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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Hemingway wrote a self-justifying letter to his adolescent son Patrick, explaining the breakdown of his marriage to Gellhorn while also preparing Patrick for his new relationship with Mary Welsh: “We want some straight work, not be alone and not have to go to war to see one’s wife and then have wife want to be in different war theatre in order that stories not compete. Going to get me somebody who wants to stick around with me and let me be the writer of the family.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1981|p=576}}''Letters'' He wrote similarly to his eldest son John, “[I] would swap her for two non beautiful [sic] wives I might occasionally have the opportunity to go to bed with.”{{sfn|Morehead|2003|p=228}}''Gellhorn'' While Hemingway had gone to war to see his lover quite willingly, the change in Gellhorn’s identity from lover to wife was a sea-change that Hemingway could not get past because, by definition, wives were for the home front. Husbands might go to war as an act of self-realization, but wives should not, as he made very sure Mary understood. In his 1950 novel ''Across the River and into the Trees'', he provides a thinly veiled attack on Martha that doubles as a warning to Mary: “You mean she went away, from ambition, when you only were away from duty,” Renata says to Colonel Cantwell about his former wife, adding, “You couldn’t have married a woman journalist that kept on being that.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1978|p=212}} | Hemingway wrote a self-justifying letter to his adolescent son Patrick, explaining the breakdown of his marriage to Gellhorn while also preparing Patrick for his new relationship with Mary Welsh: “We want some straight work, not be alone and not have to go to war to see one’s wife and then have wife want to be in different war theatre in order that stories not compete. Going to get me somebody who wants to stick around with me and let me be the writer of the family.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1981|p=576}}''Letters'' He wrote similarly to his eldest son John, “[I] would swap her for two non beautiful [sic] wives I might occasionally have the opportunity to go to bed with.”{{sfn|Morehead|2003|p=228}}''Gellhorn'' While Hemingway had gone to war to see his lover quite willingly, the change in Gellhorn’s identity from lover to wife was a sea-change that Hemingway could not get past because, by definition, wives were for the home front. Husbands might go to war as an act of self-realization, but wives should not, as he made very sure Mary understood. In his 1950 novel ''Across the River and into the Trees'', he provides a thinly veiled attack on Martha that doubles as a warning to Mary: “You mean she went away, from ambition, when you only were away from duty,” Renata says to Colonel Cantwell about his former wife, adding, “You couldn’t have married a woman journalist that kept on being that.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1978|p=212}} | ||
Martha Gellhorn came to recognize the dilemma that inevitably resulted when modern men were attracted to modern women for qualities that they {{pg|397|398}} would abjure in a wife, playing it for comedy in the 1945 play she and Virginia Cowles wrote, ''Love Goes to Press'' (originally titled ''Men Must Weep'' and then, with wonderful ambiguity, ''Take My Love Away''). The two female protagonists, Annabelle Jones (based on Gellhorn) and Jane Mason (based on Cowles), are successful war correspondents who report from the front lines of World War II, when “any decent woman would stay at home” according to Philip, the British Public Relations Officer and Jane’s love interest | Martha Gellhorn came to recognize the dilemma that inevitably resulted when modern men were attracted to modern women for qualities that they {{pg|397|398}} would abjure in a wife, playing it for comedy in the 1945 play she and Virginia Cowles wrote, ''Love Goes to Press'' (originally titled ''Men Must Weep'' and then, with wonderful ambiguity, ''Take My Love Away''). The two female protagonists, Annabelle Jones (based on Gellhorn) and Jane Mason (based on Cowles), are successful war correspondents who report from the front lines of World War II, when “any decent woman would stay at home” according to Philip, the British Public Relations Officer and Jane’s love interest.{{sfn|Gellhorn and Cowles|1995|p=10}} Joe Rogers, war correspondent and Annabelle’s ex-husband, “says war’s no place for a woman” according to his new fiancée, actress Daphne Ruther- ford (14). She is entertaining the troops rather nearer to the front line than she had expected, and he promises to “bundle [her] up and send [her] straight off to America where it’s safe” (14). | ||
While the male correspondents are satisfied to rewrite military communiques, Annabelle and Jane show remarkable ingenuity in finding ways to get to the front so as to report the action firsthand. However, their efforts are denigrated, Joe Rogers repeatedly complaining, to the widespread agreement of the other men, that they “run this lousy war on sex-appeal” (45, 49). As Sandra Spanier notes in her Afterword to the play: | While the male correspondents are satisfied to rewrite military communiques, Annabelle and Jane show remarkable ingenuity in finding ways to get to the front so as to report the action firsthand. However, their efforts are denigrated, Joe Rogers repeatedly complaining, to the widespread agreement of the other men, that they “run this lousy war on sex-appeal” (45, 49). As Sandra Spanier notes in her Afterword to the play: | ||