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Spanier, Sandra Whipple. "Catherine Barkley and the Hemingway
Code: Critics have
trashed Hemingway’s women characters as either “destructive” or
“daydreams” (131), including Catherine, but she actually has more strength
than almost all critics have perceived [despite the fact that she is Frederic
Henry’s model for courage in the killer world passage: “If you bring so much
courage to the world, then it has to kill you or break you,” etc.].
Joyce Wexler (“E.R.A. for Hemingway: A Feminist Defense of A
Farewell to Arms” in The Georgia Review 35 [1981]: 111-123)
suggests that Catherine’s stoicism actually foreshadows “the kind of person
Frederic has become by the time he narrates the story” (132). Spanier claims that Frederic Henry is a “Hemingway
hero,” a character being educated by experience and a guide, whereas Catherine
Barkley—“a strong and fully realized character”—typifies the so-called
“Hemingway code” by displaying honor, courage, and “grace under
pressure” (132), who models for Frederic survival methods for living in chaos
and making a limited freedom by living one’s own “roles and rituals.”
Spanier draws from both A Farewell to Arms and the posthumously
produced [unfinished] Garden of Eden to support her claims. One of the titles that Hemingway rejected for A Farewell
to Arms was “The Sentimental Education of Frederic Henry,” a title that
indicates, though he is experienced at studying in Italy and traveling in
Europe, emotionally he has not developed before meeting Catherine.
She will show him how to face “the senseless horrors of modern
existence and . . . devise a means to survive keeping the greatest possible
portion of his sanity and dignity intact” (132-133).
Both Rinaldi and the priest fail as guides because they are wearied by
the war. Instead, Catherine
combines the priest’s ideal of love as service and Rinaldi’s cynicism, being
irritated by platitudes and show.
Frederic may think he is playing a chess game of words, but
it’s Catherine who is putting those words in his mouth at the beginning of
their merging. Out of grief, she
needs a substitute for her dead fiancé and she has Frederic fill in [just as
Frederic used to do with the prostitutes in the Villa Rosa] (134-135).
Spanier notes that an earlier protagonist of Hemingway, Nick Adams, used
a similar “psychological survival skill” while fishing after returning from
the war (135). Frederic complies.
But this is not where their relationship ends; both “grow into their
parts until they are no longer acting” Catherine embodies the so-called “code” from the
beginning, living for today and discontented with conventionalism (136).
Her emotions validate her, as she gives to Frederic what she wishes she
had given to her soldier of the Somme. When
Frederic brings up marriage once she is pregnant, Catherine rejects the
convention for the reality: In her mind, they are married, and she wants the
tangible relationship [rather than a ticket away from Frederic if the
authorities found they had actually married or even wished to have a sanctioned
union]. Catherine rejects Ettore
Moretti as “useful” in combat but insufferable in conversation. Catherine also embodies the savoring of life and the
possibility of gloom, for the most part [except for seeing herself dead in the
rain], such as during the crossing of the lake, which she tries to turn into a
lark, laughing as Henry tries futilely to use an umbrella for a sail and later
relishing the gas that gets her a little drunk in order to stave off the pain
for a while. Catherine is amazingly
stoical and uncomplaining. She
turns her mood away from feeling like a whore in the Milan hotel to a
home-maker, making the best of it for Frederic’s sake by the force of her own
will, and defining courage—dying on the inside but not mentioning it.
Even her last words as she is dying exemplify this stoical courage—she
isn’t afraid of dying, “It’s just a dirty trick” (137) [on both of
them]. Frederic changes under Catherine’s influence
immediately—Rinaldi notices his desire to protect his feelings for Catherine
from public discussion. By
Switzerland, he has taken over Catherine’s them of submerging one’s identity
into the two of them as one person, claiming that he is nothing when he’s
apart from her [which probably foreshadows the ending of the novel].
Critics have mostly lambasted Catherine for this sort of talk, but
Frederic spouts it as much as she after the middle of the novel.
Using love to structure one’s life is different from using “the
bullfight, the prizefight, the hunt,” but perhaps more sensible in the context
of escaping a brutal and senseless war in order to survive, to live. As Frederic comes to embody the priest’s ideal of love,
which Catherine has done for most of the novel, he ministers to her as he
provides gas to forestall her pain [Did the doctor let him do this because he
realized it wouldn’t be effective against Catherine’s final throes?] and she
ministers to him, trying to console him about her death, even playfully echoing
a line from the beginning of their relationship when she vows to come back to
him in the night, though she knows that death is the end (138).
Catherine knows how it will be because she’s been there (139).
Of course, it’s Catherine’s death [on top of all the deaths he has
seen and even caused] that defines his “killer world” philosophy. Perhaps critics—including feminist critics—have been
too biased to see Catherine as a representative of those survival tactics that
critics invented as a code. Perhaps
this failure says more about the values of the critics and the culture than
about Catherine’s values, particularly self-sacrifice (140-141).
Criticism of Garden of Eden has looked more at Hemingway’s
supposed “androgyny” as surface features like haircuts than as holding of
values regardless of gender. In all of the endings that Hemingway drafted for the novel,
Catherine dies. After all, that’s
where Frederic Henry’s notion of the killer world comes from, the tragic death
of the most courageous (142-143). Seeing
her as a strong character instead of a weak one also makes sense because of the
person who inspired her. Hemingway’s
own nurse, with whom he fell in love after his own wounding, was nearly 8 years
older than he, a professional, and she broke his heart.
His first wife, Hadley, was also 8 years older than he.
Though it is risky to read too autobiographically, a later character,
also named Catherine B., shares many of the same traits—even some of the same
statements—as the heroine in A Farewell to Arms (144), and is a strong
character. Hemingway’s changes to the manuscript for his 1929 novel
reveal considerably more about Catherine’s role and control of the
relationship and Frederic’s learning emotionally (145).
Passages removed probably because they might reveal too much include
Frederic’s admission early in the novel that he was awash due to Catherine and
didn’t really know what was up with her.
Another statement nearly gives away the ending of the novel after
Frederic feels bad about not being able to see her one night when he had taken
her for granted (146). Hemingway
also cut out a line in which Frederic says he felt as if he were acting a part
in a play. Catherine is misread by Frederic, and has been misunderstood by critics since the novel was published (146-147), even by feminist critics who see her as a doormat. Adrienne Munich (in Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism edited by Gayle Greene and Copelia Kahn) argues for a feminist criticism that does more than bash strong men and trash weak women characters by bringing fresh views to traditional works that languish under only male-centered readings and help some women characters “escape into readability” (147). Even if Hemingway didn’t intend to make Catherine a so-called “code hero,” he crafted a dynamic woman character (148). |
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