Nicole M. Nguyen
Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises not only presents a disillusioned World War I veteran’s views on the general postwar era but also showcases a male perspective of the changing gender landscape. With Lady Brett Ashley as its most prominent example of femininity, the novel investigates the state of masculinity, which changes in response to the shifting parameters of womanhood. In doing so, the pressure the male characters—especially Jake Barnes—feel to successfully perform the masculine ideal, is revealed to stem from a need to establish a difference from femininity.
A discussion of how The Sun Also Rises depicts attempts to define masculinity based on its difference from femininity first warrants a definition for the concept of femininity. Brett Ashley, the novel’s most prominent woman character, acts as a prime example of the changing standards of womanhood in the 1920s. The Victorian concept of “true womanhood” emphasized such qualities as “piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity”—all virtues which Brett seems to disregard or even deliberately flout (Welter 152). The challenges Brett’s behavior poses to the conservation of so-called true womanhood leads to the development of the concept of the “New Woman,” which Brett as a character exemplifies (Welter 174). With her second ever piece of dialogue in the novel, she orders “a brandy and soda” for herself (Hemingway 29). In doing so, she becomes not only an example of how women in the postwar era exhibited their independence and boldness by beginning to drink and smoke openly, but her enterprising behavior is also antithetical to the traditional belief that women should be “passive, submissive responders” (Allen 95, Welter 159). Brett takes charge of her sexuality as well as her social life. She goes to a dancing-club with a group of flamboyant gay men, despite the fact that they make Jake—and most likely other patrons—“angry,” and does not wait for the finalization of her divorce before attaching herself to Mike Campbell and planning to marry him (Hemingway 28, 46). Whether she is married, divorced, or engaged, Brett is neither truly single nor securely attached. She juggles a multitude of men, still married to the man from whom she got her title, intending to marry Mike—while having trysts with Robert Cohn and Pedro Romero, even though she is miserably in love with Jake. She is never seen playing the role of domestic housewife, and there is even doubt cast on her engagement to Mike. Jake tells Cohn that Brett is “in love with Mike Campbell, and […] going to marry him” and then follows that with the remark that Mike is “going to be rich as hell some day” (Hemingway 46). These two pieces of information seem to be only tangentially related, unless Jake is implying that Brett is marrying Mike for his money. Not only is Brett’s engagement to Mike thrown into doubt by her connections with other men, the basis of their relationship is implied to stand on something far less estimable than a desire for a socially reproductive marriage. Thus far, she has rejected three of the four tenets of true womanhood: purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.
As a result of Brett’s disregard for traditional feminine morals, tradition rejects her in turn. She is ejected from the church in Pamplona for failing to wear a hat—that is, she fails to conform to traditional conventions concerning women’s physical presentation and propriety (Hemingway 160). This mutual rejection can perhaps be explained by the general postwar attitude, over which disillusionment reigned. Brett’s soon-to-be ex-husband’s title, Lord Ashley, recalls historical English nobility and the authority that stems from such a distinguished lineage. However, Ashley proves to be an ignoble and abusive husband due to his war trauma; he forces Brett to sleep on the floor and threatens to kill her (Hemingway 206). Jake informs Cohn that Brett had married Ashley during the war, after “her own true love” had just died, and she is unable to enter a relationship with Jake because he is impotent (Hemingway 46). The war served to prove that “masculine invincibility and authority” was fallible (Martin 66). Having survived the trauma of a world war, Brett—like much of her (and Hemingway’s) generation—seems to have lost faith in traditional conventions and ventures away from it in search of a new way of living, a new source of meaning, fulfillment, and enjoyment. The challenge that Brett poses to the preservation of true womanhood ultimately leads to the development of the “new womanhood” observed in 1920s America.
