Machism, Self-doubt and Gender Achievement in The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway, the poster child of modernism’s lost generation, often tackles masculinity and manhood in the subjects of his novels, employing characters that reflect parts of himself and the other guys of this wasted generation to explore the psychosocial impacts of war and other struggles on guys. The Sun Also Rises is no exception to the rule, with some scholars arguing that the “question of gender constitutes the basis of the story,” putting the significance of the masculine archetype into focus (Elliot 77). There are innumerable references to masculinity which occupy a position in stark contrast to the insecurities that most of the male characters have. Beyond the insights that Hemingway gives the reader into the thoughts and fears of these men, the reader can also glimpse into the author’s focus on masculinity in his descriptive style, and his choice of subjects. Hemingway appears fascinated, and possibly disturbed by the masculinity and masculine insecurities that have so permeated his novel. What’s more, he frames masculinity through culture, which assists to establish how society is implicated in masculinity via gender functionality.

Early on in the novel, Hemingway makes use of Jake as a car to introduce the unrealistic and unattainable standards that society has established for masculinity. “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters” (18). As Robert Cohn attempts to convince Jake to embark on a South American adventure and airs issues that he feels that his life is passing him by, Jake makes this succinct remark that is wealthy in its implications regarding masculinity. The subject of bullfighting alone is 1 steeped in macho masculine metaphor. An occasion in which a man, dressed and idolized in extravagant uniform, exerts his force over a gargantuan bull in a battle to the death represents the social expectations for men to be dominant, controlling, violent individuals who are at the top of the food chain, gastronomically, socially, and sexually. This comment demonstrates Jake’s negativity towards his own life, lacking in his potential to dominate sexually, and also suggests that if a man is not literally or otherwise grabbing a bull by its horns, he won’t live a fulfilled life. Robert’s response shows an interesting view to the contrary. “I’m not interested in bull-fighters. That’s an abnormal life” (ten). Here, Robert is calling out this reflection of masculine expectations as warped, suggesting that the idolization of the bull-fighter and what he culturally and socially represents is not wholesome.

The introduction of Robert as a character gives the reader a look at how gender derived inferiority is at play in the novel. Very first, the discussion of boxing and the way in which Cohn used it to counter the insecurities that he felt is the initial coupling of masculinity with violence in the novel. He was created to feel inferior as a Jewish student at Princeton and resorts to violence as a defense. Subsequent, he is shown to be inferior to Frances, his fiancee. “I watched him stroll back to the café holding his paper. I rather liked him and evidently she led him quite a life” (7). This comment, from Jake’s point of view, suggests that Robert is incapable of major Frances in life, that she is in manage of the relationship. Robert seems to be aware of this inferiority as his realization that “he had not been every little thing to his very first wife” is described in Chapter 2 (8). The inability to lead in romantic relationships is an issue that is repeatedly addressed all through the novel, for numerous male characters. Jake cannot get Brett to commit to him because of his impotence and Mike cannot maintain Brett from exploring other sexual relationships. Although this requires an implied anti-feminist stance towards the submissive part of females in relationships, it does aid highlight how every single of these men feel inadequate in their masculinity.

Jake, our story’s narrator, is a dysfunctional solution of socially-defined gender expectations. His self awareness and homophobia are highlighted early on in the novel. “Somehow they constantly produced me angry. I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you need to be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one particular, any one, something to shatter that superior, simpering composure” (20). In this statement, the reader is exposed to Jake’s homophobia and tendency to resort to violence although revealing society’s attitude towards homosexuality. This concept that homosexuals need to be noticed as funny and place up with is disgusting and intolerant, but Jake can't even bring himself to believe that kindly of them. The truth that he perceives them to be composing themselves in an impacted, superior style appears to indicate a self awareness and inferiority that Jake might really feel, due to his impotence.

