Hemingway’s Portrayal of Women in The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, Cat in the Rain and A Farewell to Arms

Abstract

Hemingway’s portrayal of women in his fictional literary works has always been labelled misogynist and reductive due to the stereotyped image his female characters conveyed. The purpose of this dissertation is to try to determine the extent to which Hemingway’s depiction of his female characters fits the criticism it has generated. In order to do so, two theoretical preliminaries have been applied: the first is that of the New Criticism, for the sake of objectivity, and the second is that of the social construction of gender as explained by Simone de Beauvoir and Mary Roberts Coolidge. The dissertation arrived to the conclusion that Hemingway’s depiction of his female characters is far more nuanced than decried, and that it is more sympathetic to women than it is another way of perpetuating their subjugation and oppression.