Ernest Hemingway’s Female Images and For Whom the Bell Tolls 英语专业毕业论文.doc

ernest hemingways female images and for whom the bell tolls abstract: ernest hemingway (1899-1961) is one of the most famous writers of the twentieth-century. hemingway not only forged a startling original literary style, he also created “the hemingway hero.” through reading the woman image in for whom the bell tolls, the author of this thesis aims to point out that hemingway is not a misogynist, nor a male chauvinist, but a supporter of harmonious co-existence between male and female.chapter one of this thesis discusses the characteristics and background of the traditional woman image and hemingways woman image, and also the critic comments about his woman image. chapter two analyzes the characteristics of the two women images in for whom the bell tolls, the ideal woman maria and the mannish woman pilar. chapter three discusses the factors for hemingways shaping of woman image from three aspects: the background of that time, family upbringing and influence of women.to sum up, as a great writer, hemingway owns strong sense of masculinity, but he is not short of concern of women. the women images in his works show the real characteristics of that society.key words: hemingway; for whom the bell tolls; woman image摘 要；海明威被誉为二十世纪最伟大的作家之一。他不仅开创了典型的海明威式的文风，也创造了海明威式的英雄。本文的主旨是通过仔细研读海明威的小说丧钟为谁而鸣，分析原作品中的女性形象，从而发掘海明威始终不渝的追求男性与女性的和谐共处的主题。本文第一章讲述传统的女性形象和海明威笔下女性形象的特征和形成的历史背景，以及文学评论对于海明威笔下女性形象的一些误读。第二章主要分析丧钟为谁而鸣里的两位女主人公的形象：理想女性玛丽亚和男人似的女人比拉尔，从而展示海明威笔下的女性形象。第三章则从海明威当时所处的社会环境、家庭成长以及他所受的女性影响讲述他塑造典型女性形象的原因。海明威作为一名伟大的作家，他不仅有强烈的男性主体意识，而且也不缺少女性意识，他作品中的女性形象真实地反映了当时社会女性的特征与面貌。关键词：海明威；丧钟为谁而鸣；女性形象introduction ernest hemingway is a giant of modern literature. he is original in writing techniques and style. he won the nobel prize for his “mastery of the art of modern narration.” he developed a clean, terse style characterized by short sentences, simple words, and emotional understatement. hemingways approach to the craft of fiction is direct, but never or just plain simple. his style gives his novels and short stories a distinctive accessibility that is immediately identifiable with the author. he accomplished a revolution in literary style and language. and such a lean, economical style had an immense impact on his contemporary writers in america, england and other european countries.hemingway not only forged a startling original literary style, he also created “the hemingway hero.” hemingways novels and short stories emphasized the reaction of characters to a world which is not too kind. a recurring theme seen throughout hemingways stories is that a real man does not whine or complain when put into a position of pain, but takes his downfall with a sense of grace and dignity. thus hemingway is often stereotyped as a machismo writer. critics once declared that hemingway is often not depicting women in that he was better at depicting men without women. it became common for critics to divide his fictional women into castrators or love-slaves, either “bitches” or helpmates-the simplicity of dichotomy.with the rise of the womens movement in the 1960s and of feminist criticism in departments of literature, hemingway became enemy number one for many critics, who accused him of perpetuating sexist stereotypes in his writing. the early feminist attacks unquestionably diminished his literary reputation. these same attacks, however, led to a broader revaluation of his work. the resulting rereading have given new visibility to hemingways females characters and their strengths and have revealed his sensitivity to gender issues, thus casting doubts on the old assumption that his writings were one-sidedly masculine, his female characters were all weak, flat, and static. this “new” hemingway is a writer who treats gender issues in their full diversity and complexity. his search for complementary relations between the sexes expresses itself in a wide range of fictional females. the task of this thesis is to offer a relatively comprehensive and detailed look into hemingways for whom the bell tolls to study the women image in hemingways works. this thesis concentrate on two women characters, maria and pilar. the ideal woman maria possesses not only the definitive female traits such as gentleness, sentimentality, devotion, and affection, but also some specific ones which belong to new modern woman like independence, bravery, self-confidence, smartness and rationality. during her communication with robert jordan, maria gets well along with him by giving and loving, but never brings him horror and threats. she tutors jordan in love, initiating him into the authentic emotional commitment grounded in faith in each other. the mannish woman pilar is a new woman who transcends the stereotyped women images of patriarchal society to pursue self-value. she has mannish appearance, subjectivity and pursues the leading role in conversation. as the real leader of the guerrilla band, she shows pride and confidence which are traditionally considered as male attributes. she is the heroine as the wife of pablo and like a mother looks after maria and the guerrillas. this thesis is not to explore why hemingway wrote what he did about women, nor what he was “feeling” about women at any given stage of his career, but to explore what his language actually says about his female characters and the way they deal with the circumstances of their lives. hemingway was well-known for saying that his job was to put down what he sees and what he feels in the best and simplest way he can tell it. in creating his women images and the complicated milieu in which each has to operate, hemingway may actually have “put down” more than he know and more than many of his critics have found.chapter 1 general introduction of woman imageas the representative of lost generation, ernest hemingway has done a lot to shape the 20th century american literature. his