Scholar Ira Elliott illuminates this instance, “Jake’s attitude toward the homosexuals—the way he degrades them and casts them as his rivals,” reveals, “the extent to which sexual categories and gender roles are cultural constructions” (78). He continues to clarify that gender – not to be confused with biological sex – expressions of any sort are effectively efficiency art installments, with an individual mirroring the constructed views of what is masculine and what is feminine in their behavior. There is neither a cranial implant nor a gland sending messages that define the male or female, society sets those parameters. Elliott argues that we conform to expressions of socialized gender and execute and behave about these gender structures. He supports this contention by examining the ways in which Jake gathers his info in the encounter with the homosexuals. Jake deduces their sexual orientation primarily based on the gestures and designs of the guys. These behaviors and traits, such as clothing or hairstyle, are set against societal definitions of gender and sexuality. Mr. Barnes assumes their sexual preference based strictly on their behavior and appearance, which does look to indicate that gender is a extremely socialized cultural construct (Elliott 78). Operating inside these understandings, Jake’s disgust most likely stems from the concept that inside this binary social structure of gender, there is no acceptable feminized male. Therefore, he perceives these males to be performing as female, which would cause some cognitive dissonance on Jake’s portion and outcomes in his adverse feelings towards them.

James A. Puckett echoes the idea of gender functionality getting a social and cultural a single and specifically references The Sun Also Rises. “Masculinity for Hemingway’s characters is beneath continuous negotiation and necessarily relies upon the judgment of other folks, holding no significance outdoors of a social context” (126). He supports this claim by analyzing the character Francis Macaomber, who struggles with cowardliness and fear and the way he is judged by his public audience – namely his wife – by means of societal lenses of acceptable and acceptable masculinity.

When Jake recounts his recovery in the Italian hospital in the war, he is reminded of the colonel who visited him. “I was all bandaged up. But they had told him about it. Then he made that superb speech: ‘You, a foreigner, an Englishman’ (any foreigner was an Englishman) ‘have provided much more than your life’” (31). In claiming that Jake’s erectile dysfunction is worse than death, the colonel speaks on behalf of a gendered neighborhood in which the potential to carry out sexually has a lot more social value than life or service. This is further demonstrative of the twisted priorities of the gendered social expectations for guys. It is crucial to note that the characters accountable for perpetuating these expectations are not just the males, but the ladies as properly. Brett reinforces these warped values by refusing a commitment to Jake on account of his impotence.

Jake’s quite impotence is a crucial facet in interpreting gender in The Sun Also Rises. It appears that if Hemingway truly adopted the hyper-masculinized expectations of society, that he would not have created his protagonist, Jake, impotent. That quality would not be a single that he would want his readers to positively associate with the novel or himself, by extension. It begs readers to question that deliberate selection and its significance to the plot. New Jersey City University English professor David Blackmore provides this suggestion, “I would posit that Jake’s emasculation functions as a metaphor for the whole complex of his anxieties about masculinity and sexuality” (53). This argument seems completely affordable and likely, offered the frequency with which phallic imagery is met with anxiousness from Jake. Blackmore focuses a lot more closely on the nature of Jake’s impotence, pointing out that Hemingway cited Jake’s situation in a 1951 letter, ““Jake has lost his penis but not his testicles or spermatic cord – and as a result not his sexual desire” (66). Had Hemingway opted for the reversal of that, it would substantially modify the interpretation of Jake and his circumstance. Blackmore explains, “if want rather than behavior defines sexual identity, Jake need to have not carry out heterosexually in order to be a heterosexual” (54). This concept of desire trumping performance in some way conflicts with the notion that Hemingway is playing with gender as efficiency. Nevertheless, desire’s value in modernist literature tends to make Blackmore’s case an interesting and critical point of view that it would be unwise to dismiss.

Possibly what 1st appears to be conflict between the concepts of sexual wish and gender identity that is observed in Jake’s character is really another way in which Hemingway is fighting the confines of gender performance brought on by culture’s binary gender definitions. By picking to juxtapose Jake’s disability with his heterosexual need, the author discredits and dissolves the energy of gender overall performance and the norms surrounding it.

Modernist scholar Greg Forter has his personal view on male social energy and male sexuality. Hemingway’s selection to divorce Jake and his physical manhood show how tough it was for males in modernism to determine as men. Forter continues, “the wound cuts them off from the supply of their personal undoubted virility – a supply that, in our cultural imaginary, is the root of male social power as well” (26). Once once more, there is a suggestion that culture has dictated meaningless criteria for what constitutes masculinity and masculine power. Nevertheless, Forter poses a relatively novel claim, stating that there is a duality to the impact of Jake’s affliction. Not only does the veteran shed the phallic, dominating energy of the masculine male, but he also loses the “genteel, sentimental, and implicitly feminine masculinity,” which leaves him in a psycho-sexual limbo (26). When gender is forced into a male-female system in which there is a binary inside each category – male masculinity and female masculinity – there is an empty space lying on a spectrum not represented by the binary technique. Jake lies, if readers are to accept Forter’s argument, in that zone, which Hemingway seems to be aware of. Even Jake is arguably conscious enough of his habitation in this no-man’s land, and his feeling out of location reveals itself in the implicit anxieties regarding masculinity that he displays all through the novel.

