Gender Roles In Hemingway

During the early twentieth century and World War I, men and women in the United States were treated very differently. Each gender had their stereotypes and was not to stray from them. Men were to do masculine things and women were to do feminine things. It was very odd to find someone of either gender slip away from the stereotypes of their particular gender because they would be looked upon as “different” and “different” wasn’t usually accepted in the society. This is something Ernest Hemingway struggled with in his lifetime: the absolute masculinity men were to follow during their life. Marc Hewson wrote that since Hemingway struggled to stay with the masculine stereotype, instead of showing it in his real, personal life, he wrote about it.
Although it is not certain that the protagonists in Hemingway’s books are a reflection of his actual feelings and the things that happen to these protagonists are his actual life happenings, it is clear that there is an autobiographical atmosphere these books bring out (The Real Life).
The reason it is uncertain whether these protagonists are based on himself is that Hemingway goes a step further by creating other characters that break the stereotypes and moral codes that society has instilled upon each gender. This is epitomized in A Farwell to Arms where Hemingway creates two main characters, Lieutenant Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley, who put a gap between themselves and the stereotypes that the civilization has placed on each gender and on human nature in general. The way Hemingway does this is by giving the main characters a sense of pragmatism in the way they go about things, a sense of homosexuality and a sense of objection of the norm for the genders by actions of these
characters. According to the eighteenth century philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Voltaire, the mind was created to think and think abstractly. To them, this was the only way society was to advance culturally and intellectually. Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, the modern philosophers which are credited with developing pragmatism, thought differently. Pragmatism is defined as dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations. William James then took think a step further, in what is known as Jamesian pragmatism, by saying pragmatism is based on more realistic everyday situations than situations that may or may not happen; James applied pragmatism to the everyday world. Katie Owens-Murphy explains that Hemingway ‘s characters, particularly Frederic Henry, are “attracted to the concrete and the physical rather than to abstract ideas. This thought is epitomized when Frederic talks about his experiences during the war.
I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places where all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. (Hemingway 184-185)
Frederic is unable to find meaning in abstract ideas and refers to these virtues as obscene (Hemingway’s Pragmatism).
What Frederic finds as obscene is the fact that he cannot physically see things like glory and sacredness. Frederic would rather orient himself around concrete things such as numbers, geographic markers, and dates (Hemingway’s Pragmatism). To Frederic, it is more logical and practical to think like this rather than to think based on ambiguity. Although Frederic narrates this story based on his experiences during the war, James Phelan notes him as “more of a recorder rather than a reflector.” Part of the reason this statement is true is because whenever someone asks him about the war, he claims he physically cannot recall his experiences; he can only recall what he
saw.
Owens-Murphy says Hemingway almost makes it seem like abstract thinking is unacceptable as he places this type of thinking with the enemies or bad guys in the book, the “battle police” and the nurse Helen Ferguson. The “battle police,” who nearly kill Frederic, justify their interrogations and executions with abstract ideas; “It is because of treachery such as yours that we have lost the fruits of victory,” (Hemingway 223). The officers find it clear that the outcome of the war is out of their control so they decide to create scapegoats and in this case, they are Frederic and the other people they have captured. Frederic cannot comprehend this because their basis for their interrogations and executions is based on ambiguity and they do not have a concrete reason for doing what they are doing. Luckily, Frederic survives this experience only to later have something else happen that he cannot comprehend because it is based of thought, not something based off of fact. When he meets up with Catherine Barkley again, Helen Ferguson joins them and instantly becomes jealous of the relationship Frederic and Catherine have. Helen lashes out at Frederic for having “no shame and no feelings,” and Frederic in return becomes mean because he doesn’t understand the feeling of jealousy (Hemingway 247). Catherine then explains that he should be nice to Helen because she is jealous and although he cannot comprehend why he needs to be nice, he politely agrees to Catherine’s request.