identified in Hemingway may be termed a consequence of his emphasis on masculine virtues: misogyny.  His life and reputation also entailed other elements of the same ideology, as in his legendary abuse of alcohol and fierce independence.  These factors certainly play into the controversy as a whole, in that they support Hemingway’s dedication to a masculine ideal.  Nonetheless, and by no means going to the author’s credit, Hemingway’s treatment of the women in his fiction actually undermines any validation of such a masculine ideal.  The controversy is not merely a form of social antipathy to a viewpoint many find disagreeable. It survives to indicate an important reality because the misogyny itself reveals an inherent weakness in creativity and perception.  Ultimately, Ernest Hemingway’s generally derogatory treatment of women in fiction means little in terms of his being a man and an individual, but a great deal regarding his status as a literary artist.  To objectify women must translate to an inability to truly perceive and present all people, and this is the real flaw in Hemingway and the validity to the controversy of his misogyny.

Background

Even as it is necessary that Hemingway’s work, and consequently his controversial approach to women in it, be examined apart from his life, that life warrants some inspection.  This is true chiefly because, even in the early and mid-20^th century, Hemingway was very much a celebrity author.  More to the point, he knew very well that the persona he projected was strongly associated with his work, and it appears that he embraced this relationship.  Then, as the studies of his life plainly reveal, there was much occurring in Hemingway’s formative years that clearly ties into how he would seek to represent and define masculinity, both within himself and for the public at large. Posthumous research and biographies are particularly helpful here because Hemingway had a habit in his lifetime of asserting “facts” of his life removed from the known realities.  The controversy of Hemingway’s misogyny, then, demands some investigation into the author’s actual life.

As has been identified, it seems that Hemingway’s childhood was divided into two; there are the records, photographs, and accounts from family, and there is the version Hemingway himself insisted on presenting.  Regarding the former, there is a wide array of interesting experience.  Much of it is ordinary.  Born in 1899, the family lived in a prosperous suburb of Chicago, and Grace and Clarence Hemingway, his parents, were an educated and respected couple.  Clarence was a physician; Grace had trained to be a professional singer (Mellow  9-12).   In many ways, this was a perfectly ordinary and stable family.  Other elements, however, dominated the scenario, and their importance is evident in any examination of Hemingway’s adult work.  His father, instance, was a highly imposing man: tall, extremely strong and masculine, deeply religious, and a believer in physical punishment when his children misbehaved.  He would also demand that his children kneel to ask God for forgiveness at such times (Mellow 11). Grace, on the other hand, was no typical wife and mother of the era.  She attended to her duties as such, but she also retained an independence of spirit unusual for the time.  It was her decision, for example, to use a legacy left by her own father to purchase a 45 acre farm, a decision Clarence fought (Mellow  17).  It is inevitably dangerous to draw conclusions regarding a person’s development based on fragments of their childhoods, yet it seems that a kind of perpetual conflict marked the Hemingway home.  If the father was stern, the mother was equally forceful in her own, and overtly feminine, way.  However he would choose to interpret gender relations, Hemingway grew up with a striking example of what may be called an uneasy alliance of a marriage.

What is far more interesting in regard to Hemingway’s youth, and which is verified by photographs and personal accounts, was Grace’s determination to raise Ernest and his sister Marcelline as twins, which they were not.  This took the unusual form of dressing them alike in ways combining the hyper masculine and the feminine.  Before kindergarten was begun, the boy and girl would wear dresses and organdy hats; in later years, Grace would dress them both as boys, in over-all and with matching Dutch boy haircuts.  Marcelline herself recalled that she and Ernest had matching sets of dolls, toy china, and air rifles.  It is also recorded that, at three years old, Hemingway was fearful that Santa Claus would not know he was a boy (Mellow  11).  In later years of boyhood, Ernest would make great efforts to engage in competitive sports, and it seems reasonable to view this as an early expression of a need to compensate.  More to the point, and aside from any potentially lasting psychological effects, the reality is that some form of gender confusion was instilled in the very young Hemingway.

