Gender Identity and the Modern Condition in The Sun Also Rises

Jennifer Banach Following his literary debut in Paris with the publication of Three Stories and Ten Poems and his subsequent introduction to American audiences with the short-story collection In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926. The book, which presented an intense portrait of the modern world through an emotionally disfigured group of American expatriates living in France and Spain during the years immediately following World War I, met with immediate success and propelled its author to literary stardom. Chronicling the deepest psychological effects of the war and presenting a hauntingly candid look at a society struggling to redefine itself and reconsider its values in the conflicts unsettling aftermath, Hemingway was able to present a fictional drama of a uniquely personal nature, using his characters to yield deeply complex insights into the human condition. More than eighty years later, The Sun Also Rises remains one of Hemingways most significant novels and is also recognized as one of the most important works within the canon of American literature. Examining the reasons for the novels lasting success, one is compelled to consider first its extraordinary characters: they seem infinitely complex and haunt the reader long after the book is set down. In fact, despite the revolutionary style of The Sun Also Rises, which has commanded the attention of scholars and critics with its lean, precise prose, the deepest and most significant concerns of the novel begin with Hemingways treatment of character. Through its dynamic characters, such as Jake Barnes, Robert Cohn, and Lady Brett Ashley, Hemingway is able to demonstrate the enormity of the effects of World War I. The book presents a startling discourse on gender roles in modern times alongside considerations of topics such as modern sexuality, androgyny, and the endurance (or extinction) of traditional models of
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romance in the postwar world. It raises questions about identity, challenging conventional definitions of manhood and womanhood, and ruminates on the bounds of human nature, asking which parts of oneself, if any, may remain unchanged and how loss can affect ones core identity. Through its exploration of these topics, the novel is also able to speak about the complexity of modern relationships, both sexual and platonic, utilizing Jakes impotence as an allegory of the condition of the modern world. World War I and the staggering amount of injury, death, and loss it inflicted on the generation that fought in it threw into question traditional notions of love and romance, challenged religious faith, and raised moral issues. An entire generation underwent an overwhelming loss of innocence, making it impossible for them to continue living as they had before the war. The changes were of such great significance that they were manifested in peoples everyday behavior and appearance, with the war affecting the very way that people identified themselves. The issue of gender identity and its correlation to the greater human condition, which could no longer be denied, became a key focus for Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises. Within the novel, one finds that traditional gender roles are often overturned and definitions of gender blurred, making the characters representative of an androgyny that extends beyond the sexual. In other words, the sexual androgyny represented by the characters in the novel has its basis in genderwomen act and even dress in a masculine manner, and men possess characteristics typically identified as feminineand their androgyny performs as an allegorical representation of a larger cultural condition tangled up in the postwar spirit of uncertainty. This androgyny, defined by scholar Mark Spilka in his book Hemingways Quarrel with Androgyny as a mixture or exchange of traditionally male and female traits, roles, activities, and sexual positions, was the symptom of an existential crisis born of the postwar world in which old values were no longer functional and even those most basic parts of human nature had to be reevaluated. As Spilka
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points out, Hemingway would continue to grapple with the notion of androgyny throughout the entirety of his career, but in The Sun Also Rises his interest in the androgynous makeup of men and women had begun with the mannish Lady Brett Ashley and the unmanned Jake Barnes (1). In this novel Hemingway first presented androgyny as an edenic garden that a man must lose or leave (4). Indeed, Spilka demonstrates, the strangely worded damned good time that Brett and Jake cannot attain is not the kind of damned good time one might associate with the debauchery of the Jazz Age, but rather romantic love itself (2). While Spilka speculates that Hemingways interest in androgyny may have, at least in part, been formed as a result of his own androgynous upbringing and Victorian forebears, he also recognizes the evolution of androgyny as a societal conditiona wounding condition or bedeviling conditiona side effect brought about by the postwar extinction of the romantic love that Brett and Jake crave and the death of old conceptions of masculine and feminine (3). Indeed, as androgyny becomes a symbol of the modern condition, so too do the characters of the novel take on allegorical roles. Despite these roles, the men and women who inhabit The Sun Also Rises are remarkably complex characters who bring to life questions of how the most basic parts of an individuals nature may be altered by war and loss. They embody the shifts in gender roles that were exhibited in real life throughout the 1920s and reinforce the significance of modern problems such as the expiration of traditional notions of masculinity and femininity and the uncertainty of human nature. In fact, Hemingway chose to open the book with a powerful reference to genderspecifically, an image of masculinity. The story begins with Jake Barnes introducing Robert Cohn, a former middleweight boxing champion of Princeton (11). However, this initial image of masculinity is promptly undercut when Jake suggests that Cohn adopted his masculine qualities as a survival device, as protection against the emotional injury of being tormented for his Jewish heritage. Jake tells us, He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it,
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but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton (11). From the opening lines of the novel, then, it is suggested that in the modern world masculinity is not rooted solely in mere biology. Rather, it is something that can be learned and performed, its definition alterable in accordance with circumstances. Thus Hemingway chooses to begin with a description that registers the uncertainty of what it means to be a man in the world Cohn and Jake inhabit, and this description becomes a powerful reminder of the myth of gender in modern times. Robert Cohn is the image of machismo shattered, and readers are prompted to read the book questioning the most basic assumptions about what it means to be a man. As Hemingway further develops the character, we learn that Cohns wife has left him and that he is now having an affair with a commanding woman who only wishes to take care of herself. He is denigrated by the other men and allows himself to be taken advantage of. He lacks the strength and assertiveness normally associated with a strong male, and, therefore, he does not fit within the bounds of traditional notions of masculinity. However, Cohn still seeks love and romance, asking Jake, for instance, to travel with him to South America because he read about it in a book. Jake tells us:
He had been reading W. H. Hudson. That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Cohn had read and reread The Purple Land. The Purple Land is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well-described. For a man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent. . . . Cohn, I believe, took every word of The Purple Land as literally as though it had been an R. G. Dun report. . . . It was all that was needed to set him off. (17)