works remain popular with the public and exert a profound influence on writers. literature criticism that focuses sharply on hemingways works has proliferated and changed strikingly, especially during the last fifteen years of the 20th century. the valuable insights of early hemingway critics and biographers remain unquestionably significant, but the developments of recent literary theory have changed the course of hemingway criticism and altered the way we read him. future generation will never view him again in quite the same way.in this chapter, the traditional woman image and the woman image in hemingways for whom the bell tolls will be introduced.1.1 introduction of traditional woman image“traditional women” is a term that is relative to “new women” who are depicted to be bold enough to win over their own independence, freedom and rights. by contrast, traditional women are supposedly to rely too much upon men. they are dependent on men economically and submit to their men in spirit. thanks to the efforts made by feminists and sympathetic social institutions, womens social status was raised in an absolute sense. in 1920s, the feminism of the united states totally attained the fight of vote for women in politics. in the field of law, economics, education and etc., women achieved the majority of rights. however, either in society or in the families, women did not enjoy the equal rights as men; the relative position of women remained virtually unchanged. the american society was still dominated by men, while women were put on the margins. in society, the traditional thoughts still firmly bound up women to the circle of family. in the relationship between men and women, women were still passive and did not get the complete and true freedom.1.2 hemingway and woman image in his worksernest hemingway (1899-1961), one of the most distinguished but most controversial american writers of the 20th century, is regarded as a sensitive and dedicated artist, a great literary giant and adventurer and a stylistic genius american history has ever produced. his position and reputation in american literary history as a talented and influential writer has been well established through the decades during which his major works (mainly the sun also rises, 1926; a farewell to arms, 1929; for whom the bell tolls, 1940; the old man and the sea, 1952) came out together with all the other minor novels and short stories. he won pulitzer prize in fiction in 1953 and the nobel prize for literature in 1954.hemingway enjoys great worldwide popularity that the number of critical essays about him, his works and his “heroes” far exceeds that of his own works. discussion about hemingway often centers on his telegraphic style and his typical heroes-dauntless, unyielding men with “grace under pressure”. it seems that women are ignored by hemingway. some critics, especially those of feminism, fault hemingway severely, in no area more strongly than in his portrayal of women. their major objection has been that the female characterizations are weak, that the women are too thin, or too dimensional, because they emphasize only single facts of human personality, they are actually caricatures. more recently, feminist criticism has ridiculed some of the more “passive” women as sexual pawns for hemingways heroes, or social foils in contrast with which the hemingway males can appear more masculine.critics tend to categorize hemingway women. overwhelmingly the most popular critical manner of categorizing hemingway women has been to dichotomize them. philip young generalizes that the women “are either vicious, destructive wives like mrs. macomber, or daydreamers like catherine, maria, and renata”1; jackson benson concluded that in hemingway we find “the girl who frankly enjoys sex and who is genuinely able to give of herself” and “the all-around bitch, the aggressive, unwomanly female”2; john killinger believed that “hemingway divides his women into the good and the bad, according to the extent to which they complicate a mans life. those who are simple, who participate in relationships with the heroes and yet leave the heroes as free as possible (like the indian girls, maria morgan, catherine, maria, and renata), receive sympathetic treatment; those who are demanding, who constrict the liberty of the heroes, who attempt to possess them (like marjorie, margot macomber, and dorothy bridges), are the women whom men can live without”3. in the eyes of some critics, hemingways fictional women are either demons or angels; either castrators or slaves of love; either bitches or good companion.and there were also some critics tend to believe that hemingway used fictional women to characterize his men. by employing the patterns of imaginary and diction, which imply little about the women themselves but imply very much about hemingways men, hemingway could and did portray his protagonists with remarkable skill and complexity. it points out that hemingway does write women; however, the portrayal of women only serves as a means that brightens the male protagonists.in fact, hemingway was as interested in women characters as he was in men-perhaps more interested. just as he said that he had always considered that it was easy to be a man compared to being a woman who lives by as rigid standards as men live by. no one of us lives by as rigid standards nor has as good ethics as we planned but an attempt is made. and he also continued said that it is hardest to do about women and we shuold not worry when they say there are no such women as those he wrote about. that only means your women arent like their women. the defensive tone in hemingways comments is probably explained by the negative criticism many of his women characters-if noticed at all-had received.chapter 2 woman image in for whom the bell tolls2.1 summary of the storyfor whom the bell tolls, a novel by hemingway, was published in 