By 1918, Hemingway’s world would dramatically expand.  He volunteered for the Red Cross and, after some time in New York, worked in Paris and Milan.  In New York, however, and in no time at all, the very young man became engaged to actress Mae Marsh, immediately upon a brief affair (Griffin  57).  What is astonishing is that he informed his very conservative parents, evidently anticipating support.   This did not come.  The affair came to nothing, and Hemingway was sent to Europe.  In these years, something of the Hemingway legend was already being shaped.  In Paris, he was taken in by Gertrude Stein, famously becoming one in an elite army of artists and writers.  He would meet and come to know the great names of the era, even as he would later, as with Stein, fall out with them.  Not unexpectedly, he also engaged in frequent sexual and romantic adventures, prompted by both the liberal atmosphere of the artistic environment and by Hemingway’s own good looks.  He was tall, broad-shouldered, and uniformly described as strikingly handsome (Griffin  43).  Moreover, the young man, entering into European scenes charged by war and intense artistic reaction, was noted as being attentive to everything he took in.

The trajectory of Hemingway’s life after this period involves, of course, his initial successes as a writer and his evolution into a public icon and literary lion of the day.  It is also far more important to assess Hemingway’s misogyny through the evidence that cannot be contested: his own work.  Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to draw from his early life indications of this pronounced tendency.  In New York, for example, he writes a glowing, almost poetic, and graphically sexual note to a friend about his encounter with a beautiful prostitute.  He also related, and in some detail, his knowledge of the New York men who would pay for sex with young soldiers (Griffin  60-61).  That a good-looking young man, experiencing the worlds of several major cities in this turbulent era, should indulge in an excess of sexual adventures is hardly surprising.  Nor does it by any mean indicate of itself a misogynist view; if such indulgence is seen as irresponsible and degrading to women today, this was a different world, and Hemingway was merely acting as millions of such young men did.  The difference lies in the documentation. His letters and notes survive, and they reveal a different aspect of objectivity.  In the letter about the New York prostitute, for example, his language is strangely ambiguous.  The girl was impossibly beautiful in his estimation, and virtually a goddess.  In the same paragraph, he describes her sexual skill in as base a way as can be imagined:  “’She was the most beautiful girl I ever saw….You’ve got a wonderful chin for a pair of balls, lady’” (Hemingway cited in Griffin  60).  Similarly, his words regarding the homosexual activity he at least knew of also convey duality.  There is a tone of admiration as he relays how one man defiantly beat up a sailor threatening him (Griffin  61).  What matters here, and as exposed in Hemingway’s own language, is that he appears to have distanced himself from sexual partners because, as with the prostitute, these scenarios confuse him.  No matter his youthful bragging about these exploits, he consistently objectifies, not the experience, but the partner.  In a sense, then, this emerging trait of misogyny also suggest the more fundamental issue affecting Hemingway as a writer.  More exactly, an inability or unwillingness to enter into the feeling and thinking of another distances not only women, but men as well.

The Evidence in the Work

It is hardly coincidental that a great deal of Hemingway criticism, and particularly in regard to his treatment of women in his fiction, arose in the 1970s and 1980s.  This was the beginning of a feminist perspective, and it was largely unfavorable to Hemingway.  Study after study in this period insists on, not only a Hemingway misogyny, but one indicating a confused and insecure sexual identity.  Noted male scholars such as Charles J. Nolan and Mark Spilka also entered the fray, challenging what they perceive as a “masculine swagger” disguising either outright mistrust of women or an ambiguous sexuality (Ray  75).  More than a few critics have linked their ideas of Hemingway’s alleged sexual orientation issues with his having been dressed as a girl by his mother, which ties into their belief that the work itself represents little more than gender confusion, rather than gender hostility.  Interestingly, and in keeping with the focus here, others take a broader view and believe that Hemingway debases or stereotypes women only because he applies sets of values to both sexes (Ray  76).  This, as will be seen, is the more valid basis underlying the misogyny, and one that greatly goes to the author’s discredit.

