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

Dorothy Bridges’ identity as female war correspondent is undermined not only by her characterization but by the very structure of the play, which rigidly confines her to the domestic sphere—a strategy that Hemingway later employed more subtly in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. Act One, where Dorothy is prominent, has three scenes, all set at the Hotel Florida. Act Two, where Dorothy is less prominent, has only one scene set at the Hotel Florida; the other two scenes are set at Seguridad headquarters, where two Loyalist soldiers are being interrogated for suspected treason, and at Chicote’s Bar, the hangout for International Brigade soldiers, prostitutes, and war correspondents. Act Three, where Dorothy is again less prominent, has two scenes set at the Hotel Florida; the other two scenes are set at Seguridad headquarters, and at a Republican artillery observation post that Philip and Max infiltrate. The active Philip’s scenes include not only those in his and Dorothy’s rooms at the Hotel Florida, but also those at Seguridad Headquarters, Chicote’s Bar, and the Republican observation post. In contrast, Dorothy is never presented outside of the Hotel Florida, almost always in her own room (only once entering Philip’s room). Indeed, she is most frequently seen in bed, for example “sleeping soundly” through Philip’s extended conversation with the hotel manager,{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=16}} “go[ing] back to sleep for just a little while longer” after waking for breakfast and conversation,{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=26}} pushed by Philip “toward the bed” in a protective gesture when the Loyalist soldier is shot in Philip’s room,{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=33}} eating breakfast in bed, reading in bed, lying in bed with Philip while she wears her new silver fox cape,<ref group=Notes> Dorothy’s silver fox cape is a fictionalized version of Gellhorn’s own. Reynolds asserts that this cape was “a gift [to Gellhorn] from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade” (270), but he provides no note for his source. Lincoln Brigade veterans Milton Wolff (the Brigade’s last commander) and Mo Fishman independently told me in telephone interviews in May 2001 that they considered this claim unlikely given the extremely low pay of the Brigade soldiers, most of which was donated to build orphanages, and the relative infrequency of contact with Gellhorn and her circle. Moorehead notes that in Gellhorn’s first few weeks in Spain, she “went shopping with [fellow war correspondent] Virginia Cowles, . . . priced silver foxes and got desperately greedy wanting them” (''Gellhorn'' 119–20). In The Fifth Column, Hemingway represents Dorothy’s fur as the morally dubious Black Market purchase of a self-centered woman, and in the context of the play he indicts Gellhorn as well. However, the reality is more complicated. Moorehead notes that “often, [Hemingway and Gellhorn] walked together around Madrid, buying silver and jewelry ‘like specula- tors’” (''Gellhorn ''136), and Kert notes that Hemingway’s sidekick Sidney Franklin not only scrounged food for Hemingway but also “found bargains in furs and perfumes” (297). Hemingway must have found Gellhorn’s fur acceptable, indeed attractive, since she wore it when ac- companying him in 1937 to the Second Congress of American Writers, where he previewed The Spanish Earth, showing an excerpt from it, and gave his famous speech, “Fascism is a Lie”; Gellhorn gave a speech the following day. In a 1937 radio broadcast from Madrid to the United States, Gellhorn “stressed for her radio listeners the composure of Madrid’s population,” noting the irony that “while various staples were scarce, it was possible to purchase ‘furs, fine silk stockings, and beautiful clothes, French perfume, victrolas, wrist watches, and every imaginable luxury’” (Rollyson 115). In order to make such broadcasts, she was required to “dash across the road to the Telefonica, where Madrid’s only radio studio was based, at the moment of peak evening shelling” (Moorehead, ''Gellhorn'' 139). But despite her radio broadcasts and her journalism, she upbraided herself during this same period, “fretting about her own idleness, her visits to the dressmaker and furrier  ‘Stupid day, stupid woman. I am wasting everything’” (Moorehead, ''Gellhorn'' 138)