Ernest Hemingway's life and literary works

Hemingway and Women

Is Ernest Hemingway a misogynist, a woman hater? Whenever one discusses Hemingway, his personal life, his literary works, this question inevitable pops up in the conversation. While it's a fascinating question, one that's fun to discuss from time to time, it's ultimately a reductive pursuit. It's reductive for two reasons (a) one can never truly know what's in another person's heart, (b) the purpose of great literature is not to provide one with answers about the author's convictions, but to raise questions that challenge the reader's convictions.

To cut to the chase, Hemingway's short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" doesn't reveal how Hemingway feels about women, it ultimately asks the reader how he/she feels about women. In short, it can be considered a Rorschach test for the reader on the subject of misogyny. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the way in which Hemingway forces the reader to question his/her perspective of women as well as the dynamic between men and women.

Everyone knows there's something special about American women. Wilson, the consummate hunter and archetypal manly man, knows it too, he says in the story, "She is away for twenty minutes and now she is back, simply enamelled in that American female cruelty. They are the damnedest women. Really the damnedest." There are many ways to evaluate this statement. While most readers may think it to be a pejorative comment, one that puts women in a negative light, there's another interpretation. That is, women, in particular American women, are tough, are powerful, are obstinate to the sexist wishes and conventions of their male counterparts. To a provincial hunter who has certain expectations for how a woman should act and/or behave, a red-blooded, independent American woman is the "damnedest" -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

This "damnedest" quality that women possess is further explored in subsequent paragraphs, Wilson says, "She's damn cruel but they're all cruel. They govern, of course, and to govern one has to be cruel sometimes. Still, I've seen enough of their damn terrorism." Again, while it's clear that Wilson sees women in a certain way (at times, perhaps a power-hungry, misogynistic way), he understands the power that women possess. He knows that women do rule and govern. And he respects to some extent their Machiavellian ways, i.e. one has to be cruel to govern.

But for Wilson it's not just about respect for a woman's strong-headedness and resolve, it's also about the beauty she possesses and the pleasure she can bring (not just physical pleasure), "She looked younger today, more innocent and fresher and not so professionally beautiful. What's in her heart God knows, Wilson thought. She hadn't talked much last night. At that it was a pleasure to see her." Margaret is beautiful. And she is certainly no pushover. She takes what she wants. When she wanted Wilson, she took him, despite her husband's presence in the camp. But another point is being made here, it's that Wilson (like most men) have not figured out women. The fact that he says, "What's in her heart God Knows," suggests a resignation to not having all the answers on the issue. This leads the reader to ask himself/herself, does Wilson really hate women? Or does he just not understand them? Additionally, are the ways in which Wilson defines women patently negative? Or is there a silver lining to some of his language and descriptions of women?

While it's instructive to look at Wilson's thoughts on women (which will be addressed again later), it's also helpful to look at what the narrator says about the quid-pro-quo relationship between Macomber and Margaret, "Margot was too beautiful for Macomber to divorce her and Macomber had too much money for Margot ever to leave him." In other words Margaret and Macomber are on an equal playing field. They are in a mutually beneficial relationship. The scale of power is evenly split. And they are using one another, she's using him for his money; he's using her for her looks. It should be noted that this is an indictment on the vanity of not just Margaret, but Macomber too. If this were a truly misogynistic story (or one-sided story), one could argue that Margaret would be exclusively referred to as a 'gold-digger,' for lack of a better term, and Macomber her innocent victim.

It's clear to the reader that Macomber has his faults too. Not only is he portrayed as a coward, but he is also portrayed as being too forgiving, the narrator says, "Also, he had always had a great tolerance which seemed the nicest thing about him if it were not the most sinister." There are a few points that should be made about this. First, it's interesting that Macomber is given a stereotypical feminine quality, "great tolerance" (he's the character who is most frightened, Wilson calls him a 'ladybug,' Margaret calls him a 'coward'). But it's not tolerance as in, say, racial tolerance; it is tolerance as in not having a backbone. Being absent a backbone Wilson is sinister man, someone who is willing to take the easy way out or put others in harms way to save his own hide (as the reader noticed with his plea to leave during the lion hunt before it had been killed).

The second point, which is a continuation of the first but framed in the larger context of the entire story, is that Hemingway, has created a husband who acts like a wife and a wife that acts like a husband. He has inverted the traditional paradigm. The wife, Margaret, is a strong-willed, governing, cruel philanderer and the husband, Macomber, is a spineless, fearful, and, at times, helpless coward. The overall point is that there's an equal distribution of flaws amongst Macomber and Margaret. And the flaws do not seem to be divvied out along sexist lines (if anything it's the opposite). So, taking this information into consideration, the reader must ask himself, herself, is the narrator saying that sometimes men have personalities that reflect the negative stereotypes of women and vice versa? If so, what does this mean? For men, is misogyny just another form of self-hatred?