Brett’s defiance and rejection of traditional femininity goes so far as to encroach on the territory of masculinity. After their affair, Cohn compares her to the Greek mythological figure Circe, who “turns men into swine” (Hemingway 148). Essentially, Brett unmans her lovers. She emasculates them even further by embodying traits typically read as masculine. Her first line of dialogue in the novel is a greeting in which she addresses Jake and Cohn as “you chaps” (Hemingway 26). Her second is her ordering a drink and referring to herself as a “chap” (29). From her very introduction, then, Brett seems to not only disregard distinctions between genders but also transgress them. In his informal history of the 1920s, Frederick Lewis Allen observes that postwar women’s fashion and beauty standards seemed to laud the “boyish” look; women strove to achieve “boyishly slender” figures and went beyond bobbing their hair to cutting it “close to the head like a man’s” (90-92). Jake describes Brett as curvy, with her hair “brushed back like a boy’s” (Hemingway 30). She, according to Jake, is the origin of the boyish trend, making her not merely a member of this affected postwar generation but its primary pioneer. Furthermore, Brett is a new spectator to the masculine tradition of bullfighting and a sexual aggressor. Brett exercises her agency, acting on her sexual desires while “her lovers wait to be chosen” (Martin 75). Though Cohn accuses Jake of acting as Brett’s “pimp” when he facilitates her affair with Romero, he is mistaken (Hemingway 193). In truth, Brett has Jake procure Romero for her, not the other way around, as Cohn had presumed. Brett is the consumer rather than the commodity, thus taking a man’s place in what formerly would have been a homosocial exchange.
Brett’s masculinity feminizes the novel’s male characters by comparison, especially Jake, who already lacks a traditional marker of manhood because of the war wound that renders him impotent. He compensates for his shortcomings by aligning his “manly essence” with other symbols of masculinity. His primary method is maintaining his interest in bullfighting. Though bullfighting is a tradition specific to Spain, Jake’s passion for it is evidence that its true essence is not its association with Spanish culture but how it connotates masculinity. Montoya, the hotel owner in Pamplona, shares Jake’s passion for the sport and consequently treats it as “a very special secret between the two of [them]” (Hemingway 136). Spanish men with the same passion at first express skepticism that an American can have such a strong and genuine “afición,” but Jake soon proves him wrong, and they eventually accept his presence (Hemingway 137). Bullfighting creates bonds of affinity between men, rather than a dividing line based on culture. Brett, on the other hand, is a newcomer and needs a knowledgeable, authoritative source such as Jake to explain to her the rules and practices. Brett is an outsider to this world, as evidenced by her ignorance, and it falls on Jake to invite her in and guide her. From Montoya’s point of view, the sight of Jake and Pedro Romero sitting together is interrupted by the presence of Brett, “a woman with bare shoulders,” and Montoya’s reaction to this tableau marks Brett as an outsider on the basis of gender as well as experience (Hemingway 180). Jake’s passion and expertise upholds the traditional value of masculine authority, creating a boundary that effectively places Brett on the opposite side. Jake especially admires Romero’s bullfighting skill for Romero’s ability to “dominate” his bulls, symbolically maintaining patriarchal hierarchy (Hemingway 172). Romero himself is secure in his masculinity; the fact that he does not mind speaking English speaks to his awareness of the fact that not speaking English would be playing into the Spanish torero’s image of “machismo affectation” (Rudat 50). In fact, his security in his traditional manliness is such that Brett falls for him, affirming his sexual dominance. For the moment, gender distinctions prevail, and Brett is successfully corralled into the sphere of femininity and marked as an outsider in this masculine realm. This positioning also confirms that the definition of masculinity is built on a system of exclusion, specifically of all things and concepts feminine.
