And I'm back from my weekend away! The trip was very fun overall, and my mom and I got to spend some quality time together. We did a lot of shopping, wine drinking, and mostly just relaxing. We found some good deals on clothes (yay Ann Taylor Loft!), took long morning walks, and caught up on some TV shows.
The train trip home was rather unexciting, except that I shouldn't have tried to sleep, because I didn't.. I should have just stayed up reading. I brought two books with me, a Sarah Dessen to reread and then the book I'm reviewing tomorrow and talking about today, The Paris Wife. I also got a super fun book from a friend while I was there that I can't wait to explore.
But back to The Paris Wife. This was one my mom mentioned to me, and it's about Ernest Hemingway's first wife. I kind of love Ernest Hemingway. In fact, if I had to pick my favorite book (as my friend Leah would say, quoting Cougar Town, "Gun to your head!") I would pick The Sun Also Rises.
I didn't read any Hemingway until my 20th Century Literature class my freshman year of college (second semester). I was desperate to take this class, and I took the last spot after watching the schedule for days. I was also the youngest person in the class and was intimidated, as this was the first literature-based college class I had taken. But I had a great professor who chose wonderful books and it ended up being one of the classes I did the best in and loved the most.
And Hemingway became one of the authors that I love most. You know when you read a book at just the right time in your life that you and the book just click? I think that happened with me and The Sun Also Rises. I wrote my response paper on the feeling of being lost, and while I wasn't lost in the same way as the characters, I could relate to it. I had a lot of changes going on that semester and just didn't know what I wanted. And the book seemed to capture how I was feeling, despite the immensely different time periods and circumstances.
In The Paris Wife, we actually see Hemingway and Stein and all of the "lost generation" before the books and writing that made them famous. And we see Hemingway writing The Sun Also Rises, which was really cool for me to read. I'll be back with a full review tomorrow, but after the "read more" break is my response paper for The Sun Also Rises, in case you want to check out some vintage Whitney writing. It's still one of my favorite "academic" papers I've ever written.
The train trip home was rather unexciting, except that I shouldn't have tried to sleep, because I didn't.. I should have just stayed up reading. I brought two books with me, a Sarah Dessen to reread and then the book I'm reviewing tomorrow and talking about today, The Paris Wife. I also got a super fun book from a friend while I was there that I can't wait to explore.
But back to The Paris Wife. This was one my mom mentioned to me, and it's about Ernest Hemingway's first wife. I kind of love Ernest Hemingway. In fact, if I had to pick my favorite book (as my friend Leah would say, quoting Cougar Town, "Gun to your head!") I would pick The Sun Also Rises.
I didn't read any Hemingway until my 20th Century Literature class my freshman year of college (second semester). I was desperate to take this class, and I took the last spot after watching the schedule for days. I was also the youngest person in the class and was intimidated, as this was the first literature-based college class I had taken. But I had a great professor who chose wonderful books and it ended up being one of the classes I did the best in and loved the most.
And Hemingway became one of the authors that I love most. You know when you read a book at just the right time in your life that you and the book just click? I think that happened with me and The Sun Also Rises. I wrote my response paper on the feeling of being lost, and while I wasn't lost in the same way as the characters, I could relate to it. I had a lot of changes going on that semester and just didn't know what I wanted. And the book seemed to capture how I was feeling, despite the immensely different time periods and circumstances.
In The Paris Wife, we actually see Hemingway and Stein and all of the "lost generation" before the books and writing that made them famous. And we see Hemingway writing The Sun Also Rises, which was really cool for me to read. I'll be back with a full review tomorrow, but after the "read more" break is my response paper for The Sun Also Rises, in case you want to check out some vintage Whitney writing. It's still one of my favorite "academic" papers I've ever written.
The Sun Also Rises
30 January 2005
A Lost Generation
The epigraph of The Sun Also Rises includes a quote from Gertrude Stein that states, “You are all a lost generation.” Through the characters of Jake, Robert Cohn, Bill, this statement is proven to be true, but Lady Brett Ashley is perhaps the most “lost” character of the novel, and she tries to fulfill her unhappiness by searching for love.
