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Feminist critics, and I know of only one feminist rejoinder to her reading of Hemingway’s “classic.” The extremely forceful statement of a “resisting” reader, Fetterley’s chapter should clarify why Hemingway deserves to be demoted.
What Fetterley does instead is to rewrite A Farewell to Arms. Thought it might seem that the novel endorses romantic love, Fetterley argues that this is mere appearance: “If we examine Hemingway’s novel closely, we will discover that the emotions which in fact direct it are quite opposite from those which are claimed as central. One cannot miss the disparity between the novel’s overt fabric of idealized romance and its underlying vision of the radical limitations of love (p. 48). If Fetterley meant the phrase “the radical limitations of love” to refer to the fate of romantic love in Hemingway’s world, then of course we would have to agree with her. In fact, however, she is referring to the inherent and truly radical flaws of the (hetero)sexual relationship itself. Romantic love, we are told, is a process of idealization that disguise hostility (p. 47). Fetterley speaks of the “cumulative hostilities” that Frederic Henry feels toward Catherine Barkley (p. 62), then asserts that Frederic’s hostility toward Catherine is at the very “heart” of A Farewell to Arms (p. 67). She argues that Catherine is ultimately a mere scapegoat whose death is necessary if Frederic is to avoid adult commitment and maintain his childish, egotistical ways (p. 47). That these are male “ways” need hardly be stressed.
Fetterley’s basic premise is that romantic love disguises hostility for the beloved “object.” Is this Hemingway’s view of is it Fetterley’s? Fetterley never actually says that it is Hemingway’s, indeed she is quite evasive on the issue, but she proceeds to read many of the novel’s details as if Hemingway did in fact believe this. She detects Frederic’s “obvious” enmity toward women in the scene at the end of the book where he shoves two nurses out of the hospital room where Catherine lies dead (p. 53), as
A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 46-71. Page references in the next three paragraphs are to this text.
Kolodny, for example, “enthusiastically” recommends The Resisting Reader. See “A Map for Rereading: Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts,” in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory, ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon, 1985), p. 62 n.35. The feminist reply to Fetterley is by Joyce Wexler, “E.R.A. for Hemingway: A Feminist Defense of A Farewell to Arms,” Georgia Review, 35 (1981), 111-23