Gender roles with Jake and Brett

In Ernest Hemingway’s first major novel, The Sun Also Rises, he meticulously illustrates the rapid lifestyle of the roaring twenties with his sharp signature prose. The two central protagonists in this novel are Jake and Brett. Hemingway explores the evolving gender roles of the “Lost Generation” with theses two characters. One, Jake, being a wounded WWI veteran, and the other, Brett, being a loose woman, trying to define herself in a decade where a woman’s roles were significantly altered.

Jake, the narrator of the novel, is, from all appearances, a man’s man. He knows his boxing, loves to fish, and always keeps up on the latest bullfighting news. He’s a good and reliable friend, and well to do, except for one flaw, Brett. From their first conversation, where she cautions, “Don’t touch me” in the cab, to the time Romero took a “final look to ask if it were understood. It was understood alright,” acknowledging to the famed bullfighter it was all right for him to take Brett for the time being. In doing this Jake alienated Mike, and most of the aficionados in town. Jake seems unable to shake this bad habit of Brett up until the end of the novel when she complains “we could have had such a damned good time together” and he simply replies, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” subsequently ending the book and possibly his inability to shake free from Brett. The issue in their relationship stretches deeper than simply some “game” they play. Jake’s war wound is the loss of his genitalia, and the effects it seems to have on his personality. Brett’s shared knowledge of this situation inverts the roles in the relationship for almost all of their interactions in the novel. She can’t be with him, claiming, “It’s my fault, Jake. It’s the way I’m made,” because he can’t satisfy her. When it comes to Jake’s war wound he becomes less of a reliable narrator and often shies away from directly discussing the matter, making light of the situation, then quickly changing the subject.

Brett is the love interest of this novel in the most literal sense, as she is the love interest of nearly every male character in the book. Her and Jake seem to share a deep emotional connection, yet are separated by his wound and her promiscuity. Her character consistently lines up with the identity of the new, loose women of the 1920’s. She sleeps with who she wants, smokes, dances, and lives life to the fullest. This became the case for many women at that time as the morals of the general population were shifting to a more tolerant, urban lifestyle. In comparison to characters such as May Welland from The Age of Innocence one can see how drastic these changes were.

In addition to the new freedoms of women, there are the habits they borrowed from the traditional masculine stereotype. This is what makes gender roles so prevalent in this novel. Brett will swear, and “aggressively expresses her sexual desires while her lovers wait to be chosen.” (Finnegan) Jake, and her other various lovers in this novel, all gladly accept the role they are assigned by her. So beyond a boy’s haircut, and a man’s hat, it’s obvious Brett changes the rules in a time-piece novel, plainly exploring a rapidly changing culture.

Works Cited

Finnegan, Jim. The Sun Also Rises (1926) Lecture Notes. 25 9 2009

http://www2.english.uiuc.edu/finnegan/English%20251/SunRises.html