The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Hemingway and Women at the Front: Blowing Bridges in The Fifth Column, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Other Works: Difference between revisions

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 During the early twentieth century, another female figure publicly emerged at the battle front, one yet more troubling in terms of the prevailing paradigm since her activities could not be redefined as appropriately female because domestic: the female war correspondent. The first American woman to win accreditation from the War Department as an official war correspondent was Peggy Hull on 17 September 1918, but she was restricted from access to the battlefields of World War I (as were the few free-lance female correspondents); when the male correspondents realized the popularity of Hull’s stories about “the lives of the common soldier” away from battle, they “demanded her removal”{{sfn|Sorel|1999|p=xviii}} and she was “forced to spend the rest of the war in Paris.”{{sfn|Knightley|1975|p=127}}  Some eighteen years later, the women who covered the Spanish Civil War were still small in number but free of official regulations governing their behavior. Outsiders in Spain creating a new professional role, they were little regulated as to dress or behavior (as were the later female correspondents of World War II, who were required to wear uniforms and forbidden access to the front lines,{{efn|Gellhorn wrote in 1944 “a formal letter of protest to the military authorities about the ‘curiously condescending’ treatment of women war correspondents which, she said, was as ridiculous as it was undignified, and was preventing professional woman [sic] reporters, with many years’ experience, from carrying out their responsibilities to their editors and to ‘millions of people in America who are desperately in need of seeing, but cannot see for themselves’.”{{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|pp=221}}''Gellhorn'' She wrote more pithily to a friend that “female journalists were now seen as lepers.”{{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|pp=221}}''Gellhorn''}} though individual resourcefulness frequently overcame this official restriction). These female correspondents ranged as freely as their inclinations, abilities, and contacts enabled.
-It would seem that ''The Fifth Column''’s Dorothy Bridges is a war corre- {{pg|385|386}} spondent—how else to explain her residence in Madrid’s Hotel Florida, the presence of a large military map and war poster and typewriter in her room, and her announcement late in the play that she has “sent away three articles?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=82}}  But her lover Robert Preston, himself a war correspondent, calls her “a bored Vassar bitch”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=4}}—a change from the 1937 Madrid typescript where she is identified with Martha Gellhorn’s own Bryn Mawr. Rather than protesting, Dorothy agrees that she doesn’t “understand anything that is happening here.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=5}} Dorothy’s stereotypical characterization as a dumb blonde renders her presumed identity problematic. For example, Philip confusedly shouts, “Aren’t you a lady war correspondent or something? Get out of here and go write an article. This [the assassination of a Loyalist soldier in Philip’s room] is none of your business.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=33}} Her role as war correspondent cannot stand alone, but must be delimited by the modifier “lady”—or better yet relegated to the unnameable “or something.” But if the assassination of a soldier is not the business of a “lady” war correspondent, then what is? Indeed, what is the appropriate material for the article Philip directs her to write while simultaneously identifying what is off limits to her? In this telling scene, Philip places Dorothy in an untenable position because her identity and her subject matter remain unsayable. She fits into neither of the historically accepted categories of women at the battle front, prostitute or rape victim, nor into that of the more recently accepted category of nurse. But there she is nonetheless, at the war front instead of the home front, practicing it would seem the male profession of war correspondent.
+It would seem that ''The Fifth Column''’s Dorothy Bridges is a war corre- {{pg|385|386}} spondent—how else to explain her residence in Madrid’s Hotel Florida, the presence of a large military map and war poster and typewriter in her room, and her announcement late in the play that she has “sent away three articles?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=82}}  But her lover Robert Preston, himself a war correspondent, calls her “a bored Vassar bitch”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=4}}—a change from the 1937 Madrid typescript where she is identified with Martha Gellhorn’s own Bryn Mawr. Rather than protesting, Dorothy agrees that she doesn’t “understand anything that is happening here.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=5}} Dorothy’s stereotypical characterization as a dumb blonde renders her presumed identity problematic. For example, Philip confusedly shouts, “Aren’t you a lady war correspondent or something? Get out of here and go write an article. This [the assassination of a Loyalist soldier in Philip’s room] is none of your business.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=33}} Her role as war correspondent cannot stand alone, but must be delimited by the modifier “lady”—or better yet relegated to the unnameable “or something.” But if the assassination of a soldier is not the business of a “lady” war correspondent, then what is? Indeed, what is the appropriate material for the article Philip directs her to write while simultaneously identifying what is off limits to her? In this telling scene, Philip places Dorothy in an untenable position because her identity and her subject matter remain unsayable. She fits into neither of the historically accepted categories of women at the battle front, prostitute or rape victim, nor into that of the more recently accepted category of nurse. But there she is nonetheless, at the war front instead of the home front, practicing it would seem the male profession of war correspondent.