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As with all of the male characters in the novel, the ambiguity of Cohns masculinity can be seen as a metaphor for a greater human condition. Unlike the other male characters, however, Cohn reminds readers of a passion that is absent in the other characters. In fact, Spilka proposes that Cohn represents a romanticism that has been lost in the postwar world, that it is this sensibility that provokes a negative response from the other male characters, most of whom have resigned themselves to the absence of love and romance as a fact of existence in modern times. In his essay The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises Spilka explains:
Cohn still upholds a romantic view of life, and since he affirms it with stubborn persistence, he acts like a goad upon his wiser contemporaries. . . . . . . [Cohn] is the last chivalric hero, the last defender of an outworn faith, and his function is to illustrate its present folly. (108-9)

Like Cohn, the narrator Jake Barnes also fails to fit within a traditional mold of masculinity, and he functions somewhat symbiotically with Cohn, serving as a constant reminder of the romance that is impossible in the new modern world. Rendered impotent by a war injury, he is unable to consummate a sexual relationship and, it is implied, is therefore not wholly a man. The war has literally interfered with his manhood. However, in light of his physical impotence, it becomes critical to note that while Jake cannot be intimate with a woman, by being enlisted as narrator, he is made capable of intimacy through the revelation of his thoughts, feelings, and observations. In other words, his character suggests that intimacy may also be, or must be, redefined in the modern world as more than mere sexuality. Of equal importance is Jakes sensitivity, or, more specifically, his role as a sensitive man. We find evidence of his sensitivity not only in the way that he interacts with Brett but also in his attention to detail, such as the overwhelming attention that he pays to his natural surroundings. For instance, in chapter 6, Jake observes the barges of the Seine:
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Crossing the Seine I saw a string of barges being towed down the current, riding high, the bargemen at the sweeps as they came toward the bridge. The river looked nice. It was always pleasant crossing the bridge in Paris. (48)

