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Ernest Hemingway: Machismo and Masochism.

Article Excerpt
Ernest Hemingway: Machismo and Masochism. By Richard Fantina, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 206 pp. $65.00.

For nearly three decades, scholars have been busy rethinking how masculinity operates in Hemingway's life' and work, replacing the celebrated macho persona with a Hemingway motivated by various psychosexual desires. Yet, as Richard Fantina argues in his important new book Ernest Hemingway: Machismo and Masochism, "[a]lthough many critics now readily dismiss the old Hemingway myth of machismo, few seem prepared to acknowledge the masochism that prevails in much of his work" (1). Fantina's book aims to redress this critical oversight, making the case that masochism is a central feature of Hemingway's major works. He uses the term masochism in its specific sexual sense, meaning the desire of a man "to submit himself sexually to, and to suffer pain and/or humiliation administered by, a woman whom he has elevated into a position of superiority and dominance" (6). As his book's title suggests, Fantina argues that this dynamic of the dominant woman and passive male Often exists alongside the characters' machismo. As he puts it quite directly at one point, "Hemingway's...

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