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Michael McNamara: Into Something Rich and Strange
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The Private Hemingway – Homophobe or Homosexual?
In his personal life, Hemingway
seemed to hold varying and opposing views about homosexuality. His relationship with
Gertrude Stein shows his general acceptance of lesbians. However, he made many statements
that show he was less accepting of gay males. "In the thirties," biographer
James Mellow writes, "his views on writing and writers were blunt and often vulgar in
print and in private, all part of his effort to stress his masculine pursuits in the
literary world, particularly among the New York intelligentsia. He would pepper his
published texts and letters with slurring references to homosexual writers" (397). In
the posthumously published A Moveable Feast, Hemingway has a conversation about sex
with Stein. He admits that he "had certain prejudices against homosexuality
since...[he] knew its more primitive aspects" (18). His main experience, he claims,
with male homosexuality is its seediest underside where threatening tramps tried to attack
boys. With these prejudices, he attempts to hold a conversation with Stein, but she sees
through his apprehension and disgust. They hold an uncomfortable conversation until
finally Stein admits:
One must wonder if Stein, who counted many homosexual male companions in
her charmed Parisian circle, really did say such things or if it was Hemingway’s
creative imagination being affected by his homophobia. |
Trapped in the Gap - Turn-of-the-century American Masculinity
In the introduction to his book American
Manhood, E. Anthony Rotundo reminds us that, "Manhood is not a social edict
determined on high and enforced by law. As a human invention, manhood is learned, used,
reinforced, and reshaped by individuals in the course of life" (7). The fluidity of
masculinity’s definition caused Hemingway to suffer because he grew up in a gap
between two separate definitions — the prudish ideas of nineteenth century Victorian
American culture and the more modern ideas of the twentieth century. In
nineteenth century America, Rotundo claims, the path to manhood was less clearly marked
than it is today. However, the distinction between being a boy and being a man was much
stronger than it is now. Boys were allowed to be playful, whereas men were expected to be
distinguished and somber. The line between boyhood and manhood was clearly drawn, but
there was not an equally clear path for boys to follow so that they could get across that
line.American men in the 1800s also
felt conflict in their gender roles. "As small boys, they were dressed in the
clothing and hairstyles of girls" (7). This was especially true of Hemingway. Mellow
writes that Hemingway’s mother Grace "had an unexplained penchant for wanting to
pass off her two eldest children, Madelline and Ernest, as twins, sometimes in dresses and
floppy or organdy hats, or, in the summer, in boy’s overalls" (11). Meanwhile,
"middle-class culture seemed to place gender labels everywhere. A man’s
aggressions were male; his conscience, female; his desire to conquer, male; his urge to
nurture, female; his need for work and worldly achievement, male; his wish to stay home
and enjoy quiet leisure, female." (8) This "inner woman" was not
necessarily the problem. However, the society of the Victorian era, Rotundo believes,
"elevated gender to such a high level of moral and political meaning [that] a man
with feminine qualities was bound to face difficulties" (265). The extremely
effeminate man who did not fit into society’s defined gender role was bound to have
problem but so was the extremely masculine man who could not control his masculine
impulses. |
| In the twentieth century, with rises
in urbanization and industrialization, American men became less focused on masculine
somberness and spent more time concerned with luxuries. Rotundo writes, "Certain uses
of leisure time and certain consumer tastes became marks of manliness — whereas one
hundred years before, any fondness for leisure or material goods would have been scorned
as effeminate (283)." With industrialization came the creation of the relaxing modern
phenomenon of the weekend. Through this, men became more domesticated, spending more time
at home with wives and children. Because of these switches or in spite of them, the
remaining qualities now considered truly masculine, "the competitive, aggressive
drives— though still defined as male— [were] seen with less fear and more
reverence. We think of them as vital contents of a man’s true self in an era when the
true self is regarded as sacrosanct" (Rotundo, 286). However, in a time when men were
able to be emotional in ways that had previously been allowable only in women, and society
was becoming more female, it was becoming increasingly more difficult for men to relate to
their "male passion."One way to deal with this
problem was through what Rotundo calls the "existential hero." This man cannot
deal with his true masculine impulses within modern society, so he lives outside of it in
order to be able to keep his masculinity pure from civilization’s influence.