1940. the title is derived from a sermon by donne: “no man is an iland, entire of it self; every man is peace of the continentand therefore never sends to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”4robert jordan, an american, has entered the loyalist army during the spanish civil war of the 1930s, and has been sent to join a guerrilla band in the mountains near segovia to blow up a strategic bridge at the exact minute that will help a loyalist advance. during the three days and nights that he spends in the guerrillas cave, he awaits with a romantic opposition to heroism what he suspects will be his own destruction and that of his companions. he falls in love with maria, daughter of a republican mayor, who has seen her parents killed and herself raped by falangists. her closed cropped hair is a symbol of her tortures; jordan helps her to regain her desire to live. their passionate love is abetted by the powerful woman pilar, who dominates the group by her force of character, gusto, and love of the republic. her man pablo is silly but lacks belief and hence courage. the others include foul-mouthed agustin; pedantic dignified fernando; the gypsy rafael; and the adoring andres. a sense of impending disaster develops, with smoldering opposition within the group, a falangist attack on the guerrilla leader el sordo on a neighboring hill, acts of cowardice by pablo, and a mission by andres to loyalist headquarters to carry a note from jordan saying the advance is likely to fail, with the messenger impeded by the communistsbuearcracy and suspicion. the generals finally realize they should have cancelled the attack, but it is too late. leaving the retreat, jordan successfully blasts the bridge. in the attempt to flee he is wounded, and forces the others to leave him. he lies on the hillside almost delirious, restraining himself from suicide so that he may shoot the leader of the fascists, and thinks, “i have fought for what i believed in for a year now. if we win here we will win everywhere.”52.2 the ideal woman: mariain for whom the bell tolls, hemingway creates two completely different types of women in pilar and maria, who act as separate embodiments of those female qualities. the ideal woman maria possesses not only the definitive female traits such as gentleness, sentimentality, devotion and affection, but also some specific ones which belong to new modern woman like independence, bravery, self-confidence, smartness and rationality. during her communication with robert jordan, maria gets well along with him by giving and loving, but never brings him horror and threats. she tutors jordan in love, initiating him into the authentic emotional commitment grounded in faith in each other. on the other hand, marias wound caused by the inhuman fascists is also healed by jordans love and she learns to enjoy life and live on with hope.marias female subjectivity shows in her softening influence on jordans manly character. when the novel begins, we get such an impression that jordan is a cold hero who has never really loved or suffered, nor recognized his own share in the human inheritance of grief and death. as he admits, he is one of those who suffer little. until he meets maria, jordan has used his work, his knowledge, and his skepticism to protect him from an intimate relationship with women. it is maria who softens her lovers shell of aloofness, freeing him from his enslavement to work, teaching him to relax, opening him to the magic of the body and imitating him into the realm of authentic emotional commitment. she makes him think; she helps him grow. maria causes him to see people, not just ideas, politics, and ideology. we get the impression that previous women in his life were more like objects that he didnt always have time for in spite of their attractiveness. but he appreciates maria as a person, not merely as an object. consequently, he is able to see himself as a person not merely as a warrior on behalf of a political idea. for the other characters, he is “comrade jordan” or the “ingles.” it is also others have taught him throughout the story to care and to expose him to the risk and pain of involvement with others. at last jordan forms an intimate relationship with the partisans who have become closer to him than his own family. if anselmo has been like a father to him, pilar is like a mother, agustin the brother he never has, maria his wife. so he says that “she is also my sister and i never had a sister, and my daughter, and i never will have a daughter.”6although maria is not such a woman like pilar. she has tragic sense of life. as a witness of her parents death in the fascists hands, marias tragic consciousness is the most acute. death has become an organized possibility within her, an awareness that enhances every moment of her life. that awareness is reflected in the single-edged razor she carries in the breast of her shirt so that she can take her own life rather than be captured by the enemy. form her spirits of unyielding heroism in face of enemies, jordan also learns to make self-sacrifice a possibility in his won life: after he has his leg broken in the ensuing battle he decides to stay behind in a suicidal rear guard action in order to give the chance for the others to withdraw.in spite of being labeled as “passive sex kittens,” “pin-up girls” or “perfect mistresses,”7 maria is worthy of jordans profound love and can be considered as his soul mates and even his superiors or mentors. maria, in her role of daughter-listener, provides an attentive audience for the experienced jordan and in turn teaches him to care and to expose himself to the risk and pain of involvement with others through her open feeling for him.marias influence on jordans personality is further shown in the change of his way of seeing and experiencing things. maria and jordan love in great intensity, mainly in the night. her realm, like pilars,