The Forgotten Female in the Works of Ernest Hemingway Essay -- Biograp

The Forgotten Fe potent in the Works of Hemingway Ernest Hemingway has often been accused of misogyny in his treatment of pistillate characters (and, perhaps, in his treatment of women in his own life). It is not fashionable these years to praise the work of Ernest Hemingway, says Frederick Busch. His women too often seem to be projections of male needfulness (1). Many of his stories are seen as prototypical bildungsroman stories--stories, usually, of young men flood tide of age. There are few, if any, stories in the canon of women coming of age, however, and Hemingway is not the for the first time to suffer the wrath of feminist critics. But is this wrath justified? In his dissertation, Mark G. Newton reviews some of the critical literature that places Hemingway wi trim down the woman hater genre. Cliches sic abound, he says. Hemingway was in search of his manhood (an ignoble quest?) he hated women he had a death wish and a thin persona he was the archpriest of v iolence, etc. (6). However, Newton sees women in Hemingways plant as the positive life-directed force which transports the male Hemingway hero away from a debilitating wound (2), and he places them into the roles manifested by Hemingways women in aiding the hero saint Women, Sister Guides, Icons and Dream Visions, Wicked Women Who Also Serve, Feminine Points of View, and Full Cycle. My problem with Newtons approach to the feminine in Hemingway is that Newton seems to accept that, in presenting women as archetypal Eves, the woman as help-meet-type image, that Hemingway is somehow presenting women favorably. A somewhat connatural view is presented by Jeryl J. Prescott in Liberty for Just(Us) Gender and Race in ... ... of Melville, Twain, and Hemingway. New York Peter Lang, 1984. Kennedy, J. Gerald. Hemingways Gender Trouble. American Literature 632 (1991) 187-207. Miller, Linda Patterson. Hemingways Women A Reassessment. Hemingway in Italy and Other Essays. Ed. Ro bert W,. Lewis. Praeger, 1990. Newton, Mark G. Beyond the Wound The post of Women in Aiding the Hemingway Hero. Dissertation U of S. Florida, 1985. Penn Warren, Robert. Ernest Hemingway, Introduction to Modern Standard Authors stochastic variable of A Farewell to Arms. New York Charles Scribners Sons, 1949. Prescott, Jeryl J. Liberty for Just(us) Gender and Race in Hemingways To Have and Have Not. College Language Association Journal 372 (1993) 176-88. Willingham, Kathy. Hemingways The Garden of Eden Writing with the Body. The Hemingway Review 122 (1993) 46-61.