Editing Internet Texts/Women in Hemingway's fiction/Hemingway's critics

Leslie Fiedler (1967)

“There are, however, no women in his books!”, wrote Leslie Fiedler, “for in no case, can he quite succeed in making his females human.” Although such a statement may seem unjust, many critics agree that Hemingway’s female characters are either unrealistic or presented in a stereotypical way and “seldom spring from the page as flesh-and-blood characters”. Other early critics of Hemingway share Fiedler’s view. Edmund Wilson divided Hemingway’s fictional women Leslie Fiedlertwo types as he believed they were “doomed to embody one of two extremes, either the deadly (…) or the saintly (…). The former were his fear-projections, the latter his wish-fulfilments”. As he usually portrays women as submissive and thus ideal or dominant and evil, Hemingway is often accused of being a chauvinist hostile to women despite the fact that in his private life he married four times and was never without a female partner.

Nevertheless, with the rise of feminist criticism, the focus has shifted from male to female characters and they not only started to be analysed from a female perspective, but also with greater accuracy. More and more often critics argued that Hemingway’s women cannot be so easily labelled and they proposed new approaches towards their analysis. Consequently, some critics ceased to view them as perpetuation of sexist stereotypes or Hemingway’s lack of competence when it comes to dealing with women in his fiction which resulted in his heroines being shown in a more favourable light.

Alan Holder was probably one of the first critics who suggested the need for a new treatment of Hemingway’s female characters and the need “to recognize and acknowledge the other Hemingway”. According to him, Hemingway’s focus is not exclusively on men, but at times he empathises with women by recognising their rights and demands which, nonetheless, are usually ignored or denied by men. In fact, in some of his stories it is apparent that he sympathises with females rather than indifferent, egocentric males who victimise them. Moreover, on the basis of Nick’s stories, Holder claims that “Hemingway has displayed what is not generally attributed to him, a capacity to question some of his own deepest responses towards women.” By citing “An Alpine Idyll”, Holder shows that its narrator’s “immersion in an exclusively male world has crippled his capacity for natural response”. Thus Hemingway, an admirer of masculinity, seems to challenge it which, in turn, benefits his heroines.

Carlos Baker, one of Hemingway’s most influential critics, was sceptical about Wilson’s division of Hemingway’s females into the “deadly” and the “saintly” ones as well. In Hemingway, the Writer as Artist, he observes that such a portrayal of women appears in both American and English literature and is not distinctive of Hemingway. Baker does not focus on denying such a division, but rather looks for its explanations. What he, however, strongly denies is the assumption that Hemingway’s depiction of females resulted from his incompetence and inability to create a fully dimensional woman for many a time he proved that he can “draw a character fully, roundedly, and quickly”. Such accusations made against a writer who “developed a memorably individualized style”, “showed an unerring ability to keep his narratives in motion” and “achieved mastery of that special combination of naturalistic and symbolic truth” seem largely misplaced. Baker proposes two explanations for Hemingway’s heroines: the “esthetic” and the “geographical”. He claims that Hemingway “establishes a moral norm of womanly behaviour” and then using it as a base and shaping it to a varying degree, achieves a contrast between his characters. What is more, according to Baker, these characters are “an aspect of the poetry of things”. Since Hemingway adopts a chivalric attitude, his heroines are always presented as beautiful, even if evil. As to the latter explanation, women in Hemingway’s fiction live in the times of wars or revolutions which have a damaging effect on their lives. They are displaced and yet “they contrive to embody the image of home, the idea if not the actuality of the married state, and where they are, whatever the outward threats, home is”.

Another critic who opted for a more positive reading of Hemingway’s women is Linda Patterson Miller. In her article, she argues that females portrayed by Hemingway are not unrealistic or one-dimensional. On the contrary, they dis-play emotional complexity which is, however, missed by “some readers [who] fail to recognize the truth of Hemingway’s characters, because they do not meet the demands of Hemingway’s art”. Reading his fiction requires reading between lines; otherwise, his heroines may mistakenly be seen as weak. What is more, Miller brings up Baker’s argument by claiming that Hemingway’s depiction of women is closely related to the set-ting or narrative form. As the action of many of his works is set in wartime, the characters’ behaviour is prone to be intensified and distorted. This leads to his women being misinterpreted as stereotypical hysterics. For Miller they are “both elusive and real [and] become powerful literary devices within the intricate weave of his narratives”. It is thus, paradoxically, the complexity of Hemingway’s fiction and characters which prevents readers from viewing the characters as complex.

It becomes evident that Hemingway’s critics, as well as readers, are generally divided into two camps. Either they see him as a misogynist who portrays women in a stereotypical and sexist way or they recognise his attempt to create complex female characters who are not mere embodiments of men’s fears or dreams. The initial focus on Hemingway’s masculinity and his male heroes may have contributed to such a division of opinions on his heroines since, as Miller wrote, “a misreading of Hemingway’s women became almost inevitable when people failed to separate the man—or the idea of the man—from the work.”