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
LogansPop22 (talk | contribs) citations added |
LogansPop22 (talk | contribs) citations added |
||
| Line 125: | Line 125: | ||
Far from wanting Gellhorn to leave the dangerous arena of war, Hemingway wanted her to stay, for it was the locus of their love affair. Only after their affair was firmly established did he once briefly forbid her from accompanying him, telling her in Paris to wait there with the wife of war correspondent Vincent Sheean, since "Spain’s no place for women,” then promising to “phone to say whether ‘the women’ might come.”{{sfn|qtd. by Wyden|1983|p=450}} Gellhorn did not wait for his approval to join him in Barcelona, thereby again demonstrating her independence. | Far from wanting Gellhorn to leave the dangerous arena of war, Hemingway wanted her to stay, for it was the locus of their love affair. Only after their affair was firmly established did he once briefly forbid her from accompanying him, telling her in Paris to wait there with the wife of war correspondent Vincent Sheean, since "Spain’s no place for women,” then promising to “phone to say whether ‘the women’ might come.”{{sfn|qtd. by Wyden|1983|p=450}} Gellhorn did not wait for his approval to join him in Barcelona, thereby again demonstrating her independence. | ||
Like Dorothy’s first lover Preston, Hemingway had a wife and children on the home front, and his coverage of the Spanish Civil War provided him with a reason to be away from his family as well as with an environment of danger and intensity where a shared cause subsumed any other differences, encouraging the pleasures of a sexual liaison without thoughts of consequences. Indeed, a wife and children seemed to preclude consequences. Hemingway demonstrates a degree of masculine self-awareness when he has Dorothy say, “Those wife-and-children men at war . . . just use them as sort of an opening wedge to get into bed with some one and then immediately afterwards they club you with | Like Dorothy’s first lover Preston, Hemingway had a wife and children on the home front, and his coverage of the Spanish Civil War provided him with a reason to be away from his family as well as with an environment of danger and intensity where a shared cause subsumed any other differences, encouraging the pleasures of a sexual liaison without thoughts of consequences. Indeed, a wife and children seemed to preclude consequences. Hemingway demonstrates a degree of masculine self-awareness when he has Dorothy say, “Those wife-and-children men at war . . . just use them as sort of an opening wedge to get into bed with some one and then immediately afterwards they club you with them.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=25}} | ||
Gellhorn most valued her comradeship with Hemingway as they worked together (thereby reversing the priorities of Dorothy and Philip, whose sexual relationship is primary and comradeship a farce). Gellhorn was an apt pupil, and Hemingway loved the role of teacher. His tutelage, born of hard experience, demonstrably influenced Gellhorn, who learned fast and with a gusto that delighted Hemingway, as did her courage. | Gellhorn most valued her comradeship with Hemingway as they worked together (thereby reversing the priorities of Dorothy and Philip, whose sexual relationship is primary and comradeship a farce). Gellhorn was an apt pupil, and Hemingway loved the role of teacher. His tutelage, born of hard experience, demonstrably influenced Gellhorn, who learned fast and with a gusto that delighted Hemingway, as did her courage. | ||