Feminism and Objectification in The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway’s monumental 1926 novel, has often been heralded as a seminal work of modern American fiction. Illuminating a time and place- a zeitgeist- Hemingway’s novel most aptly, and famously, describes the disillusionment of the ‘Lost Generation,’ a term coined by Gertrude Stein in which is encompassed the collective shock of a world in transition at the behest of mechanized war and an industrious world, from which emerged a general dis-ease at modernization defined by a sense of sociocultural disillusionment. Within this context, Hemingway’s novel seemingly espouses, to no end, an unprecedented social crisis of an existential nature. But, though existing within and descriptive of an era of modernity, the short masterpiece seems to transcend these chronologically specific sociocultural parameters and instead offers its readers insight into a timelessly existential- or humanistic- weltanschauung. It is in the context of this seemingly general thought that this novel can be re-examined, acting not only as ostensorium explanation of a crisis of disillusionment at the onset of an imposing modernity, but also as an explication of contemporary literary and social theory; under new critical lenses, the novel presents new analyses and insight. In this regard, with the application of an ecocritical lens in conjunction with an understanding of feminist theory, the novel offers a reading in which an understanding of the objectification of women within the novel (primarily Brett) informs the ways in which Cohn, arguably the novel’s primary vessel for social critique, is presented as a both a foil to, and projection of, the novel’s protagonist, Jake. This new reading, in turn, presents the novel as a story of personal progression in which the disillusioned subject of modernity learns to adapt in a postwar America.

Central to an explication of this thesis is an understanding of ecocritical theory, a study of the relationship between literature and the (an) environment. As Lawrence Buell, renowned ecocritical scholar and author of several works on the subject, notes in The Environmental Imagination, there seems to exist throughout American literature an apparent fascination with the natural world. This fascination is perhaps best advanced through scholar D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), in which is presented a “psychohistorical” theory that posits a pastoral “American (male) writer” who acts as an “escapee from civilization.” This is of particular interest, as many of the scenes throughout The Sun Also Rises that present a pastoralized (idealized) environment are created through circumstances such that a male character (most often Cohn or Jake, both writers) is shown to impress upon an environment some elaborately romanticized quality with the intention to satisfy (or rectify) what must be an emotional or psychological disequilibrium. For Buell, “Lawrence’s…critical judgement was that nature-quest narratives reflected an immature stage of psychocultural development, in which struggles between libidinal and repressive forces were acted out in processes that the authors themselves only half grasped” (Buell). Buell expounds upon this notion through an analysis of the work of Lisa Fielder, from whom it is “exposed more intricately…how wilderness in American writing serves as a liminal site for male self-fulfillment in recoil from adult responsibility associated with female dominated culture in the settlements” (Buell). These theoretical approaches to the notion of pastorality are of particular interest when considered in conjunction with the second chapter of The Sun Also Rises, which is all but entirely composed of Jake and Cohn, two American writers living in Europe, discussing (or, perhaps more appropriately, romanticizing) a prospective trip to South America, “the particulars of which are left vague, and the passion for which has been informed through Cohn’s ingestion of a pastoral novel, The Purple Land” (Patten 2). For Jake, this novel “is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is well described….I did not realize the extent to which it had set him off until one day he came into my office” (Hemingway 17). Here Hemingway introduces a division inherent among these two characters while also suggesting a similarity, presenting a theme that will continue to occupy a central role throughout the novel. “It is, ultimately, Cohn’s romanticism that fuels his collusion with the pastoral text and his drive for South America, and, as it applies to the novel at large, his desire for Brett and the calamity caused by his relentless pursuit of an unattainable goal” (Patten 2).

