Literary Criticism: The Sun Also Rises

The Masculine Myth: Deconstructing Gender in The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway is known for his overly masculine characters written into existence in a terse prose style. In his novel, The Sun Also Rises, masculinity is a competition, wrought by the desire to win a feminine object. His characters are pressured into an oversimplified masculine gender. Hemingway’s contemporaries would have read this pressure as a reassurance of “traditional” gender roles established by society. A post-modern, post-structuralist reading of this novel binarily pits masculinity against femininity, or genderlessness; therefore Hemingway’s bull fighting epic does more to deconstruct gender than it does to enforce it’s once rigid social structure.

Throughout the novel, Jake Barnes demonstrates a long term struggle over his own inability to become truly masculine. His first problem is that he has lost a piece of his own male genitalia in World War I. Barnes recounts when an Italian colonel commends him on his sacrifice. The colonel said, “You...have given more than your life” (Hemingway 39). The truth is that Barnes lost more than just anatomy; his castration also presents him with the loss of an essential portion of his masculinity. In the eyes of the masculinized colonel, Barnes has given more than his life, he has given up his gender. As a result of his genderlessness Barnes runs into immense pressure to sexually perform as a man, an intense desire for masculinity, and the need to be reassured he is manly.

After one of his initial encounters with Brett, Barnes begins to break under the pressure to be masculine. Brett and Barnes meet at a club, and Brett is surrounded by men that are described as “big-hippily” by Barnes. The insinuation is that the men Brett dances with are homosexual, and even though they pose no sexual threat to Barnes’ infatuation for Brett, they enrage him. He says, “I was angry. Somehow they always made me angry” (Hemingway 28). Once the couple breaks away from the club, they talk about Barnes’ accident in the war, and they realize that they cannot have sex no matter how much they love each other. For Barnes this is complete emasculation; instead, retreats to his quarters alone. He undresses and looks at himself in the mirror. “Of all the ways to be wounded. I suppose it was funny,” he tells (Hemingway 38). He then gets himself into bed and replaces what would have been intercourse with a desire for masculinity. Barnes reads bull fighting magazines to coax himself into sleep. Instead he begins to think about Brett, and because of his inability to perform sexually with her and his intense desire to be masculine, he cries himself to sleep knowing that he desires reassurance that he is a man.

This is why Barnes’ relationship with Montoya and infatuation with bullfighting is so important to the novel. Bullfighting becomes the epitome of masculinity for Barnes, and he devotes much of his personal desires to the sport. He says, “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters” (Hemingway 18). He substitutes bull fighting for masculinity, and he replaces his lack of masculinity for a desire for the most masculine sport. This is why Montoya and Barnes share a special connection; they are both lovers of masculine bull fighting. Barnes speaks about Montoya:

"He always smiled as though bull-fighting were a very special secret between the two of us; a rather shocking but really very deep secret that we knew about. He always smiled as though there were something lewd about the secret to outsiders, but that is was something that we understood. It would not do to expose it to people who would not understand" (Hemingway 136). What is so lewd about being an aficionado of bullfighting? Montoya does not exert any roles of masculinity except for his love for bullfighting. Barnes appears, through most of the novel, as genderless and neuter. They both bond over their love of masculinity, and perhaps their desire to be masculine. They admire the most masculine character of the play, Pedro Romero. In fact they might admire him too much, they say “‘He’s a fine boy, don’t you think so?’ Montoya asked. ‘He’s a good-looking kid,’ I said” (Hemingway 167). This level of admiration is actually opposed by a character in the novel. Barnes and Montoya make their secret love of masculinity lewd because they know how society will label it.

Barnes’ friend Bill voices the gender pressure that makes masculine love homoerrotic. “Listen. You’re hell of a good guy, and I’m fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn’t tell you that in New York. It’d mean I was a faggot” (Hemingway 121). This pressure becomes gender police for Barnes. Barnes is unable to perform sexually as a man, he has homoerrotic love for a masculine sport, and all he desires is to be what he is not. Barnes has a deep want to live into the social norm of the masculine gender, but he is somewhere in between masculine, feminine, and genderless. In order to achieve his need to be masculine, his desire over masculinity is kept secret, he replaces his sexual inablity with the bullfighting masculine obsession, and he does everything in his power to win over the feminine object, Brett.

