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That Philip, the seeming playboy-correspondent, is involved in something secret and serious is realized even by the idiot hotel manager, a point emphasized not in the 1937 Madrid typescript but in Hemingway’s 1938 Key West revision of the play. But dim Dorothy, who lives with Philip in adjoining rooms at the Hotel Florida, never suspects his other life, the resulting {{pg|389|390}} dramatic irony redounding always to Philip’s credit. Philip’s apologia for loving Dorothy sounds instead like an indictment: “Granted she’s lazy and spoiled, and rather stupid, and enormously on the make. Still she’s very beautiful, very friendly, and very charming and rather innocent—and quite brave.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=44}} While Dorothy is here damned by faint praise, Philip’s description calls his own values into question. Philip loves her because of her superficial qualities, only his appreciation of her bravery hinting at something deeper. In this sense, they are well matched, each largely drawn to the other because of physical size and sexual appeal. Dorothy is referred to as “that great big blonde,”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=41}} and she is attracted by Philip’s sexual prowess,{{efn|Hemingway here engages in an ego-bolstering move, since Gellhorn “did not find [Hemingway] physically attractive” and sex with Hemingway “was never very good.” {{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|''Gellhorn''|pp=114, 135}} Moorehead notes that Gellhorn “told a friend [in a 1950 letter], [that] all through the months in Spain she went to bed with Hemingway ‘as little as she could manage’: My ‘whole memory of sex with Ernest is the invention of excuses and failing that, the hope it would soon be over’.”{{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|pp=135-136}}''Gellhorn''}} noting that “he made me happier than anyone has ever made me.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=47}} When he throws her over, asserting, “You’re uneducated, you’re useless, you’re a fool and you’re lazy,” she responds, “Maybe the others. But I’m not useless.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=83}} She here indirectly refers to her sexual utility, which Philip identifies as “a commodity you shouldn’t pay too high a price for.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=83}}  Hurt and angry, Dorothy retaliates by asking Philip, “Did it ever occur to you that you’re a commodity, too? A commodity one shouldn’t pay too high a price for.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=84}} Philip is amused, never having had to think of himself as a sexual object, indeed a whore (“commodity” an economic term saturated with Marxist significance). But Dorothy does not have the luxury of Philip’s laughter. She is psychologically vulnerable to the charge, for “women who push the boundaries of gender are censured for such behaviors” in gender- specific ways.{{sfn|Herbert|1998|p=2}} Just as the ''milicianas'' were figured forth as whores to discourage their presence at the front lines and to render them a familiar female type if they stayed, so too is Dorothy when she will neither leave the war front for the home front nor deny the interrelationship of war front and home front that she herself has created and represents.
That Philip, the seeming playboy-correspondent, is involved in something secret and serious is realized even by the idiot hotel manager, a point emphasized not in the 1937 Madrid typescript but in Hemingway’s 1938 Key West revision of the play. But dim Dorothy, who lives with Philip in adjoining rooms at the Hotel Florida, never suspects his other life, the resulting {{pg|389|390}} dramatic irony redounding always to Philip’s credit. Philip’s apologia for loving Dorothy sounds instead like an indictment: “Granted she’s lazy and spoiled, and rather stupid, and enormously on the make. Still she’s very beautiful, very friendly, and very charming and rather innocent—and quite brave.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=44}} While Dorothy is here damned by faint praise, Philip’s description calls his own values into question. Philip loves her because of her superficial qualities, only his appreciation of her bravery hinting at something deeper. In this sense, they are well matched, each largely drawn to the other because of physical size and sexual appeal. Dorothy is referred to as “that great big blonde,”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=41}} and she is attracted by Philip’s sexual prowess,{{efn|Hemingway here engages in an ego-bolstering move, since Gellhorn “did not find [Hemingway] physically attractive” and sex with Hemingway “was never very good.” {{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|''Gellhorn''|pp=114, 135}} Moorehead notes that Gellhorn “told a friend [in a 1950 letter], [that] all through the months in Spain she went to bed with Hemingway ‘as little as she could manage’: My ‘whole memory of sex with Ernest is the invention of excuses and failing that, the hope it would soon be over’.”{{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|pp=135-136}}''Gellhorn''}} noting that “he made me happier than anyone has ever made me.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=47}} When he throws her over, asserting, “You’re uneducated, you’re useless, you’re a fool and you’re lazy,” she responds, “Maybe the others. But I’m not useless.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=83}} She here indirectly refers to her sexual utility, which Philip identifies as “a commodity you shouldn’t pay too high a price for.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=83}}  Hurt and angry, Dorothy retaliates by asking Philip, “Did it ever occur to you that you’re a commodity, too? A commodity one shouldn’t pay too high a price for.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=84}} Philip is amused, never having had to think of himself as a sexual object, indeed a whore (“commodity” an economic term saturated with Marxist significance). But Dorothy does not have the luxury of Philip’s laughter. She is psychologically vulnerable to the charge, for “women who push the boundaries of gender are censured for such behaviors” in gender- specific ways.{{sfn|Herbert|1998|p=2}} Just as the ''milicianas'' were figured forth as whores to discourage their presence at the front lines and to render them a familiar female type if they stayed, so too is Dorothy when she will neither leave the war front for the home front nor deny the interrelationship of war front and home front that she herself has created and represents.


