The male writer and the feminine text: Hemingway's major novels from a Cixousian perspective.

Abstract

This dissertation addresses Hemingway's developing understanding of gender and sexual identity in four major novels---The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Garden of Eden---using Cixousian theories about the construction of self-definition. Applying Cixous's ideas of inherent bisexuality and ecriture feminine, the thesis posits Hemingway as a possible member of her elite group of biologically male but psychologically feminine authors to suggest that, as his career advanced, he tried increasingly to define himself in unsettling but crucial ways. Such characters as Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes began the investigation into mediated gender and sexual identity that lasted until the end of his creative life, while Catherine Barkley and Frederic Henry's love established the importance of open and honest sexual relationships as methods of self-discovery. Hemingway's extension of loving relationships by way of the brief but intense affair between Maria and Robert Jordan marked a further movement towards a Cixousian sense of bisexual feminine writing as the lovers focus on life instead of death. Finally, Catherine Bourne's desire to create an anti-patriarchal image of the feminine exposes her creator's own wish to reject restrictive masculine identity in order to try to come to grips with his femininity. Ultimately, of course, Hemingway could not overcome his gender training and admit those of his needs and desires that defied societal standards of masculine behavior. In his writing, however, he indulged in gender-bending and alternative sexuality as a way to express himself creatively. These fictive experiments, often accompanied by real-life counterparts, suggest how much Hemingway wanted to understand men's and women's places in the modern world; and the conclusions to which he came look remarkably like Cixous's. Tracing the similarities between her theories and Hemingway's writing, we might recognize how pervasive Hemingway's questions were and how deeply he wanted to answer them. This attempt to recalibrate the commonly held opinions about Hemingway's life and writing allows us to see more clearly what was at stake for him in the creation of his art by exposing him as a nascent, if unconscious, writer of ecriture feminine.