Rotundo’s existential hero has been "embodied in such popular figures as
Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, and John Wayne (286)." The image of masculinity
that Hemingway created in his novels was idealized by American popular culture; however,
Hemingway himself felt more conflict than his characters living on the fringe ever did. |
"Hemingway’s Pain" – The Failure of the Masculine Mentor
Benjamin Kriegel in his essay
"Hemingway’s Pain" writes of the search held by many individual men for an
adoptive-father to tell them that:
For many, Hemingway was the idealization of becoming a man, and
therefore he was idolized by adolescent and grown men everywhere. He became a celebrity;
his every move was recorded as if he were a Hollywood movie star. His work, for a time,
became definitive of American masculinity. |
"The Women Within" – The Emasculation of Homosexuals
As the Victorian age gave way to
more modern sensibility and all men were attempting to establish a new place within this
sensibility, homosexuals were also finding their own place. Homosexuality, of course,
already had a long history before the late nineteenth century when the word
‘homosexual’ entered popular usage in the United States. The name represented
something new. Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick writes that:
At the same time, because of this new label and increased urbanization, "men and women whose sexual desires focused on their own sex began to think of themselves as separate social groups. Those who lived in large cities formed communities within the whole, an experience that fostered a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Rotundo, 275)." The stronger that sense became, the stronger the idea that homosexuality was an innate human characteristic became. The identifier ‘homosexual’ made homosexuality seem less like a disease, a bad habit, or a passing fancy and more like it was something in-born1. Male homosexuals were considered to have been born with the soul of a woman. Before this, too much effeminacy had been the traditional marker of a male who engaged in homosexuality, but with the creation of an other known as the homosexual, this issue became more complicated. Now, to avoid being thought of as someone who practiced homosexuality, it was not enough to avoid being caught in action; instead, one had to avoid being thought of as part of that other group. Through this, the marker became not an abundance of feminine qualities; instead a lack of enough masculinity marked homosexuals. Rotundo writes:
Hemingway obviously felt this pressure to be masculine enough to avoid this stigma. As an artist, he was part of a profession that was often considered feminine, especially in the United States, and had many homosexual members. His attacks against these members show his insecurity. Although he was criticizing their literature, he focused his attacks on their sexuality, drawing attention to his insecurity. These insecurities were only fueled by the McAlmon rumors and are known to have affected his work. In the first manuscript version of the "The End of Something," Mellow writes, after Nick Adams ended his relationship with Marjorie, Hemingway wrote that "He lay there until he felt Bill’s arm on his shoulder. He felt Bill coming before he felt his touch." However, Hemingway changed this section twice, making it less physical each time. Mellow believed that, "In this story in which a young man sends his girl away, reverting to the companionship of another male, Hemingway may have wanted to avoid any sense of homosexual connection...The changes, that is, seem to have been dictated more by the author’s fearfulness than by the narrative logic of the story (109)." |
| Comely and Scholes explain
Hemingway’s definition of maric—n in a similar way; Hemingway was trying
to distance himself from homosexuality by the tone of the definition. The use of the word
‘fags’ wasn’t added until after the first draft. However, it is not enough
to say that Hemingway’s writing was not homophobic because he was fearful of his own
image — this fear is an inherent part of homophobia anyway.A more complex answer
to Hemingway’s homophobia comes from the reverse of Hemingway’s fear. This
stigma of masculinity means that in order to not be considered a homosexual, one must be
enough of a man. For this to be true, then, the definition of homosexual must be
emasculated. Homosexual men cannot be masculine under this definition and are forced
create a new maleness for themselves. Like Hemingway and other men leaving the Victorian
age and entering the twentieth century, homosexuals were forced to forge a new path for
their own adult manhood while also questioning their gender and sexual identity. Hemingway
identified with homosexual men for this reason and with this empathy explored homosexual
issues fairly in a number of his short stories. |