In Paris, Jake walks previous the statue of Marshal Ney, who seems to be a painful reminder of Jake’s impotence and associated lack of energy. “He looked very fine, Marshal Ney in his prime-boots, gesturing with his sword amongst the green new horse-chestnut leaves” (29) The pointing and directing actions and the sword itself speak to the phallic nature of the statue. The new green development of the leaves suggests propagation, a reproductive act for which Jake is ill-equipped. It is crucial to note that this is an critical figure of sexual masculinity, combined with a weapon. Hemingway a lot more than after associates male sex imagery with handle and violence or weaponry.

At the novel’s close, the reader sees the final interaction in between Brett and Jake in the taxi in what is, once again, filled with phallic imagery. “Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The automobile slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me” (247). The policeman is “mounted,” probably an intentional option of words which has sexual connotations. Mounting an animal suggests a sexual dominance and energy, which Jake lacks. The policeman and his baton, respectively representative of power and violence and male genitalia, is in further contrast to Jake’s impotence. They are pressed with each other, but only as the outcome of the handle and energy exerted by this policeman, not in reaction to Jake’s actions. The officer’s role, one particular of – at the time – masculine energy and physical control, could be interpreted as one more instance of how gender functionality manifests itself inside a culture. Just as culture has assigned qualities to gender which we mirror inside society, those gender assignments and associated performances have historically extended themselves to the workplace, with distinct gendered performances being anticipated of certain professions, such as police work or military service, the latter becoming a part consistently presented in Hemingway’s functions.

Hemingway’s own macho-presenting overall performance and his written fixation on violence and power could recommend that he could have looked unfavorably on guys who didn’t fit the standard masculine gender mold. Nonetheless, with an impotent protagonist, it is clear that he is much more sympathetic to masculine insecurities that arise from the expectations that shape and fail the males in his stories. Additionally, study suggests that Hemingway may possibly have also viewed gender far more complicatedly than a single may possibly assume, as he utilizes the social and cultural manifestations of gender to display and normalize male insecurities. In using gender constructions and gender efficiency within this function, Hemingway is in a way putting the culture that designs these systems on trial, in a critique that does not align itself with the way Hemingway’s masculine persona and legacy have been continuously interpreted.



Works Cited

Blackmore, David. ” ‘In New York It’d Mean I Was A…’ “: Masculinity Anxiousness And Period Discourses Of Sexuality In “The Sun Also Rises.” Hemingway Overview, vol. 18, no. 1, 1998, pp. 49-67. Academic Search Premier, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.csupueblo.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=0de95728-eee1-44a8–eightb97–986627bbdaf4%four0sessionmgr10five&vid=19&hid=112. Accessed 22 November 2016.

Elliot, Ira. “Performance Art: Jake Barnes And ‘Masculine’ Signification In The Sun Also Rises.” American Literature: A Journal Of Literary History, Criticism, And Bibliography, vol. 67, no. 1 1995, pp. 77-94. MLA International Bibliography, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.csupueblo.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=22&sid=0de95728-eee1-44aeight–8b97–986627bbdaf4%four0sessionmgr10five&hid=112. Accessed 22 November 2016.

Forter, Greg. “Melancholy Modernism: Gender And The Politics Of Mourning In The Sun Also Rises. (Articles).” The Hemingway Review, vol. 22, no. 1 2002. Literature Resource Center, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.csupueblo.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=21&sid=0de95728-eee1-44a8–eightb97–986627bbdaffour%four0sessionmgr10five&hid=112. Accessed 22 November 2016.

Puckett, James A. “Sex Explains It All.” Studies In American Naturalism, vol. eight, no.two, 2013, pp. 125-149. Academic Search Premier, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.csupueblo.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=17&sid=0de95728-eee1-44a8–eightb97–986627bbdaf4%40sessionmgr10five&hid=11two. Accessed 22 November 2016.