 As soon as Philip falls in love with Dorothy, a romance that she boldly initiates, he demands that she “move out of this hotel and . . . go back to America.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=31}} But Dorothy refuses to leave, calling him an “impudent, impertinent man.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=31}} An independent woman, she need not comply with his demand that she return to the home front. That is, after all, the realm of wives, as evidenced by Preston’s wife, about whom he is “always going on,” according to Dorothy, who adds, “Let him go back to his wife and children if he’s so excited about them. I’ll bet he won’t.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=25}}
-Though Dorothy commits herself to remaining near the battle front, she has simultaneously worked to make her own room homey, and she makes over Philip’s adjoining room as well. In the context of the play, Dorothy’s redecoration of Philip’s room signals her desire to domesticate him, to lure him away from the war to the home front. Certainly that is how Philip interprets it. His ambivalence about this domestication is revealed by his dis- {{pg|386|387}} comfort in the redecorated room and by his conflicted responses to Dorothy. In the midst of the war, she has created a home front of sorts, a conflation that confuses Philip. He attempts to reestablish the division by associating nighttime with the home front and daytime with the war front, declaring during the night not only his love but more tellingly his desire to marry her, and repudiating these declarations during the day. Dorothy reacts to both nighttime and daytime pronouncements with equanimity, enjoying Philip’s nighttime fantasies which she also shares, yet recognizing them as such. When Philip rejects her at the end of the play, he does so because he fears he will be unable to withstand the temptation she represents to abandon the war front for the home front, a concern that his German comrade Max reinforces. But Philip’s rejection of Dorothy, however painful, does not result in her departure from Madrid.{{efn|In Benjamin Glazer’s adaptation of the play for production, the much-revised character of Dorothy ''does'' leave Madrid, hoping but not expecting Philip to follow her. Glazer’s Dorothy is more conventional than Hemingway’s, an attempt to make her more sympathetic to the audience. Notably, she is only pretending to be a war correspondent while she is actually searching for her lost brother who has joined the Lincoln Brigade. In Glazer’s adaptation she is, bizarrely, raped by Philip. She is thereby transformed from Hemingway’s female war correspondent into the conventional female rape victim of war. Despite the rape, Glazer’s Dorothy falls in love with Philip, a response that the audience is expected to approve. For a discussion of Glazer’s version as compared to Hemingway’s, see {{harvtxt|Fellner|1986|pp=5–30}}.}} Just as Philip has volunteered for the duration, so too, it would seem, has Dorothy. But she is better able to assimilate fantasy and reality, nighttime and daytime, home front and war front, into a complex whole. For Dorothy, the conversations about other places are “just ''playing'',”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=62}} a kind of bedtime story ritual. Realist to his romantic, she accepts the constraints placed on them by their mutual presence at the war: “But can’t we just go on now, as long as we have each other, I mean if we aren’t going to always keep on, and be nice and enjoy what we have and not be bitter?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=63}}
+Though Dorothy commits herself to remaining near the battle front, she has simultaneously worked to make her own room homey, and she makes over Philip’s adjoining room as well. In the context of the play, Dorothy’s redecoration of Philip’s room signals her desire to domesticate him, to lure him away from the war to the home front. Certainly that is how Philip interprets it. His ambivalence about this domestication is revealed by his dis- {{pg|386|387}} comfort in the redecorated room and by his conflicted responses to Dorothy. In the midst of the war, she has created a home front of sorts, a conflation that confuses Philip. He attempts to reestablish the division by associating nighttime with the home front and daytime with the war front, declaring during the night not only his love but more tellingly his desire to marry her, and repudiating these declarations during the day. Dorothy reacts to both nighttime and daytime pronouncements with equanimity, enjoying Philip’s nighttime fantasies which she also shares, yet recognizing them as such. When Philip rejects her at the end of the play, he does so because he fears he will be unable to withstand the temptation she represents to abandon the war front for the home front, a concern that his German comrade Max reinforces. But Philip’s rejection of Dorothy, however painful, does not result in her departure from Madrid.{{efn|In Benjamin Glazer’s adaptation of the play for production, the much-revised character of Dorothy ''does'' leave Madrid, hoping but not expecting Philip to follow her. Glazer’s Dorothy is more conventional than Hemingway’s, an attempt to make her more sympathetic to the audience. Notably, she is only pretending to be a war correspondent while she is actually searching for her lost brother who has joined the Lincoln Brigade. In Glazer’s adaptation she is, bizarrely, raped by Philip. She is thereby transformed from Hemingway’s female war correspondent into the conventional female rape victim of war. Despite the rape, Glazer’s Dorothy falls in love with Philip, a response that the audience is expected to approve. For a discussion of Glazer’s version as compared to Hemingway’s, see {{harvtxt|Fellner|1986|pp=5–30}}.}} Just as Philip has volunteered for the duration, so too, it would seem, has Dorothy. But she is better able to assimilate fantasy and reality, nighttime and daytime, home front and war front, into a complex whole. For Dorothy, the conversations about other places are “just ''playing'',”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=62}} a kind of bedtime story ritual. Realist to his romantic, she accepts the constraints placed on them by their mutual presence at the war: “But can’t we just go on now, as long as we have each other, I mean if we aren’t going to always keep on, and be nice and enjoy what we have and not be bitter?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969b|p=63}}
 In creating a home front at the war front, Dorothy does not split but compounds her loyalties, voluntarily remaining at home in war-torn Madrid. Gellhorn asserts in her 1959 Introduction to The Face of War: “War was our condition and our history, the place we had to live in.”{{sfn|Gelhorn|1978|p=viii}} In making the war front their home, women were thus making themselves at home in the public sphere of the world at large. In “The War in Spain” section of ''The Face of War'', Gellhorn specifies: “Thanks to ''Collier''’s I had the chance to see the life of my time, which was war  For eight years, I could go where I