Though Lady Brett Ashley is portrayed as somewhat of a masculine woman, every man that she comes in contact with loves her. Robert calls her “Circe” (148), who was a Greek sorceress who lured men to her island and then turned them into animals. Brett does have a certain effect on men, most notably on Robert. Not only does he end his long-standing relationship with Frances, his personality changes, a change that Jake blames on Brett: “…until he fell in love with Brett, I had never heard him make one remark that would, in any way, detach him from other people” (52). As the novel progresses, Robert continues to change, and his obsession with Brett impacts his relationship with the others.
The reasons for Brett’s abilities to seduce men are unclear. Mike says that “she is the only lady [he] has ever known who [is] as charming when she [is] drunk as she [is] when she [is] sober” (66). Brett Ashley is not only charming, but beautiful as well: Robert Cohn says that she is “remarkably attractive” (46). But the best way to describe Brett is the following: “There’s a certain quality about her, a certain fineness. She seems to be absolutely fine and straight…I don’t know how to describe the quality…I suppose it’s breeding” (46). Brett’s combination of beauty, charm and breeding gives her the opportunities to find what she is really looking for, but she can’t find it.
Even though many men love her, Lady Brett Ashley is lost in that “she only wanted what she couldn’t have” (39). She spends her time searching for the one thing she can’t have: love. Everyone knows that “Brett’s had affairs with men before” (147), but these men are not the loves of her life. She sleeps with many men, but it doesn’t change the fact that she is lonely. Brett has been through a great deal of heartache and has lost every real love she has ever had. Before she married Ashley, “her own true love had just kicked off with the dysentery” (46). In addition to not loving her husband, she has a horrible marriage:
“When [Ashley] came home he wouldn’t sleep in a bed. Always made Brett sleep on the floor. Finally, when he got really bad, he used to tell her he’d kill her. Always slept with a loaded service revolver…She hasn’t had an absolutely happy life…” (207).
To add to her unhappiness, Brett is desperately in love with Jake, but cannot be with him because he cannot fulfill the physical expectations of their relationship. When Mike asks Brett and Jake why they aren’t married, Brett replies, “We have our careers” (68). I thought this was an interesting statement made by Brett, because the only things she truly does with her time is sleep with men and drink. After first meeting Mike, she says “I rather liked the count…offered me ten thousand dollars to go to Biarritz with him” (41). I immediately felt that Brett was indirectly referring to herself as a prostitute, but then, Jake tells Robert “[Brett’s] in love with Mike Campbell and she’s going to marry him” (46).
Later on in the book, Robert calls Jake a pimp, which, in a way, is what Jake is to Brett. When Brett decides that she’s “in love” (187) with Pedro, it is Jake who sets them up:
“[Pedro] looked at me. It was a final look to ask if it were understood. It was understood all right…when I came back and looked in the café, twenty minutes later, Brett and Pedro Romero were gone” (190-191).
At the end of the novel, it is Jake who rescues Brett, but he does partially take blame for the situation: “Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right” (243). Since Jake is unable to fulfill the physical aspects of the relationship, he almost tries to find other men to take his place.
However, no men can take really take the place of Jake. Jake and Brett have an emotional relationship, and this relationship is unlike any other in the book. It is to Jake that Brett admits that she is “miserable” (32), and it is Jake who truly understands her. He can see her true feelings, found in the descriptions of her eyes:
“She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else’s eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things” (34).
Jake truly loves Brett and can tell that she is afraid. He goes on to say that “her eyes had different depths, sometimes they seemed perfectly flat. Now you could see all the way into them” (34). By allowing Jake to look “all the way” into her eyes, Brett is almost exposing her emotions to him.
Jake is “the only person [Brett’s] got” (185), and she claims to be in love with him: “She looked at me, hand on the table, her glass raised. Don’t look like that…told him I was in love with you. True, too. Don’t look like that” (41). She also is in love with Mike and thinks she is in love with Pedro. With her tendencies to fall in love so quickly, it makes me wonder about whether she truly does love Jake, or if he is just a symbol for what she wants and cannot have. If she and Jake were capable of having a relationship, I wonder if Brett would finally be happy, or if she would end up just as lost as she is throughout the novel.
30 January 2005
A Lost Generation
The epigraph of The Sun Also Rises includes a quote from Gertrude Stein that states, “You are all a lost generation.” Through the characters of Jake, Robert Cohn, Bill, this statement is proven to be true, but Lady Brett Ashley is perhaps the most “lost” character of the novel, and she tries to fulfill her unhappiness by searching for love.