Additionally, and importantly, this larger dilemma or weakness in Hemingway was noted long before feminist voices were raised. In the 1950s, just as the Hemingway image was being confirmed by the award of a Nobel Prize for The Old Man and the Sea, critics were challenging his claim or position as a true literary artist.  Critic Melvin Backman asserted that, in Hemingway, there are only killers and victims, clearly implying a lack of dimension in the formation of the characters.  Leading critic Leon Edel wrote extensively on Hemingway in 1955, arguing that, instead of real style, the author relies on evasion.  Edel’s belief is that the world (and the Nobel committee) mistook suggestions of style for the real thing, as in his view Hemingway actually suggests emotion by dismissing it (Hays  36).  What is most interesting in this field of criticism is the focus on Hemingway’s men.  Extensive debate raged then, as it does today, over the actual depth of these men, and this profoundly goes to an author’s integrity as such.  In plain terms, good fiction must in some sense present dimensional people, and these critics largely see the men of Hemingway as more caricature.  James Colvert, for example, refers to the Hemingway hero as consistently defined by moral skepticism and an unshakeable faith in pragmatic ideals.  More to the point, this alone is all that is needed to confirm the masculinity.  In The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes is impotent due to a war injury.  As Tom Burnam notes, this means that Jake is incapable of performing the one act that, in all cultures, confirms masculinity (Hays 37).  However, Jake is simultaneously the virtual icon of the Hemingway male.  It may be argued, then, that some type of sexual or gender confusion in Hemingway leads him to ultimately dismiss sexual ability as a defining attribute for maleness.   What matters is not the ability to have sex with a woman, but to evince stoicism, bravery, and the other traditional, manly qualities.

The problem with this, of course, is that it defies true representation of a human being, and this is at odds with good fiction.  It is rather a way of constructing some idea of humanity from the “outside in,” or of “building the perfect beast.”  What it does not do, ironically, is penetrate.  It does not reveal; it constructs, and according to the author’s conception of an idealized human construction.  As Jake narrates The Sun Also Rises, virtually nothing is revealed of an internal life at all, and this is in strict keeping with the overtly defiant way he presents himself.  There are moments when the reader believes some revelation will occur, as when he is sleepless and thinking about Brett: “My mind stopped jumping around…Then all of a sudden I started to cry.  Then after a while it was better”  (Hemingway  39).  Nothing more is offered, and there is a distinct sense here, as in the entire narration, of a conscious effort sustained by the author.  The feeling is that, no matter what, there must be an adherence to the dismissal of feeling.  This in itself would not necessarily render character one-dimensional, but the utter lack of any external or internal challenge as accepted by Jake does.  The character, pivotal to the novel, is too much of a framework or idea, and one blatantly supporting a concept of masculinity as absolutely relying on disregard.

This emphasis on the Hemingway male is necessary to grasp his misogynistic views or, more properly, his similar simplifications of women.  It is essentially inevitable that, as Hemingway the man resists developing dimensional men, he is less capable of doing so with his females.  What occurs, in fact, is a further distancing from the realities of human beings.  In fairness to Hemingway, he captures speech in a strangely accurate way.  He is at least partially honest in allowing his women to fully express themselves, certainly to the extent that any character lacking real dimension may.  Unfortunately, the distance, or masculine objectifying, takes precedence.  The Hemingway woman is, in simple terms, a saint or a whore.  Occasionally, they are both; in The Sun Also Rises, Brett is the object of whatever romantic illusions Jake possesses (which the reader must infer), because he idealizes her into a form that may be a female counterpart to his impotence.  She is elevated as a woman if sex is meaningless.  This comes crashing down when Jake must rescue her in Madrid because his “fair maiden” is actually a whore.  Even Brett, then, of great importance to the novel, is denied depth because Jake, an extension of Hemingway’s idealized masculinity, can only assess a woman in such elementary terms.

Ironically, Hemingway also gives Brett Ashley maleness of a kind, and this may be where the core of Hemingway’s actual misogyny as such resides.  The sexual issues of the novel are too overt not to be construed as the symbols they are, and each instance of these reveals a deep mistrust, if not disdain, for women.  In a very real sense, in fact, and has been noted by critics, it seems that Brett is the woman Jake would like to be.  She is both highly heterosexual as a female, yet she wears men’s hats and a man’s hairstyle.  In the taxi scene, this potential longing in Jake is also conveyed by his kissing of her.  He can arouse but he cannot fulfill as a man (Hays  195).  He is then seeking Brett to assume the masculine role of initiative, and this supports an idea of identification as longing.  That longing is also fueled by confusion and an essential misunderstanding of the real nature of his partner.  In The Sun Also Rises, Brett is far more an obstacle to Jake’s sense of masculine fulfillment that a possibility of enhancing it, and this fundamentally prevents Brett’s ever having a true identity as a woman.  It seems that Jake, or Hemingway, is incapable of entertaining possibilities beyond his construction of his own “maleness.”

