|
|
|
Fetterley, Judith. "Hemingway's 'Resentful Cryptogram'"
In Monteiro, In 1976, Judith Fetterley published this article in the Journal of Popular Culture (10 [Summer 1976]: 203-214). Comparing the novel to Erich Segal's Love Story, Fetterley admits that A Farewell to Arms is much more complicated, in particular because of its opposites--
A feminist reading of the novel, then, equates idealization with hostility; the sign of hostility in this novel, says Fetterley, is that Catherine dies "because she is a woman." Fetterley observes, accurately, that the opening attitude toward women at the Italian front is "solely sexual" (118). Of course, she picks on Rinaldi as the archetype of this attitude [without noting that Hemingway also sees how shallow it is and the Lt. Henry transcends this attitude]. She even lambastes the poor priest as the archetype of the man without women as an ideal of the culture (119). Fetterley finds another easy target in the moronic doctor who let Catherine bleed to death. She expresses resentment over his incompetence, only as a way of blaming Lt. Henry for not spotting the phony soon enough; instead, she attacks the doctor's paternalism in pooh-poohing Catherine's fear that she might die in childbirth. When she states that "Catherine's death is finally seen as a childish and irresponsible act of abandonment" (119), she is characterizing the doctor's stupid attitude, but she neglects to separate his opinion from Frederic's or Hemingway's. Fetterley's essay sparked considerable reaction [and I can hardly stand to read it because it is so crippled by sheer feminist loathing of males in a way that totally undercuts the bravery of the heroine], most especially in her claim that the equation between Frederic and the baby somehow connects with strangling due to the Othello allusion that she makes [Hey, Judith! How many other modern women characters in man-written novels are bright enough to use Shakespeare on their men?] all comes together to indicate that Frederic WANTS Catherine dead, unconsciously, of course. [Doesn't anyone realize that she died years before the narrator, Frederic, brings himself to tell this story, so that everything in it, including his perception of the war, is tainted by the knowledge and pain of her death? How many times has it rained in those years?] Fetterley claims that Frederic SEES women in authority "as smug, self-righteous, critical, anti-sexual, and sadistic" (120). Of course, Fetterley picks on Frederic's dealings with the nurses in Milan before his love of Catherine has fully transformed him. Though she does also point to Frederic's hustling the nurses out of Catherine's death chamber in the Swiss hospital. Shame on his for being so rude to those officious dolts! How dare he ask for privacy! After, correctly, attacking Frederic for being egotistical when he is brought to Milan, Fetterley [ignoring Van Campen's actual intentions and jealousy of Frederic] notes that Frederic deals with women on the basis of their sexuality [not a completely unfair judgment early in the novel, though it stops at the Swiss border, if not before], she lobs the tautology that "Frederic would never have fallen in love with Catherine if she were not beautiful" (121-122). [True, she is ranked #1 by Rinaldi, but it's not just her beauty--maybe not even her beauty--that hooks Frederic but her craziness, her (gasp!) vulnerability, shown in that crazy game when she manipulates Frederic into pretending he's her dead fiance come back from the war. Look, Judith! Catherine is in control! Oh, ignore that and instead point to how Frederic was in control when he was with the whores.] {Sorry, folks, I can't stand to read any more of this clap-trap and half-truth and smoldering innuendo. I skimmed the rest of the article, hoping that the feminist perspective might somehow illuminate something worthy about the novel or the characters, but it's all attack, based almost exclusively on the characters in the first half of the book. Frankly, I'm disappointed. I had hoped a feminist reading would point out Catherine's strength, her desperate motivation, her bravery and "grace under pressure," but this essay only attacks the guys, who are mostly easy targets. I think Fetterley lost me when she said that we only cry for the men in the book--the hemorrhaging soldier in the ambulance above Henry who prefigures Catherine's death, in particular. Not true. Catherine Barkley is the real "hero" of this novel; Frederic is only the protagonist. The whole house of cards argument falls apart, too, if one doesn't buy her premise that idealization equates with hostility. When Frederic is riding the rails to get back to Catherine, his dream is ultimately protective, not "hostile." Note Charles Anderson's view of this passage.} |
|
|
Copyright
and Permission:
This web on Ernest Hemingway's early novel was begun under a small grant from the
VCCS, which holds copyright. © 2001 by the