Though Lady Brett Ashley is portrayed as somewhat of a masculine woman, every man that she comes in contact with loves her. Robert calls her “Circe” (148), who was a Greek sorceress who lured men to her island and then turned them into animals. Brett does have a certain effect on men, most notably on Robert. Not only does he end his long-standing relationship with Frances, his personality changes, a change that Jake blames on Brett: “…until he fell in love with Brett, I had never heard him make one remark that would, in any way, detach him from other people” (52). As the novel progresses, Robert continues to change, and his obsession with Brett impacts his relationship with the others.
The reasons for Brett’s abilities to seduce men are unclear. Mike says that “she is the only lady [he] has ever known who [is] as charming when she [is] drunk as she [is] when she [is] sober” (66). Brett Ashley is not only charming, but beautiful as well: Robert Cohn says that she is “remarkably attractive” (46). But the best way to describe Brett is the following: “There’s a certain quality about her, a certain fineness. She seems to be absolutely fine and straight…I don’t know how to describe the quality…I suppose it’s breeding” (46). Brett’s combination of beauty, charm and breeding gives her the opportunities to find what she is really looking for, but she can’t find it.
Even though many men love her, Lady Brett Ashley is lost in that “she only wanted what she couldn’t have” (39). She spends her time searching for the one thing she can’t have: love. Everyone knows that “Brett’s had affairs with men before” (147), but these men are not the loves of her life. She sleeps with many men, but it doesn’t change the fact that she is lonely. Brett has been through a great deal of heartache and has lost every real love she has ever had. Before she married Ashley, “her own true love had just kicked off with the dysentery” (46). In addition to not loving her husband, she has a horrible marriage:
“When [Ashley] came home he wouldn’t sleep in a bed. Always made Brett sleep on the floor. Finally, when he got really bad, he used to tell her he’d kill her. Always slept with a loaded service revolver…She hasn’t had an absolutely happy life…” (207).
To add to her unhappiness, Brett is desperately in love with Jake, but cannot be with him because he cannot fulfill the physical expectations of their relationship. When Mike asks Brett and Jake why they aren’t married, Brett replies, “We have our careers” (68). I thought this was an interesting statement made by Brett, because the only things she truly does with her time is sleep with men and drink. After first meeting Mike, she says “I rather liked the count…offered me ten thousand dollars to go to Biarritz with him” (41). I immediately felt that Brett was indirectly referring to herself as a prostitute, but then, Jake tells Robert “[Brett’s] in love with Mike Campbell and she’s going to marry him” (46).
Later on in the book, Robert calls Jake a pimp, which, in a way, is what Jake is to Brett. When Brett decides that she’s “in love” (187) with Pedro, it is Jake who sets them up:
“[Pedro] looked at me. It was a final look to ask if it were understood. It was understood all right…when I came back and looked in the café, twenty minutes later, Brett and Pedro Romero were gone” (190-191).
At the end of the novel, it is Jake who rescues Brett, but he does partially take blame for the situation: “Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right” (243). Since Jake is unable to fulfill the physical aspects of the relationship, he almost tries to find other men to take his place.
However, no men can take really take the place of Jake. Jake and Brett have an emotional relationship, and this relationship is unlike any other in the book. It is to Jake that Brett admits that she is “miserable” (32), and it is Jake who truly understands her. He can see her true feelings, found in the descriptions of her eyes:
“She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else’s eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things” (34).
Jake truly loves Brett and can tell that she is afraid. He goes on to say that “her eyes had different depths, sometimes they seemed perfectly flat. Now you could see all the way into them” (34). By allowing Jake to look “all the way” into her eyes, Brett is almost exposing her emotions to him.
Jake is “the only person [Brett’s] got” (185), and she claims to be in love with him: “She looked at me, hand on the table, her glass raised. Don’t look like that…told him I was in love with you. True, too. Don’t look like that” (41). She also is in love with Mike and thinks she is in love with Pedro. With her tendencies to fall in love so quickly, it makes me wonder about whether she truly does love Jake, or if he is just a symbol for what she wants and cannot have. If she and Jake were capable of having a relationship, I wonder if Brett would finally be happy, or if she would end up just as lost as she is throughout the novel.
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