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Article Excerpt
Although the psyches of Hemingway's heroes--Nick Adams, Jake Barnes, Frederic Henry, and all the rest have been thoroughly analyzed, the psychological state of Hemingway's women characters has not received similar treatment. In fact, three of the most important Hemingway women suffer from diagnosable psychiatric disorders. Catherine Barkley (A Farewell to Arms), Brett Ashley (The Sun Also Rises), and Maria (For Whom the Bell Tolls) display all-too-real symptoms of emotional illness. An understanding of this aspect of their lives enriches our sense of the struggles they face.
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IN 1952, Philip Young, reading Otto Fenichel's Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, suggested that Nick Adams suffered from traumatic neurosis (139-142), and, more recently, Ronald Smith updated that diagnosis to what today we call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Neither Young nor Smith was or is a psychologist, but both help us understand that first Hemingway hero and, by extension, all of the rest of them. Hemingway's major women characters, however, although much has been written about them, have not been examined in such a strictly psychological way. Until the 1980s, Catherine Barkley, Brett Ashley, and Maria were seen as either destroyers of men or fantasy figures--"bitches or goddesses"--but a later generation of scholars has worked hard to move them from stereotypes to complex women characters worthy of our attention. (1) Still, the possibility that these women suffer from diagnosable psychological ailments has not received the kind of attention given to Nick Adams's all-too-clear symptoms. Hence this essay. (2)
We first meet Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms when the doctor Rinaldi invites his friend Frederic Henry to the hospital to meet her, Rinaldi's new infatuation. But, after the men arrive, Catherine and Frederic become involved in conversation while Rinaldi talks with Catherine's friend Helen Ferguson. In the discussion between Frederic and Catherine, we learn important information about her. Perhaps most significant is that her fiance was killed at the Battle of the Somme, that four-and-a-half-month bloodbath in which the British lost 20,000 dead and suffered an additional 40,000 wounded on the first day alone (Keegan 295). As a result of her loss, Catherine's whole world view has been revolutionized. Before, she apparently held attitudes typical of her generation: she was engaged for eight years without sexual intimacy but didn't marry because she "thought it would be bad for [her fiance]" (FTA 19). She has also been brought up to believe that there is a reason for everything (18), although she has clearly abandoned that tenet as a result of her lover's death and of her own experience in the war. Had she known before the war what she has since discovered about life, she would have married her fiance or gone to bed with him, and Catherine is guilty and regretful about her earlier views: "You see I didn't care about the other thing and he could have had it all.... I would have married him or anything. I know all about it now. But then he wanted to go to war and I didn't know" (19). As she reiterates, "I thought it would be worse for him. I thought perhaps he couldn't stand it and then of course he was killed and that was the end of it" (19).
This last comment indicates that she no longer believes in God or religion. When Frederic, perhaps to be polite, responds that he is not sure that death finishes all, Catherine remarks: "Oh, yes.... That's the end of it" (FTA 19). Later, when she and Frederic discuss the possibility of their being married, she tells him." "You see, darling, it would mean everything to me if I had any religion. But I haven't any religion. You're all I've got" (116). And finally, when she is admitted to the hospital to have her baby, she tells the woman admitting her that she has no religion (313). In addition to this change, her earlier romantic attitude toward war and life has also been shattered. She notes that she volunteered for her nursing duties when her fiance joined the military because she had "had a silly idea he might come to the hospital where [she] was. With a saber cut ... and a bandage around his head. Or shot through the shoulder. Something picturesque.... He didn't have a saber cut. They blew him all to bits" (20). As a result, Catherine has also become haunted by death. She tells Frederic, for example, that she is afraid of the rain "because sometimes I see me dead in it.... And sometimes I see you dead in it" (126). Her morbid sense of foreboding also comes out in this conversation when she indicates that she believes that she can keep Frederic safe but that "nobody can help themselves."
At the couple's next meeting, things do not go well. After initial pleasantries, Frederic tries to seduce Catherine. He takes her hand, which she allows, and then puts his arm around her, to which she objects. When he tries to kiss her, she slaps him, although she immediately apologizes: "I'm dreadfully sorry.... I just couldn't stand the nurse's-evening-off aspect of it" (FTA 26). Frederic, believing that he now has "a certain advantage," proceeds with his seduction: "I was angry and yet certain, seeing it all ahead like the moves in a chess game." He tells her that she was right to slap him, that he has been leading a "funny life," and that she is "so very beautiful," but it is clear that she understands exactly what he is up to: "You don't need to say a lot of nonsense. I said I was sorry." When she "adds that the two of them seem to "get along," he agrees, adding that they have been able to forget the war for a moment--a comment that makes her laugh for the first time. As they continue talking, Catherine changes her mind about kissing him, telling him that she would "be glad to kiss [him] if [he didn't] mind" (27). Still angry with her, Frederic kisses her "hard" and tries to force her lips open, although she initially resists. A few moments later, however, as he holds her close to him, she opens her lips, lets her head rest against his hand, and "then she [is] crying on [his] shoulder." At this moment of surrender, she pleads, "Oh, darling.... You will be good to me, won't you?.... Because we're going to have a strange life." She is still crying, and he doesn't quite know what to make of her. "What the hell," he thinks as,...
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