The Sun Also Rises: The Emasculated VS the Femme Fatale

The protagonists of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley, represent gender in two very distinct ways, but both our represented through their sexuality. Barnes is for all intense and purposes a man who has lost his gender because of his war wounds and is searching for it throughout the novel. On the other hand, Lady Brett is a highly sexualized individual is searching for her gender by allowing herself to explore.

One way in which Jake tries to express his gender, and at this point is masculinity comes early in the novel when he goes to the dancing club and sees Lady Brett’s group of male friends, who are implied to be homosexual. Jake says “This whole show makes me sick,” referring to the homosexual men in attempt to display his masculinity (Hemingway, 29). Ira Elliot of Duke University says “Jake’s attitude toward the homosexuals-the way he degrades them and casts them as his rivals-will, I believe, reveal the extent to which sexual categories and gender roles are cultural constructions.” Not only are they cultural constructions but the gender roles become narrative constructions as well. At this point in the story we’ve already learned that Jake’s war wound has made him impotent, but it becomes clear at this point, even though for all intense and purposes he is a-sexual, he still holds onto the constructs of masculinity.

At the opposite end of the spectrum Lady Brett Ashley is searching for her gender role by being rather promiscuous. The role that she seeks is that of a lover and a partner to Jake, but the fallout from his war wound and the distance created thereafter makes their relationship quite volatile. One evident gender role in society is that of the femme fatale a woman who is desirable but represents the downfall of the men around her. I believe that Lady Brett is not trying to fulfill this gender role, but is quite aware herself that she is creating this entire scenario, even if by accident. In Chapter Sixteen Lady Brett says “I do feel such a bitch,” when Jake responds in concurrence, Lady Brett says “My God!....the things a woman goes through,” and seconds later repeats “Oh, I do feel such a bitch” (Hemingway It is as if Lady Brett realizes her own gender role as this femme fatale, but feels almost helpless to do anything about it.

Both Jake and Lady Brett are confined to their created gender roles but both feel almost helpless to do anything about it. Because of Jake’s war wounds he was been reduced to the role of a man who must display his masculinity and express his manhood in any other way he can. Lady Brett, who is in love with Jake and for all intense and purposes in love with sex, cannot be with Jake because he cannot perform. So because of this she has been reduced to a femme fatale role, where she almost becomes the downfall of multiple characters in the novel.

Both of the main protagonists, Lady Brett and Jake Barnes fall into traditional and stereotyped gender roles. Jake’s being one of a emasculated male figure who has to display dominance in other ways, and Lady Brett is a woman in love, whose desires that are not reciprocated force her into a femme fatale role. Both characters spend the entire novel in gender roles that outside circumstances have forced them into.

Works Cited

Elliot, Ira. American Literature, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 77-94 Published by: Duke University Press.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. 1926. Charles Scribner’s Son. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, Ny 10020.