Flappers and fighter planes; Gender Roles in The Sun Also Rises

Hemingway and the group that inspired the novel, Pamplona










The relationships between men and women in Ernest Hemingway’s popular novel The Sun Also Rises drives the plot line forward; dispelling gender norms and vividly portraying the changes that followed the ending of the Great War and disillusionment of the Lost Generation. Jake Barns and Lady Brett Ashley are undeniably male and female figures, respectively; but their actions and mindsets at times lean towards the androgynous, and certainly set them apart from the expectations of the preceding generations.

For Jake Barns, and the other expatriates, the ideals of honor, glory, patriotism and politics which encouraged a rush to war are no longer moving or emotionally appealing. Instead, Jake, as a true Hemingway hero, is characterized by grace under pressure, self-discipline in work and courage in the face of a life of pain. Jake is popular, but his injury leaves him isolated, his impotence a source of mirth for his group of friends. Like many of his contemporaries, Jake served in the War, but his injury- the result of his plane being shot at from the ground- serves as alienation, most obviously from Brett. Just like Tantalus, Jake is constantly surrounded by the idea of what he cannot enjoy, leaving him with the “rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of [his] friends” (21). Jake’s actions are not always traditionally “manly”; the reader is privy to his shows of weakness, crying alone in his home at night, but he is seen as no less of a man for his tears.

Lady Brett Ashley is …. untraditional. She is generally well meaning, but self-centered to the point of destruction, a Circe figure with commitment problems. She is introduced in the presence of a group of homosexual males, characterized by their “white hands [and ] wavy hair” (28); and wearing a signature outfit of “a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair brushed back like a boy’s” (30) and her ever present “man’s felt hat” (35). Brett was a war casualty in her own right, a woman who lost her first lover to dysentery on the battlefield, who became the estranged wife of Lord Ashley, a man who developed post-traumatic stress disorder and took it out violently on his wife. Brett lives loudly and independently. She spearheads an era where women are allowed to drink, smoke, and vote; her hair is cut boy-short, she is sexually free and promiscuous, she attracts a revolving door of suitors, travels with men she is not related or married to, and in every way asserts her right to personal choice. Often drunk, she rotates in circles predominated by men, and sees herself as one of the chaps. Her femininity is not soft or demure as her mother and grandmother’s generations, but seeks to draw attention, in a manner that stops short of masculinity by virtue of her obvious womanly charms.

Hemingway creates real characters, with obvious faults and virtues that span and blur the gaps of traditional masculinity and femininity. Jake and Brett are unique in their displays of humanity, in how they deal with the respective problems dealt to them by the Great War, and their mutual encompassment of the ideals of new gender roles for the Lost Generation.