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The artist as Bluebeard ; Hemingway critiques Hemingway in The Garden of Eden manuscript

University of British Columbia

This interpretive study of "The Garden of Eden" manuscript examines the general critical conception of Ernest Hemingway as a male-chauvinist writer who valorizes masculine codes of heroic individualism while simplistically objectifying and debasing the feminine. I engage in a close reading of the manuscript, inferring thematic meaning through symbology, metaphor, implication, and intertextual allusions. My methodology demonstrates that Hemingway deploys the story of Bluebeard as a self-critical paradigm, to suggest (1) the sado-masochistic aspects of traditional gender relations, and (2) the creative vanity of an autobiographical artist figure whose stories embody violent fantasies of male power. Hemingway's moral self-awareness in the "Eden" manuscript, especially with respect to the gender-art nexus, problematizes the "Papa" stereotype. Indeed, the Hemingway of "Eden" emerges as a complex, introspective, and sensitive writer who sympathizes primarily with a well-drawn female character. Given "Eden's" carefully sustained matrix of tension, ambiguity, and irony, I conclude that the manuscript is a novelistic text that both moves within and pushes beyond patriarchal ideology.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-04-24

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7547

English

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace