Ernest Hemingway's Gender And Identity Concern In The Garden Of Eden And A Farewell To Arms

Ernest Hemingway is one of the most significant writers in the 20th century American literature. In the past hundred years, lots of critical works have been done on his telegraphic prose style, his subject matters of war, love, death and his male heroes. Reading Hemingway in more than one way is perhaps the reason why his works can maintain their place in the literary canon. In my thesis, Hemingway' s gender and identity concern in his novels will be put ahead of all the other aspects, as there are lots of indications in Hemingway' s writing that gender is a conscious preoccupation. It is also the case, however, that current interest in these questions has established a frame of reference in which gender issue in his works has become more visible and interesting.From the very beginning of Hemingway's career, critics have made an issue of the "masculinity" in his writings. His early stories won wide critical praise for their stoic, understated, "masculine" style and graphic depiction of male pursuits and attitudes. And truly, his New Yorker performance and other, even less subtle, public displays have made "Papa Hemingway" synonymous with a stereotyped notion of masculinity. With the rise of women' s movement in the 1960s and feminist criticism, Hemingway also became Enemy Number One for many critics, who accused him of male chauvinism. Some critics even declare that Hemingway cannot portray women or that he is better at portraying men without women. There are of course women characters of all kinds in Hemingway's fiction, but the general tendency in Hemingway criticism is to divide them into stereotypes either of bitches or angels, castrators or love-slaves.The early feminist attacks unquestionably diminished his literary reputation in some academic circles; but at the same time, the resulting rereading has given new visibility to Hemingway's female characters andhas revealed his own sensibility to gender issues, thus casting doubts on the old assumption that his writings were one-sidedly masculine. That assumption has been further undermined by Scribner's publication of The Garden of Eden in 1986 with its strong androgynous theme, and especially by the publication of the Kenneth Lynn' s 1987 biography Hemingway, which stresses the utterly different characteristics, motifs and images in Hemingway' s writing—from emasculation to bobbed hair—that betray the author' s entrapment in sexual uncertainties of his youth and his helpless fascination with androgyny and sexual transposition.This thesis is not primarily to secure justice for Hemingway, but isexpected to show that his depiction of women and gender issue may befruitfully approached by placing them in the historical and biographicalcontexts. Hemingway' s presentation of women was largely influenced by hisconcern about masculinity, gender roles, and sexuality both in Americaand the whole Western society in the years around the First World War whengender roles were in transition and the traditional versions ofmasculinity were under acute threat. Through analyzing his response tothe on-going reformulations of gender in the culture at large and to suchspecific manifestations as the rise of women within the literary world,it is shown, Hemingway on one hand, expresses his sympathy for women'ssuffering under the patriarchal culture, his appreciation to independent,active, and intelligent characteristics of the New Woman; but on the otherhand, as a male writer, he also expresses his anxiety over the increasingpower of women and his fear of "emasculation" . So in reaction to thegender war, Hemingway fashioned an ideal—at once modern andnostalgic—of reciprocity between the sexes, an ideal he pursued in hisfiction for his entire career.The thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter one is focused on historical and biographical context to identify the sources ofHemingway' s gender concerns, which are reflected in his works. Like others of his generation, Hemingway was reared in an environment of loosening gender distinctions. From his parents, Hemingway realized that identity wds culturally constructed rather than biological ordained. Although he resented his mother' s domineering and regarded his father' s response to her as submissive, even cowardly, Hemingway admired the artistic talent of his mother and was influenced by her androgynous inclination. The androgynous sensibility enables Hemingway to identify himself with the female characters and to involve into his work the virtues, passions and values that are not alien to women, and thus female readers can identify with the subjective consciousness in his fiction.Other sources of Hemingway's ideas about gender and identity should come from his time and his experience. Hemingway was born at a time when the position of women was undergoing major changes—they had got more sexual freedom, economic independence and political power than ever. Many women Hemingway had intimate relationships with were just representatives of the New Woman of the 1920s, who were fearless, bright, tomboyish in appearance and eager to participate in work. Though the New Woman seemed appealing in many ways, she couldn' t achieve true reciprocity with a man, instead she caused intimidation, conflict and the threat of emasculation. There are lots of embodiments of the New Woman in Hemingway' s novels, such as Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises, Pillar in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Catherine Bourne in The Garden of Eden.As a witness of the early 20th century gender war, Hemingway realized that the gender combat was a double-edge sword, which victimized women as well as men. Like many participants of the First World War, Hemingway also doubted the traditional phallocentric way of thinking, as the war, in spite of confirming their masculinity, only gave them disappointment. So the complementary relationship between the two sexes which is basedon mutual understanding, mutual trust, mutual love and mutual tolerance has always been Hemingway' s search in his novels. This advocacy of the appropriate gender relations is forcefully expressed in his depiction of the ideal woman, such as Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms, Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Renata in Across the River And into the Trees, who are both men' s soul mates and even men' s mentors.Chapter Two takes Hemingway' s novel The Garden of Eden as the text to make an analysis of his contradictory attitude toward the New Woman. In this gender related novel, the heroine Catherine Bourne is just the epitome of the modern women. As a female artist, she is not satisfied with the arbitrary, socially constructed gender roles, which confine her creation. So she tries every means to free from the patriarchal forces and control. Her pilgrimage of self-affirmation and self-reconstruction can be divided into three stages: female frustration with the artistic urge in patriarchal culture; feminine practice of body writing in combat with patriarchal culture; the final breaking-up with patriarchal culture.Hemingways treatment of Catherine, on one hand, reflects his understanding of the anxiety of authorship felt by women and his sympathy for women' s aesthetic trials and sufferings. But on the other hand, as a male writer, he also expresses his fear of "emasculation" by the mannish woman who challenges the man' s sexual and artistic authority. This point can be shown from David's struggle to master his identity.Chapter Three goes further to see Hemingway' s exploration for the complementary relationship between the two sexes, which is beyond the gender construction of the early 20th century. The search for such relationship runs through Hemingway's fiction. In a sense, he wrote variations, more or less developed, on a single fantasy: A man finds his ideal woman, and together they flee from civilization into some pastoral retreat where they are united through their love against the rest of the...