However, this distinction does not hold. Brett and Romero have their brief affair, but it breaks off when he tells her that he wants her to grow her hair out so that she can present in a “more womanly” fashion, so that he can then marry her (Hemingway 245). Romero’s attempt to permanently contain Brett within the confines of traditional femininity fails, and as a result, the boundary between masculine and feminine collapses. Consequently, Jake attempts to reconstruct masculinity based on parameters that suits his own personal sense of manliness, with varying results. Though both his wound and Brett emasculate him, Jake’s vulnerability and resilience in the face of this feminization seems to mark him as dignified and stoic rather than a “hapless victim” (Onderdonk 66). In pursuit of this “new masculinity,” Jake again relies on a system of exclusion. Cohn is the primary target for this method because, for a significant portion of the novel, he is Jake’s main competition for Brett’s attention. The antisemitism present in the novel serves to emasculate Cohn, especially in comparison to Jake. Jake as well as every other character in the novel constantly, pointedly brings up Cohn’s Jewishness, usually in a derogatory context. Mike, for example, takes great offense at Brett’s tryst with Cohn, saying that she had gone off with other men in the past, but “they weren’t ever Jews” (Hemingway 148). Cohn’s characterization as emotional and fanciful also marks him as effeminate, as opposed to the cool and collected Jake. Cohn sits and takes his girlfriend Frances’ lengthy verbal abuse while Jake exercises his agency by getting up and leaving, wondering why Cohn would sit there and “keep on taking it like that” (Hemingway 48). With his submissiveness, Cohn seems to embody the traditional feminine ideal even more than Brett does. The irony that the “outwardly emasculated” Cohn can bed Brett while Jake, who bears all markers of manliness beside the physical, cannot, paints Jake as having been wronged in being replaced not merely by another man but by a Jewish man (Wilentz 188). The perceived threat of being replaced by Cohn circles back around to refuel Jake’s antisemitism as well as feeds back into his desire to readjust the boundaries of masculinity.
However, Jake’s attempt to redefine masculinity ultimately serves to draw attention to its arbitrariness and variability. Allen describes the traditional, prewar moral codes as being “easy to throw overboard” but quite so easy to replace (104). The Sun Also Rises shows masculinity not to be a fixed or essential quality but rather a construct subject to social influence. Though American literature scholar and author Wendy Martin argues that when Jake and Bill Gorton go on their fishing trip to “escape social constraints…[in the] freedom from the traditional inhibition of masculine emotion” of the country, they are not totally free (78). Bill feels uninhibited enough to affectionately express his fondness for Jake, but then qualifies that by saying, “I couldn’t tell you that in New York. It’d mean I was a faggot” (Hemingway 121). It is evident that even while they are outside of civilization/society, the inhibition still creeps in, hence Bill’s need to explain and contextualize his feelings for Jake. The men carry their ideas regarding masculinity around with them and are therefore unable to entirely leave it behind. This feeling of being beholden to a sense of “manhood,” then, demonstrates that manliness, masculinity, and the standards surrounding them are generated and maintained by the individuals who make up a society, which then compels those men to perform to those standards. Masculinity is simultaneously arbitrary and difficult to escape.
Thus, Jake’s attempts to maintain a difference between femininity and masculinity leads to The Sun Also Rises revealing that both concepts are mutable because the qualities associated with them are unfixed and arbitrary. Therefore, there may be little to no difference between women and men. The novel demonstrates that the societal pressure to “successfully” perform masculinity is such an imperative that it prevents men from examining the construct of gender (and other issues which intersect with gender) closely enough to escape the burden.
Works Cited
Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s. New York, HarperCollins, 1931.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York, Scribner, 1926.
Martin, Wendy. “Brett Ashley as New Woman in The Sun Also Rises.” New Essays on the Sun Also Rises, edited by Linda Wagner-Martin, Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 65-82.
Onderdonk, Todd. “‘Bitched’: Feminization, Identity, and the Hemingwayesque in The Sun Also Rises.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 52, no. 1, 2006, pp. 61-91. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20479754.
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H. “Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: Masculinity, Feminism, and Gender-Role Reversal.” American Imago, vol. 47, no. 1, 1990, pp. 43-68. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26303965.
Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 2, 1966, pp. 151-174. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2711179.
Wilentz, Gay. “(Re)Teaching Hemingway: Anti-Semitism as a Thematic Device in The Sun Also Rises.” College English, vol. 52, no. 2, 1990, pp. 186-193. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/377450.
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