It is arguable that Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls contradicts ideas of a Hemingway misogyny.  The novel is notoriously sexual, and in ways admitting the the impact on both genders.  Then, Maria has a history and an identity beyond the typical Hemingway women; she occupies important spaces in both socio/political and naturalist terms, as the violated daughter of the mayor.  There is also the ennobling factor of Jordan’s being drawn to her by her innate purity, surviving even after the rape (Broer, Holland  66).  It appears here that Hemingway is bringing together a man and a woman in a way demonstrating knowledge of each.  This view, however, is one created by a kind of deception, in that Maria’s experiences render her sympathetic, rather than dimensional.  More to the point, and much as Brett echoes the maleness of Jake, she exists to give outline and validity to Jordan.  Even the overtly sexualized passages seem to go more to a transcendence for him, as though Maria is an instrument in his evolution of self.  There is also no escaping the presentation of her as a construction of a hyper-masculine sensibility; she is virginal, yet she has been defiled.  She is good, and she has known badness.  Hemingway essentially does not create a real woman born from real and complex experience, but a highly convenient variation on multiple goddess images.  She is, of herself, unimportant; what matters is that Jordan’s manliness is fully affirmed by Maria’s departure from him.  She has taken on his courage, as she is carrying his child (Broer, Holland  66), and this further serves the Hemingway insistence on establishing manhood.

It is equally important to note that Hemingway himself vastly corroborated this form of misogyny, or an inherent – and presumably “manly – mistrust of women.  It is accepted that his many public statements were intended to solidify his image, but that by no means lessens his degree of belief in them.  On the contrary, they affirm what he felt to be the guiding forces in his life and in his work as a writer.  They are uniformly nearly comic in their exaggerated hyper-masculinity, as he frequently stated that women break your heart, marry men, or give them venereal disease (Mellow  463).  He joked throughout his life that women equated to drink and politics, in that they are as insufferable as they are necessary to men.  Ordinary men may make such statements, but a writer exists differently, and is obligated to explore humanity in ways beyond the superficial or the convenient.  If women are not exactly the enemy to Hemingway, they are something far worse for a writer: they are completely unknown to him.  This in turn must reflect a larger lack of concern for the creation of realism in all characters, so the misogyny serves to illustrate the greater weakness in Hemingway.

Conclusion

Ernest Hemingway’s stature as a great American writer is abetted by several factors, not the least of which is a Nobel Prize.  Added to this is the legend of Hemingway, certainly enhanced by his own efforts in his lifetime to present himself as a hyper-masculine man.  It is the work itself, however, that must define the real stature, and Hemingway has also generated controversy.  In the latter 20^th century, this would be expressed in feminist opposition to the perceived misogyny in his writing.  It is the earlier criticism, however, that comes nearer to the mark, for it was the earlier critics who noted the lack of dimension within all of Hemingway’s people.  Feminist argument would be correct; Hemingway is misogynist, in that his women are objectified ideas of womanhood that reflect masculine conceptions, and either defy or enhance those conceptions.  At the heart of all of it, however, is the inevitable weakness of the masculine constructions themselves, which uniformly suggest a masculinity not a peace with itself and perpetually driven to assert itself all the more.   The gender confusion marking Hemingway’s early years is likely a factor here but, again, it is the work that matters, and Hemingway’s is suspect.  This assertion follows a formula, as evidenced above and relying on Hemingway’s consistently non-dimensional portrayal of women: to objectify women must translate to an inability in the writer to perceive and honestly present both men and women; this is the great flaw in Hemingway, even as it provides validity to the controversy of his misogyny.

Works Cited

Broer, L. J., & Holland, G.  Hemingway and Women: Female Critics and the Female Voice.       Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002. Print.

Griffin, P.  Along With Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.  Print.

Hays, P.  L.  The Critical Reception of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.  Rochester: Camden House, 2011. Print.

Hermingway, E. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. Print.

Mellow, J. R. Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences.  Cambridge: De Capo Press, 1992. Print.

Ray, E. M. K.  Studies in American Literature.  New York: Atlantic Publishers, 2002. Print.