It is interesting then, that Hemingway has chosen to, in the succeeding scene, cast the impotent Jake out upon the streets of Paris, in search of a prostitute with whom he might share a meal, and, one again imagines, attempt to elicit within himself some notion of the satisfaction that Cohn might feel upon realizing his idealizations. And though Jake, fully aware of the futility of such an endeavour, is far from a paragon of feminist propriety. Indeed, throughout Cohn’s illustriously diatribe about the pastorality of South America and the personal satisfaction that the environment may gift him, Jake’s own form of pastorality directs him towards the plains of Africa: “Did you ever think going to British East Africa to shoot?” he asks (Hemingway 18). Here, Jake’s disillusioned dismissal of Cohn is all but undone as he subtly informs the reader, and an oblivious Cohn, of what can be construed as his own need to exert some form of dominance over Brett. Hemingway’s exclusion of what exactly it is that Jake would like to shoot seems deliberate; instead, he quite intentionally draws the observant eye to Jake’s desire to shoot something British. It can be no coincidence, then, that within ten pages of this monumentally important scene both Jake and Cohn have met (or become reacquainted with) Brett, each immediately casting upon her a Gaze. By the end of the scene, Jake and Brett are alone in the back of a cab, perhaps foreshadowing the end of the novel at which point, it is arguable, Jake finally rectifies his dissatisfactions.

Similarly, Jake’s objectification of nature (and, by association, women) is again through the ways in which he is shown idealize it. Primarily (as Lisa Fielder might argue), nature acts as an escape from the weight of civilization. As evidenced through the circumstances and situations of his trips to both Burguete and San Sebastian, Jake is desirous of some earthly connection perhaps as a metaphor for spiritual cleansing, or rebirth. In Burguete, Jake wades in a river and drinks wine (undeniably representing a forsaken Christ-like figure), roots around in the dirt for earthworms, and creates what is possibly his most real, significant personal connection throughout the novel (his friendship with Bill); in San Sebastian he again both objectifies nature as an escape from civilization and uses it as a space of personal fulfillment. Though clearly the novel pits Cohn as antithetical to Jake, the ways in which it draws similarities are undeniably interesting. Despite Jake’s general disillusionment, he has not dispossessed himself of pastorality- objectification of any kind, even if it is not “romantic,” is objectification. And as he casts upon nature a Gaze of self- fulfillment, so he does with Brett. That he wants to squash Brett is of no consequence through this particular filter- her “death,” for him, is a form of mastery.

To further this idea of pastoral romanticism as synonymous with the objectification of women within The Sun Also Rises, it is helpful to foster a familiarity with critical feminist theory; as it criticizes the various ways in which social constructs cast women as objects in the eyes of men, it is important to discuss the works of Simone de Beauvoir, a primary thinker in this area of both literary and social critique. Through her most famous work, The Second Sex, Simone posits, among other things, that women participating within (western) society are continually constructed by men as “other:” “This is what the Genesis story symbolizes, where Eve is drawn from Adam’s “supernumerary” bone…Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in her self, but in relation to himself; she is not considered an autonomous being” (de Beauvoir 5). She continues:

“…she is nothing other than what man decides; she is thus called “the sex,” meaning that the male sees her essentially as a sexed being; for him she is sex, so she is it in the absolute. She is determined and differentiated in relation to man, while he is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the Subject; he is the Absolute. She is the Other” (de Beauvoir 6).

This confining delegation quite clearly deprives women of agency; as they are created by men, women are prevented from creating their own identities. Relating to The Sun Also Rises, this parallel is made quite clear, first through the ways in which Jake and Cohn are shown to regard nature, and later in the strikingly similar ways in which they are shown to regard women. Brett is continually subjected to this Gaze throughout the novel. As Jake observes Cohn’s reaction upon meeting her, “[Brett] stood holding the glass and I saw Robert Cohn looking at her. He looked a great deal as his compatriot must have looked when he saw the promised land…he had that look of eager, deserving expectation” (Hemingway 29). Clearly, before they’ve had a chance to interact, she has been created by and for Robert Cohn, much in the same way that he has previously been shown to create an environment (South America).