Brett is the central woman in the novel, and she is the most emasculating. Every man that she promiscuously encounters ends up beaten or mentally battered in some way. The only reason men chase Brett is because if they can conquer the woman, they would be considered the most masculine of all men. For Barnes, winning Brett over is comparable to Romero’s excellence in bullfighting; each is the most masculine thing in Barnes’ eyes. He is shot down, and even beat up over his love for Brett. In his efforts to become masculine, he is emasculated further, as is every man she entangles herself with, including the richly masculine Pedro Romero. Brett functions as a prize for the most masculine of all men, but the novel suggests that there is no man masculine enough for her, even a man who can slaughter a bull. Within this reading, masculinity becomes a myth, and the myth is so powerful that it entices all the male characters to desire it because of the “traditional” social adage that men are masculine.

However, at a point in the novel Barnes’ desire for masculinity abruptly ends. As he leaves Montoya’s hotel, the two do not share smiles. When confronted by Brett’s promiscuity, he rejects her. And Barnes’ love for bullfighting has been replaced. At the beginning of the novel, the only feminine attributes are associated with Brett. She dances with “feminine” men, and she flaunts her sexuality without commitment. Masculinity is associated with the intense desire to win Brett over and the sport of bullfighting. By the end of the novel, Barnes reassociates himself with the feminine attributes that were seen at the beginning and distances himself from the masculine gender.

At the beginning of the novel, Barnes actively pursues Brett and she rejects him. He begs, “‘Couldn’t we live together, Brett? Couldn’t we just live together?’ ‘I don’t think so. I’d just tromper you with everybody. You couldn’t stand it’” (Hemingway 62). But she continues to turn him down, repeatedly. By the end of the novel, something changes for both of these characters. They swap positions in the relationship pursuit. Barnes becomes the one to reject Brett’s fancy of imaging a relationship with him. Brett begins, “‘Oh, Jake,’ Brett said, ‘we could have had such a damned good time together.’... ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’” (Hemingway 251). This swapping of roles indicates that gender is irrelevant in the pursuit of love; there is no rigid way to court someone. Barnes and Brett reverse their identifications with their respective genders. Specifically Barnes goes through a dramatic change in context of his obsession. Initially he is consumed by the sport of bullfighting, arguably because of it’s masculine focus. It is interesting to note that his captivation with masculine bullfighting is replaced by a new sport at the end of the novel. Barnes stops being an aficionado of masculinity and becomes intrigued by the sport of bicycling. The obsession moves from fixation on a phallic symbol, to a desire for a sport fixated on a yonic symbol. Bullfighting is centered around a sword mentioned in this passage, “Out of the centre of the ring Romero profiled in front of the bull, drew the sword out from the folds of the muleta...and for just and instant he and the bull were one” (Hemingway 222). This sword functions as a phallic symbol and the bull as woman. The scene is sexualized to the point where Barnes’ interest in bullfighting becomes and emphatic lust to be sexually masculine. However, at some point in the novel Barnes comes to terms with his inability to truly rise up to his gender. He reassociates himself with a yonic-central sport and feminine gender. He observes a group of cyclists. Barnes overhears them, “‘Listen,’ he said, ‘to-morrow my nose is so tight on the handle-bars that the only thing touches those boils is a lovely breeze’...The Spaniards, they said, did not know how to pedal” (Hemingway 240). This passage is an important moment of regenderization for Barnes. His intense following of bullfighting has decreased, and he seems to dwell on the words of these raunchy French cyclists. Just like the sword serves as a phallic symbol, the handlebars of the bicyclists serves as a yonic one. The French women make a joke that the Spanish do not understand the bicycle sport because they are too focused on bullfighting, centered around a phallic object. Barnes makes a realization that he does not have to continue to desire something that he cannot have, instead he can have some epiphany that allows him to associate himself with any gender role he would choose. This is what justifies his swapping change at the end of the novel.

In the strict binary of gender, one cannot switch how they are characterized. This novel creates a reassociation of Barnes with a new gender, therefore breaking the rigid masculine, feminine binary. In a poststructuralist interpretation, The Sun Also Rises presents the argument that gender is fluid and not rigidly defined. Any time gender roles and associations are defined in the novel, characters switch them, redefine them, or reject them. There is no character that fits into a perfect category of feminine or masculine, they are always a mixture or able to switch. Like Barnes, the characters desire to fit neatly into these divisions and fail. In Barnes’ case he fails because of his anatomical genderlessness which is a hinderance to his own ability to associate with a gender, but he also fails because he cannot live up to the perfect masculine model. This epiphany comes to Barnes and reconstitutes his association with a specific gender, and he effectively deconstructs the struggle-some strict tradition of binary gender.

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner, 2006. Print.