Brett vs. Frances: Hemingway's Depiction of Women
The Sun Also Rises is not a book that has a lot of female characters. The majority of the characters are male, so is the narrator Jake. The only memorable female representation we see is Frances (Robert Cohn's girlfriend) and Brett. Even though Lady Brett has a very big role in the book, we still only see her story from a biased view of Jake's. We can't learn much from an unbiased viewpoint about these female characters, but we can learn a lot about how Hemingway portrays these characters through Jake eyes.
Brett is the perfect woman. All the guys love her: she is beautiful, easy-going, funny, and loves to drink. As the male characters often say, "She is one of the guys." Most of the men in Paris are in love with her, and she has many admirers in other parts of France as well. Brett's attractiveness seems to received universally, with there not being many male characters that don't like Brett in one way or another. This becomes a problem because Brett doesn't treat her male friends in the kindest way. She is openly promiscuous in a way that hurts her friends and clearly has no respect or loyalty towards the people in her life. Brett is such a negative and hurtful character, but because The Sun Also Rises is narrated entirely by men, we see her as the protagonist because of her qualities that make her attractive to men (the "cool girl" phenomena: attractive, easy-going, drunken).
All we hear of Frances is how people don't seem to like her. Robert Cohn obviously isn't a big fan of his girlfriend, going off with Brett to San Sebastian instead, and Jake doesn't seem to like her that much either. During the conversation where Frances accuses Robert of wanting to leave her and Jake having to awkwardly sit through it, we also see from Jake's narrational perspective, his distaste for Frances and her attitude. While Jake just finds the situation weird and unnecessary, Robert is clearly just not paying attention to Frances. Both men think of her as the clingy and needy girlfriend who is just making up things because she has nothing better to do (although as we see later, her accusations aren't wrong at all). Frances is therefore portrayed as an antagonist because she is seen as less desirable than Brett.
The value of the two women in The Sun Also Rises is therefore made up of entirely superficial elements which are important to the men narrating the story, but shouldn't influence our perception of character. So what influences these perceptions of the women? Why does everyone love Brett but not Frances? Do these perceptions that the men in the story have seem unfair and biased? And do the views of the characters in the story reflect on the way Hemingway is trying to portray his male characters or does this maybe reflect on Hemingway himself? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
Brett is the perfect woman. All the guys love her: she is beautiful, easy-going, funny, and loves to drink. As the male characters often say, "She is one of the guys." Most of the men in Paris are in love with her, and she has many admirers in other parts of France as well. Brett's attractiveness seems to received universally, with there not being many male characters that don't like Brett in one way or another. This becomes a problem because Brett doesn't treat her male friends in the kindest way. She is openly promiscuous in a way that hurts her friends and clearly has no respect or loyalty towards the people in her life. Brett is such a negative and hurtful character, but because The Sun Also Rises is narrated entirely by men, we see her as the protagonist because of her qualities that make her attractive to men (the "cool girl" phenomena: attractive, easy-going, drunken).
All we hear of Frances is how people don't seem to like her. Robert Cohn obviously isn't a big fan of his girlfriend, going off with Brett to San Sebastian instead, and Jake doesn't seem to like her that much either. During the conversation where Frances accuses Robert of wanting to leave her and Jake having to awkwardly sit through it, we also see from Jake's narrational perspective, his distaste for Frances and her attitude. While Jake just finds the situation weird and unnecessary, Robert is clearly just not paying attention to Frances. Both men think of her as the clingy and needy girlfriend who is just making up things because she has nothing better to do (although as we see later, her accusations aren't wrong at all). Frances is therefore portrayed as an antagonist because she is seen as less desirable than Brett.