While Jake has thus far clearly shown no reluctance to construct Brett as he pleases, the novel suggests that his motives might be a little more complex. Literary critic William Adair, in an article entitled “The Sun Also Rises: Mother Brett,” posits several theories regarding this subject, the most important and complex of which pits Brett as a projection of Jake’s anima (a Jungian term that, according to Ronald and Valeska Stupak in their article “Carl Jung, Feminism, and Modern Structural Realities, reasons “within the collective unconscious…of both males and females there lies an element of the opposite sex. Hence, all males harbor a feminine element known as the anima, and all females retain a masculine element known as the animus…Jung considers the anima and the female consciousness to be governed by emotions and more subjective qualities, namely feeling or intuitions” (Stupak & Stupak)). A central tenet of Adair’s theory is that Brett represents a mother like figure for Jake. As a foundation for this notion, he uses information gleaned both from the novel itself and Hemingway’s personal life to suggest that Jake has been, in effect, orphaned.

“Although family members are often mentioned in the story…the family of “orphaned” Jake remains unmentioned. Jake is silent about his family, but we find at least one small his having been kicked out of home. Montoya…in effect banishes him from the hotel, his summer home…Furthermore, Hemingway’s (and perhaps jake’s) eviction from home may account for the novel’s recurring image of an older woman (or even a mother figure) at the door…Brett pushes Jake away at her doorstep- which ends Book One- and there after Jake will only try to be her friend, though not with much success” (Adair).

Complicating this overarching notion of Brett as a mother figure, a projection of Jake’s anima, is the notion of Cohn himself as a projection of Jake’s “shadow self, a personification of his humiliating romantic bondage to Brett. Cohn is punished for his romantic delusions…[and] By delivering a “phantom suitcase” to Cohn’s room the night before he departs [Pamplona], Jake rids himself of his own self-lacerating romantic attitude towards Brett” (Adair). In this, Cohn’s projections of Brett become those of Jake as well (albeit representative of an aspect of his personality he would like to disassociate with); Brett, then, is Jake’s feminine ideal.

For Adair, “Jake’s relationship with Brett seems to imply an unconscious longing for mother-love…” as evidenced by the fact that his war wound renders him unable to love her as an adult, “but, in effect, as a child” (Adair). In fact, throughout the novel, there is evidence of Jake’s regression into a childlike state, the manifestations of which are often seen in his interactions with, and depictions of, Brett. After Jake is wounded in the war, he falls in love with nurse Brett; during a taxi ride in Paris, Jake “says that loving her, but not having her physically, in an adult manner, is in its way “alot of fun,”…which may point to…a longing for lost infantile security” (Adair).

Ultimately, it is clear that both Jake and Cohn harbour pastorally objectifying projections of Brett, and that these projections can be evoked and critiqued through an ecocritical lens. That which this lens elicits, however, is of principal interest, as one must under its gaze associate Cohn and Jake, and in so doing re-imagine the novel as an attempt at the progressive shedding of character flaws, in which Jake, by “becoming more of an adult…” may present Hemingway’s “real solution of the problem of “how to live” in postwar America…”(Adair), an issue that undoubtedly acts as a major theme of the novel. Through Jake’s projections and progressions, Hemingway shows both the attempt to live ideally within the constructs of modernization and the inevitability of failure at such an act. And though seemingly derived of modernity, his true challenge is timeless, existential; the responsibility one bears at self creation, within the context of the existential, is borne by all humanity- and that Jake comes to face this responsibility in an imperfect way is Hemingway’s true master stroke.

Bibliography

Adair, William. “‘The Sun Also Rises’: Mother Brett.” Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 40, no. 2, 2010, pp.

189–208., www.jstor.org/stable/41427227.

Beauvoir, Simone de. “Introduction.” The Second Sex. Trans. Constance Borde and

Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Vintage, 2011.

Buell, Lawrence. “Introduction.” The Environmental Imagination. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard UP, 1996.

Buell, Lawrence. “Pastoral Ideology.” The Environmental Imagination. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

UP, 1996.

Patten, Michael. “Pastoral Constructions of Objectivity in The Sun Also Rises.” Unpublished.

University of Houston, 2017.

STUPAK, VALESKA C., and RONALD J. STUPAK. “CARL JUNG, FEMINISM, AND MODERN

STRUCTURAL REALITIES.” International Review of Modern Sociology, vol. 20, no. 2, 1990, pp. 267–276., www.jstor.org/stable/41421571.