Is Ernest Hemingway's depiction of women in “In Our Time” indicative of the time period the stories were written in (1920s to 1930s) or of his relationships with women? A constant theme throughout the book “In Our Time” is women being seen as nothing more than “wives” or “mothers”. We especially see this in the story “Cat in the Rain”. This short story involves two characters; a young woman, labelled only as “the American wife”, not given a name, and her presumed husband George. In the story, they are the only two American people staying at a hotel in Italy. One evening the “American wife” sees a cat outside of their hotel room. Excitedly, she goes out in the rain in an effort to find the cat and bring it back to her hotel room.
As her efforts prove unsuccessful, we see more and more qualities of a Hemingway women conveyed. She is very timid, as seen when she agrees to go back inside from the rain with the maid even when she wants to find the cat, on page 92. Even when the woman is out of context with her husband, she is still only known as the American “girl”. Not even woman. Hemingway’s use of only these two terms for her seems to be a very poignant effort to keep her at arms distance. It seems as though he doesn’t really value her as a character, or some might go as far as to say he doesn’t truly value her as a person because of her status as a woman. The use of her name to constantly remind the readers that she is one, female, and two, a wife. Two things that back then probably, sadly, did define a person. It seems odd though that George got a name, and his wife, the main character didn’t.
Another theme in Hemingway’s writing is the classic “man gets annoyed with girl and usually says something rude” situation. In “Cat in the Rain”, George tells his wife, “Oh shut up and get something to read”, when she continues to ask questions and talk about the cat. Though in most relationships there are aspects of irritation and aggravation, the high number of occurrences of this very specific situation throughout “In Our Time” show a deeper theme about women.
So this leaves us with the question; is Hemingway writing like this from experience, or is that just how women were treated in the 1920s?
I also noticed how Hemingway referred to the American wife as a "girl" as opposed to woman. He also did this in Hills Like White Elephants when referring to the woman. He might have been doing this to make the couple less mature. However, he does not refer to the husband as a boy, which makes me think that he did this to somehow belittle the woman and make her seem less important.
ReplyDeleteFollowing what Annemarie said, I also agree that Hemingway depicts women as the more immature on in the relationship, kind of like a toddler and her father; we can also see this in the dialogue between the couple right after George tells her to shut up, "I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat". However, we can see this in another way: maybe she is just trying to engage in a conversation with her husband, no matter what the topic is (or what the mood is), as so far we can see that George just blows her off, so we can speculate that her life is pretty stale after she married her. At the end of the story, it says that the maid brought her a big tortoise-shell cat for her to play with. The description of the cat suggests a sluggish cat that won't be much fun either (just like how tortoises don't pay attention to you - they just move along), and really won't effect her life that much: it suggests that when she finally does get a cat, it's just as boring as her husband (or at least that's how I read it; it's kinda sad).
ReplyDeleteI also noticed the similar trend of Hemingway's dialogues between a boy and a girl often resulting in the boy getting annoyed and rude. We see this in Hills Like White Elephants, The End of Something, and Cat in the Rain. I agree that this occurs to commonly for this to be a coincidence. I'm not sure if this is a depiction from Hemingway's experience or if this was something common in the 1920s. However we see in In Our Time that Hemingway values masculinity a lot. Even in the chapters in between the stories, many of them were related to bullfighting, which is a very masculine sport. This suggests that maybe this does come from Hemingway's own values.
ReplyDeleteI agree it was weird how Hemingway treated the obvious main character in "Cat in the Rain." Not only did he not give her a name but he seemed to side with George by portraying the wife as an annoying, petty girl. There's a reoccurring way he depicts women in his stories so I wouldn't be surprised if he's drawing from bitter real-life experiences.
ReplyDeleteIt was strange that Hemingway chose not to give the main character of the story a name while giving the supporting character, her husband, a name. I think it's likely that his views on women reflect the general mentality of that time. Hemingway grew up before the Woman's Suffrage Movement in the U.S. and when the book was published (1925) the suffrage movement had just past. I think he grew up with idea that women are in a way "inferior" and, despite the passing of the 19th amendment, his understanding of women were difficult to change during his drafting of the book (as his outlook of women's rights were engrained in him while growing up).
ReplyDeleteThe "masculine" orientation of Hemingway's stories doesn't just extend to his depiction of women. In a story like "Mr. and Mrs. Elliot," his irony-laden, even nasty portrayal of Mr. Elliot as insufficiently masculine and virile diminishes him in a similar way.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not sure that the men are portrayed as "better" than the women, necessarily. If the "American wife" in "Cat in the Rain" is rendered as a somewhat childish, trivial character, she's still a lot more spirited than this deadbeat George, sitting in bed reading all day with no desire and no distinctive character traits at all. If this is a story about unfulfilled desire, it's the *wife's* desire that is the subject of the story--and we *get* why this guy might be making her feel a little restless and unappreciated. What's *his* problem, we might think.
The depiction of Nick and Marjorie works similarly: Marjorie seems like a reasonable and level-headed person (who also enjoys a good fishing trip, which surely counts for something in Hemigway's universe!), and Nick is the moody, uncommunicative guy with an unspecified depression that he doesn't even seem to understand. It seems like he's breaking up with her for no real reason, maybe under Bill's influence, and in "The Three-Day Blow," we see Nick's tough-guy masculine posture as an *act* he must maintain--he struggles to reconcile his actual regret at letting Marjorie go with his desire to seem appropriately cool and unattached to his buddy Bill. The alignment of the story might be with the male characters, but it could also be read as quite critical in its portrayal of masculine gender roles.
I think you are definitely right about Hemingway only really writing two types of women. Every female role in this book fits alongside a male, we see women here only as girlfriends, mother, or wives. Or in A Soldiers home as a potential wife. Women are constantly shown as being difficult and subordinate to the men. We see Marge leaving and not fighting with Nick about his sudden brake up, and then there's Nick's possibly bed ridden mother who doesn't seem to believe Nick's father but just lets him go, and there's also the American "girl" who doesn't even get to be a woman. All these women are similar in demeanor and it all seems to piss off the males in the stories. Whether it's the views of the time or Hemingway's personal experience I can't really say, but Hemingway definitely has a view of women as rather annoying accessories to men.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I think that the way the Hemingway wrote the woman in "The Cat in the Rain," I found the fact that he didn't give her a name either stranger. I'm starting to get a feeling that Hemingway writes these men similarly but he thinks they are different enough to identify them with different names. When he writes a woman character on the other hand, he is just using a template and doesn't want to use names which makes the characters seem unique.
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