He pays equal attention to the landscape when he goes fishing with Bill. This interest in what is around him, which he has been able to maintain despite the effects of the war, provides important evidence that Jake is, despite his injury, still a passionate person. While the other male characters are, perhaps, too psychically injured themselves to recognize Jakes passion, the bullfighting aficionados, who are depicted as powerful, virile men, are able to recognize that Jake has true passion or aficion. Robert Cohn and Jake Barnes have a second commonality: their unrequited love for another androgynous character, Lady Brett Ashley. Just as Cohn and Jake introduce us to atypical modern male characters, so too the introduction of Brett compels us to reevaluate our assumptions about femininity in modern society. Though she is a woman, Brett has a mans name and refers to herself as a chap, as if she were one of the men. In fact, throughout the course of the story, all of her companions seem to be men. She flicks her cigarette ashes on the floor and drinks more excessively than any male character. Although we know that she wears skirts and still possesses an air of femininity, as Jake notes by describing her curves, Jake also tells us that her hair is cut like a boys and later reveals that she does not wear stockings. And while the men worry that Brett may become upset if the bullfights are gory, it is not Brett but Cohn who is nauseated by the spectacle of the bullring. Finally, unlike other women in the novel who seem to seek out romance as a means to marriage, we also discover that Brett is unable or unwilling to commit to any of the men interested in her. Further, Hemingway is careful to present plenty of examples to show that Bretts androgyny is genuine and something she has freely chosen. Commenting on her masculine haircut, Jake observes that,
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rather than following a preexisting trend, she started all that (30), and when the bullfighter Pedro Romero attempts to feminize her, asking her to grow out her hair so she will look more like a woman and expressing an interest in marrying her so that she will settle down, she refuses. While characters such as Cohn, Jake, and Brett command our attention, the minor characters of the novel also impart meaningful information about gender identity as a reflection of the modern condition. Robert Cohns new partner, Frances Clyne, while immensely different from Brett, also fails to fulfill traditional notions of womanhood. She is hard and outspoken, as evidenced in the scene in which she unreservedly confronts Cohn in front of Jake. In chapter 6, we learn that she does not like children but figures that she will have children and then like them (54). Her motivations for wanting to marry Cohn seem to be based more on a desire for financial and social stability than on actual love and respect for him, thereby subverting the traditional feminine ideals of domesticity and motherhood. Likewise, the prostitute Georgette, who appears only briefly in the book, also helps to dispel traditional concepts of femininity and womanhood. Her profession represents the opposite of the romantic ideal, but Hemingway is also careful to draw a link between Georgettes own condition and the state in which the modern woman at large finds herself. When she orders a pernod and Jake suggests that there may be more feminine drinks, Georgette responds, It doesnt make any difference with me. It doesnt make any difference with a woman (24)a statement that reveals a kind of sad camaraderie in the shaken-up state of modern womanhood and a resignation that is characteristic of womens new role. Georgettes presence reinforces the notion of the impossibility of romance, for Jake confesses flatly that he had picked her up because of a vague sentimental idea that it would be nice to eat with some one (24), and Georgettes attempt to stroke Jakes crotch draws our attention to a more literal obstacle to romantic love: his impotence. Hemingway employs minor male characters, such as Bretts fianc,
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Michael Campbell, and Count Mippipopolous in similar ways, using them as symbols of a postwar manhood that consists primarily of what scholar Thomas Strychacz calls a theater of masculinity. In other words, with the impossibility of romantic love and the death of glorified notions of the hero, such characters provide evidence that masculinity can no longer be considered something inherent; rather, it is the effect of a kind of self-consciousness that depends on the presence of an audience. Aware of their inadequacy as men, they enact the kind of posturing now demanded by postwar manhood, a posturing that relies not on inherent maleness but on the obtainment or proffering of the illusion of wealth, success, and popularity. Their role as men is dependent on others accepting this illusion as truth. In this way, Campbell and the count serve as counterpoints to each other, with Campbell possessing too few of these things and the count possessing too many. Campbell speaks about not having any medals and going bankrupt because of false friends (141). The count, meanwhile, seems to possess unlimited funds, believing that he can buy whatever he wants. He offers to pay Brett to accompany him in his travels, and has no problem leaving her alone with another man while he fetches champagne. Together, the characters create a sense of the absurd as it relates to new definitions of maleness. There are also several instances in the novel in which minor characters provide a contrast to those characters who have been directly affected by the war. The family that Bill and Jake meet on the train contrasts with other models of gender in the book. The woman is referred to not by her name but rather as Mother and, as such, is defined by her role within her family, not by her individuality. She provides a counterpoint to the other female characters, seeming to possess a mind of her own, but she also displays a willingness to please her husband. Likewise, the other travelers on the train, who are on a religious pilgrimage and who, it is implied, have been able to maintain their faith, are referred to disdainfully by Bill as Puritans. The allegorical presentation of family and the faithful creates a strong sense of other, a
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contrast that only heightens our awareness of the failure of family and faith in the modern world as presented to us by the major characters of the novel. Finally, there are the bullfighters. Of particular note, Pedro Romero symbolizes passion and power, and his presence suggests a triumph of faith and the endurance of the heroic. Although Hemingway began his first draft with Romero as the protagonist, he later shifted the bullfight section to the center of the novel; some critics, however, recognize that Romero remains the central character even in the final text. Spilka, for instance, argues that
Pedro is the real hero of the parable, the man whose code gives meaning to a world where love and religion are defunct, where the proofs of manhood are difficult and scarce, and where every man must learn to define his own moral conditions and then live up to them. (Death 118)

