Female Consciousness Reflected In Hemingway’s Works

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July21,1899----July2,1961) was one of the most eminent American writers in the20th century. As we all know, the "code hero" images he created had deeply rooted in the hearts of people. Since he often used fishing, hunting, boxing and bullfighting as the themes of his stories, he was seen as an androcentrism without female consciousness. Critics had done a lot of researches about his "code heroes". However, the female characters in his works were paid less attention to and even ignored which hindered our comprehensive understanding of Hemingway’s works and thoughts. Some critics maintained that Hemingway’s works failed to give a genuine picture of female consciousness. Others made a superficial classification of the female characters by categorizing them on two polarized sides as either "angels" or "demons". However, after a close reading of Hemingway’s works, we found that these criticisms failed to give a comprehensive portrayal of female characters and their consciousness, for women characters in many of his works stood out as beautiful, kind, lovely, brave and independent heroines rather than being foils of the men in his novels, they asserted their autonomy and self-independence in many ways. They enriched Hemingway’s literary world. In the past, the researchers analyzed Hemingway’s female characters through the pure theme analysis which was not convincing. This paper used the close reading of the text and discussed about Hemingway’s female consciousness through the study of four aspects of his works: characterization, symbolic meaning, anti-war awareness and the relationship between "code hero" spirit and female consciousness.The thesis picks among Hemingway’s numerous works three most famous novels, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls as the objects of the study to analyze Hemingway’s female consciousness.In the first chapter, the thesis gives a brief introduction of Hemingway and his works. It consists of three parts the first of which is a brief introduction of Hemingway which includes his achievements, personal experience and main works. In the second part, the researcher gives a brief introduction of the selected three novels which are under investigation. The last part is the outline which gives a clear structure of the whole thesis.The second chapter is the literature review. The first section gives a general review about Hemingway’s research at home and abroad. The second part introduces the related studies about Hemingway’s female consciousness. The third section is the theoretical basis of the thesis:female consciousness and its development.The chapter three is the main part. Firstly, it introduces the influencing factors of Hemingway’s female consciousness and Hemingway’s general view of females. Then it discusses Hemingway’s female consciousness from three aspects. The first part makes a detailed analysis of attributes of Hemingway’s female characters. The second part digs out the symbolic meanings of females in his works. The third part explores Hemingway’s anti-war awareness reflected in his female characters by emphasizing the important roles of women under the theme of war.In the chapter four, the author demonstrates that Hemingway’s "code hero" spirit and female consciousness are complementary.Chapter five is the conclusion. The first section makes a conclusion of the research and points out that Hemingway is a writer with female consciousness. The second and third sections point out the limitations of the study and the suggestions for further study respectively.By exploring into various female characters from different aspects, the paper argues that Hemingway is not a writer with male chauvinism. On the contrary, Hemingway had surpassed the narrow constraints of a male author and showed deep sympathy and admiration to the women in his works. In short, he was a writer with female consciousness.