The correlation between Dorothy and the whore would thus seem to be historically inevitable, a correlation that develops from the play’s very first short scene, which exists solely to provide a gloss on the play. A whore sees the sign on the door to Dorothy’s room: “Working. Do Not Disturb” (3). When she asks her soldier-customer to read it to her, he responds with contempt: “So that’s what I’d draw. A literary one. The hell with it” (3). She responds—to the sign? to his contempt?—with “a dry high, hard laugh,” asserting, “I’ll get me a sign like that too” (3). The stage goes dark and the scene ends, these allegorical characters disappearing forever, having provided their implicit commentary on all that follows. {{pg|390|391}}
The correlation between Dorothy and the whore would thus seem to be historically inevitable, a correlation that develops from the play’s very first short scene, which exists solely to provide a gloss on the play. A whore sees the sign on the door to Dorothy’s room: “Working. Do Not Disturb.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=3}} When she asks her soldier-customer to read it to her, he responds with contempt: “So that’s what I’d draw. A literary one. The hell with it” (3). She responds—to the sign? to his contempt?—with “a dry high, hard laugh,” asserting, “I’ll get me a sign like that too” (3). The stage goes dark and the scene ends, these allegorical characters disappearing forever, having provided their implicit commentary on all that follows. {{pg|390|391}}


In the next scene Anita—“a Moorish tart” as the stage directions initially refer to her rather than by name—is brought by Philip to Dorothy’s room, where Anita objects to the sign because “all the time working, isn’t fair” (10). She insists that Dorothy give her the sign as a means of forestalling unfair competition. Anita is, in fact, in competition with Dorothy for Philip’s affections and his sexual favors. At one level, the play presents a choice between Dorothy and Anita. And the final scene of the play presents the high-minded Philip, having rejected Dorothy, initiating a sexual encounter with Anita. Sexuality without strings is preferable to the entanglements of love and marriage when one has committed oneself to fighting for the Cause, although this loveless encounter seems like torture to Max, who responds to it exactly as he does to an interrogation scene earlier (76, 85). In “Night Before Battle,” one of the Spanish Civil War stories that Hemingway blocked out while revising ''The Fifth Column'' in Key West, the only difference between “two American girls at the Florida [who are] newspaper correspondents” and two prostitutes is that a soldier must talk to the female war correspondents before sex, while he may simply pay the prostitutes for their sexual services (118). Max’s confused articulation of Dorothy Bridges’ name—“Britches?” (64)—reinforces her redefined identity as sexual object, indeed as whore.
In the next scene Anita—“a Moorish tart” as the stage directions initially refer to her rather than by name—is brought by Philip to Dorothy’s room, where Anita objects to the sign because “all the time working, isn’t fair” (10). She insists that Dorothy give her the sign as a means of forestalling unfair competition. Anita is, in fact, in competition with Dorothy for Philip’s affections and his sexual favors. At one level, the play presents a choice between Dorothy and Anita. And the final scene of the play presents the high-minded Philip, having rejected Dorothy, initiating a sexual encounter with Anita. Sexuality without strings is preferable to the entanglements of love and marriage when one has committed oneself to fighting for the Cause, although this loveless encounter seems like torture to Max, who responds to it exactly as he does to an interrogation scene earlier (76, 85). In “Night Before Battle,” one of the Spanish Civil War stories that Hemingway blocked out while revising ''The Fifth Column'' in Key West, the only difference between “two American girls at the Florida [who are] newspaper correspondents” and two prostitutes is that a soldier must talk to the female war correspondents before sex, while he may simply pay the prostitutes for their sexual services (118). Max’s confused articulation of Dorothy Bridges’ name—“Britches?” (64)—reinforces her redefined identity as sexual object, indeed as whore.
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