Aside from the topical portraits of the characters, their complex interactions illustrate an astounding range of representations of love and romanceor, perhaps more accurately, suggestions of the impossibility of traditional, prewar love and romance. Brett has relationships with several men throughout the story but is unable to commit to any one man. While we know that she is in love with Jake, because of his injury the two are unable to consummate their love, suggesting again the impossibility of romantic love in the postwar age. Furthermore, there are the empty relationships between Jake and Georgette, Brett and the count, and Robert Cohn and Frances. The overwhelming number of failed romances in the novel should serve as a signal that they are deliberate and significant. The relationships that the characters cannot consummate, either literally or figuratively, and that cannot be defined as romantic are as significant as the romantic relationships typically depicted throughout literature. Novelist, poet, and literary critic Robert Penn Warren reminds us of the major significance of these relationships and the choices faced by the characters:

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It is important to remember . . . that the sinking into nature, even at the level of drinking and mere sexuality, is a self-conscious act. It is not the random gratification of appetite. We see this quite clearly in The Sun Also Rises in the contrast between Cohn, who is merely a random dabbler in the world of sensation . . . and . . . Jake and Brett, who are aware of the nada at the center of things. (46)

The empty relationships that we witness and the characters responses to these relationships are emblematic of the modern condition in which the characters find themselves unwillingly entangled. With traditional notions of romance no longer viable, the characters are forced to seek out other kinds of relationships, such as friendship or the camaraderie born of shared failures and present obstacles. In fact, the men often seem to have closer relationships with one another than with any single woman in the story. One might consider the scenes between Jake and Bill, for example, as an instance of the kind of camaraderie shared between men in the absence of women. Meanwhile, the androgynous Brett seems most comfortable among homosexuals and other men to whom she need not commit. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the novel lies in its ability to move these issues beyond straightforward characterization, further revealing them in other formal elements of the text. For instance, while Hemingway uses symbolism sparingly, a handful of major symbols contained in the book parallel and reflect the characters condition. First, the bullfights are an undeniable allegory, a symbol both of the new theater of gender to which the characters are subjectedenacted not only in the gender of the animals and their corresponding roles but also in the death that occurs in the ringand a reminder of the endurance of old ideals of faith, love, and the heroic. In the bullring, Strychacz aptly observes, men are made or unmanned (53). The performance of masculinity that has become necessary in the postwar age is reflected by the arena and its audience, whose function is to appraise rituals of manhood and bestow praise or condemnation on the
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protagonista particularly important role, Strychacz points out, if we take the matadors actions as somehow representative of masculine codes of behavior (54). The bullfights reflect the wounded condition that manifests itself in androgyny (Spilka, Quarrel 3). They are purposefully described with sexually suggestive language, and Jake draws parallels between himself and the steers, or castrated cattle, that are used to calm the fertile bulls as they enter the ring and that are killed as part of the bullfight ritual. Second, through his narrator, Hemingway creates a character who pays close attention to his natural surroundings. Despite the gloom that seems to haunt the characters, the natural world remains beautiful, seemingly unchanged despite the war. This tactic of juxtaposing the modern world with the natural one enhances the readers awareness of the enormity of the shift the war has created. The very title of the book, taken from a passage in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, reinforces this notion of nature as a constant:
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose. . . . The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. . . . All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. (8)