The value of the two women in The Sun Also Rises is therefore made up of entirely superficial elements which are important to the men narrating the story, but shouldn't influence our perception of character. So what influences these perceptions of the women? Why does everyone love Brett but not Frances? Do these perceptions that the men in the story have seem unfair and biased? And do the views of the characters in the story reflect on the way Hemingway is trying to portray his male characters or does this maybe reflect on Hemingway himself? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
You bring up some very interesting points! The value of a woman in this book is clearly based on how attractive she is. Another woman that I thought about while reading your post was Georgette. Jake only describes her physical appearance to us. He says how she is pretty but when she smiles she doesn’t show her teeth. Later, Jake reintroduces her smile and says he now knows why she doesn’t smile with teeth, her teeth aren’t attractive. Jake chooses however, to spend his evening with her and even goes so far to call her his fiancé (in a joking manner). Like Brett, Georgette is a pretty woman who likes parties and having a good time. The women in this book are only worth the time of the men if they are attractive.
ReplyDeleteInteresting Blogpost! What influences this perception of women is the author himself. Hemingway is very masculine, thus it shows in his novel when he treats women who are more attractive as more important. Additionally, I think the reason everyone loves Brett is because she is manipulative and attractive. I feel as though she uses her looks and sexuality as a way to leech off of other men. Frances probably is not as good of a manipulator than Brett is. I do not think it is "unfair" if a man is more attracted to a girl than another. That's simply an opinion. If more men are attracted to Brett than Frances, that's their opinion.
ReplyDeleteUGHHH! I agree with you, Catalin, this book is so heavily saturated by the male gaze that we as readers find it hard to separate value and personality from appearance. I like your explanation of the "cool girl" archetype that makes her so attractive. I think another, perhaps sadder, view of Brett is through the manic pixie dream girl (MPDG) trope. A MPDG is described (from Wikipedia) as "the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does." Basically, her value is tied solely in how much the male hero loves her and needs her to do the things he does. Furthermore, MPDGs don't have their own happiness besides being the "muse" to the male hero. Brett seemingly pursues her happiness in the men she sleeps with but how is that portrayed? Her affairs are measured in importance and worth as functions of how much they hurt Jake not pleased Brett, in what they made him feel and, subsequently, do. I think it's very interesting to look at Brett through this stock character archetype.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with this. This book is such a stark example of the male gaze. In addition to what Tina said, I think about how Brett’s character is largely defined by who she’s sleeping with at the moment. When she has a partner Jake approves of, his opinion towards Brett and all his descriptions of Brett are totally different than when Brett is with someone she disproves of. We never see him thinking about Brett without the context of a man she’s with. This broadly applies to all the women we encounter in this book – they are characterized through the men they are with, such as Frances: all the information we get about her is that she’s Cohn’s girlfriend.
DeleteI think the reason for this disparity is that Brett represents a modern, post-war woman (more independent, more promiscuous, more 'mannish' overall) and Frances, like Cohn, is stuck in the past. While readers in the 21st century might be drawn to the more sexist aspects of how Brett is portrayed, I think it's important to note that the way Brett is acting is very new and revolutionary, defying Victorian gender roles. Frances is not doing that. The fact that someone like Brett is getting attention and focus in the novel is very significant to me.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to say that the portrayal of Brett isn't sexist at all. It's through the eyes of Jake, so of course it is. But I think we should recognize that the novel depicts Brett's independence desirable, natural.
I don’t think being described in a positive way makes readers sympathize with Brett. Almost everyone seem to have a visceral negative reaction to her. I think part of the reason everyone sees her as such a horrible person is for the same reason she seems attractive: because we only see her through Jake, who tends to focus on how attractive she is and doesn’t notice or find it necessary to narrate the nuances of her personality that might make her a more sympathetic character.
ReplyDeleteI will point out that, although Frances is treated very badly by Robert (on Jake's advice, which he conveniently refuses to acknowledge as he witnesses the awkward 'showdown' between them), Hemingway does give her some very good lines (just as Brett has some of the novel's most memorable lines). In this way, these characters do have voice that exists independently of the male gaze. Robert is effectively able to send Frances away to enable his infidelity with Brett, but Frances clearly "wins" this scene, destroying Robert verbally while, as Jake notes, he just sits there and "takes it."
ReplyDelete