The sun continues to rise and the wind continues to blow, even though society and humanity change. Though people may struggle, the world goes on. Hemingway uses both of these major symbolsbullfighting and natureto draw our attention to the contrasting notions of impotence and fertility, wherein questions of inadequacy and strength begin to surface. Of course Hemingway provides us with the literal example of Jakes impotence; however, like other writers of this time period, Hemingway also uses his characters disability to illuminate the flaws of the
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modern world and as a symbol of the emotional impotence those flaws have caused. Again, this symbolic impotence becomes more visible when paired with images of nature, reminders of the sexuality of other characters, and the always pervasive reminders of love that cannot be consummated. Finally, the language and style that Hemingway employsperhaps the most well-known elements of The Sun Also Risesare also instrumental in facilitating this dialogue about gender and identity. In his article Melancholy Modernism: Gender and the Politics of Mourning in The Sun Also Rises, Greg Forter explains that Hemingways
style defends against yet keeps alive the dual loss of sentiment and potency by serving as a kind of monument that ceaselessly speaks of the losses its erection seeks to silence. Style allows Hemingway and his characters neither openly to embrace lost affect nor to do without it, neither to lay claims to a hard masculinity nor really to renounce it. (33)

The style and language, in other words, mimic the characters androgyny and ambiguity, with the clean, hard sentences possessing a masculine quality while their emotional suggestiveness offers a countering feminine balance. Ultimately, Hemingways study of gender and associated models of love and romance became a symbol of a new, modernist sensibility. As a movement, modernism, among other things, abandoned Victorian notions of masculinity and femininity, sought to redefine romance and spirituality, and recognized the emergence of a new, postwar morality. As Spilka illuminates, these traits in Hemingways fiction serve as part of a larger study of the taboo on tenderness in modern fiction, whereby the old Victorian quarrel with sexuality has been replaced by our modern quarrel with the softer sentiments (Quarrel 5). The Sun Also Rises remains relevant not only because it so aptly captures a period of American history and culture but also, more important, because through its exploration of gender it presents an existential discourse
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that transcends geographic boundaries and triumphs against the passage of time. Although gender connects us to the characters specifically, it is a topic that opens doors to a broader discourse about humanity, culture, loss, and love. In Ernest Hemingway, Gerry Brenner and Earl Rovit describe the characters as sensitive recorders of the shock they have suffered (140). More accurately, the characters can be described as sensitive recorders of a collectively suffered shock, and the book and its reflections on gender and romance should be remembered as a record of the truth of human nature and a significant commentary on adaptation and resilience in the face of loss.

Brenner, Gerry, and Earl Rovit. Ernest Hemingway. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. Forter, Greg. Melancholy Modernism: Gender and the Politics of Mourning in The Sun Also Rises. The Hemingway Review 21.1 (2001): 22-37. Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. 1926. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 2006. Spilka, Mark. The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises. Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1985. 107-18. ____________. Hemingways Quarrel with Androgyny. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990. Strychacz, Thomas. Hemingways Theaters of Masculinity. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2003. Warren, Robert Penn. Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1985. 35-62.

Works Cited

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