Hemingway's Women as seen in a Parisian Showroom

Women in Paris have a different aura about them to American women, there seems to be this grandeur about the ways of Parisian women that they have this superiority, this elegance yet demining manner about them. Above men, control the men have this capability to tease and tempt the man into doing as she wishes. When working at Oscar de la Renta these French women came waltzing in up the white reflective marble steps, into a grand room where chandeliers hung and where ball gowns circulated the room on wafer like mannequins. Thru the glittered shoes, sparkling jewelry, and café au lait holding waiters, amongst the petite French ladies with there mysterious air, passionate discussions, and vibrant red nails with cigarette stained fingers, stood a tall leggy woman, with large eyes, coloured with turquoise makeup and pointy shoes. She whispered to a small hairless man with a New York accent.  She had wanted some ordeuvres for the young entrepreneurs who had just flown in from Spain. She had an air of power, and stern in her ways yet very amiable. Her flaming red hair, and elongated body with delicate hands, motherly hands reminded me of Hadley, Hemingway’s first wife, his second love but first true partner.

She captures that perfect domestic, conservative woman “she was an oddity in the age of the flapper”(McLain). Just like the woman at Oscar de la Renta, intelligent, frank and had warmth about her, Hadley illustrates the same qualities as described in McLain’s novel bringing light to the character that of Mrs. Hemingway the first. Not only does she show how a bourgeois upper class household is like in Paris but one in “St Louis with dark undercurrents of alcoholism and suicide”(McLain). She grew up was with an alcoholic father and saw the darkness of what that brings, she was a strong woman, and had seen things. The eyes of her father had resembled those of Hemingway’s, “So lost, he’d said, and I could see it in his eyes, which reminded me of my father’s” (68). Much like Hemingway who embarked on such drinking activities with various authors of that time, she also had needed him for her life, to take a life where she could escape her past, as he needed someone to feel secure. Hadley was a beautiful red headed, curvaceous woman, six years senior she had an intelligence and kindness that was very different from his later wives, she owned ethical and gendered values yet had to embrace the modernizing world of Paris that surrounded her. She held a tradition haven waited to give herself away before the age of twenty-eight she remained true to her values, very rare for this time of the flapper. Despite the two lovers being complete opposites they both needed one another, Hemingway needed Hadley “to provide the emotional structure necessary for him to write and translate into aesthetic rhythm the explosiveness of those dark memories” and she had needed “him to help her exit the safe but lifeless cocoon that is her family existence in St. Louis.”( McLain).

Hemingway was this passionate, eager, adventurous man who had seen a lot and witnessed a lot of life changing things, that effected the way he acted and saw life. He held a passion and love so strong for literature that he could and wanted to express what he was feeling to anyone and everyone, Hadley was quieter about that. This perception of Hadley shows that she might be on the shier side and the more reserved side but that nonetheless she was a twinkle in Earnest’s eyes.

It’s interesting to see how Hadley is represented in the New Reading of an American expat in Paris; McLain really paints a picture of a woman who wishes she’s something more than she was. In the text Hadley described “His preoccupation with his work made me (her) sharply aware that I (she) had no passion of my (her) own” (70). Later in the novel, she muses, “I wasn’t at all convinced I was special, as Ernest was. He lived inside the creative sphere and I lived outside” (107).” This idea that she’s with someone so outgoing and so alive- just like the photos taken and showed at Shakespeare and Company’s bookstore, Hadley seemed to lack such charisma. Leading to often insecurities about herself, and the new modernist woman that shadowed her. Despite the perception of herself as this monotonous individual she shared something truly special with Hemingway, even though him leaving her for one of her friends Pauline Pfeiffer, that devastatingly hurt, he has always referred to her in his writings. She was seen as a muse of Paris, she had inspired him to see the modernism against the antimodernist perceptions and ways of life. “McLain brilliantly fleshes out these tensions between the modern and the anti-modern, with the result that her book allows us to understand Hemingway’s ultimate mourning for “the wife” he had lost—and came to venerate as a Paris memory and muse in his late work.”(McLain). It shows just how much he wishes he had been with her more, that he cherishes her, she inspired the sparkles in his eyes, they both shared traumatic experiences in their separate past lives that in the end brought both of them closer together, allowed their attractions for each other to reach new heights. They were at one with each other, perhaps opposite but a muse is a muse and nothing can escape the artist’s mind of that of his muse.

Thinking of that idea of a muse, and what it means, and what it means to be a muse, or to have a ONE, is something that bookstore and publisher Sylvia Beach understood. Sylvia Beach owned Shakespeare and Company; she was a witty woman, with a boundless amount of love and passion for writers and their art. She opened this store that Hemingway described as warm, cheerful and with a big stove. This representing her big heart and her warm and cheerful personality, of someone that was “No one that I ever knew was nicer to me”.

She was a respectful lady, with a generous heart, that’s seen in the letters to Joyce got often taken advantage of. That her kindness could be seen as a weakness, however in the letters passed between Joyce and herself, she stands up for herself, she has the unconditional passion and respect for the artist and their writings and would do everything in her power to do as much as humanly possible for them. Yet Joyce seemed to have taken her as a convenience in several situations, these letters “reveal much about his intellectual landscape Indeed, Joyce's letters, however much they might be couched in politeness, in camaraderie, in wheedling, in downright begging, are the stuff of which task- masters are made. One request follows the other, rather like beads on an endless string.”(Sylvia & Joyce). This shows that she was a courageous lady, standing up for herself against famous authors, these letters show the story between James Joyce and Beach, a tale more than just ingratitude or “submission sacrifice” or “egotism”.

This masked courage that Beach had inherited is shown in her memoir or her time in Paris during the Nazi occupation. This idea of a strong woman is evident in these pages, however there is still an air of lightness and wit about her. Despite a High ranked German officer coming to take away her books and belonging, Sylvia manages to protect her love and transport all her affairs to a third floor studio. The fact she tricked this officer and succeeded to hide her precious books and that notable Finnegan’s Wake shows tremendous bravery and humour that has been so noticeable throughout the various descriptions of her. There is one sentence that she mentions in her memoir “Shakespeare and company remained open. The war went on” almost shows her ignorance to the war around her. Perhaps not ignorance but shows what is priority to her, shows her views about the subject matter, and where her heart and spirit is. She had thought about leaving back to America but decided to remain in the reality that of Paris with her friends. She let the fiction of her books; overrule the reality of her war.  

The two women discussed in this blog post shows that there are different types of American women coming to Paris as expatriates. Some are looking for that love to share with someone “and we’ll never love anyone else but each other. ‘No never.’ As Hemingway once said to Hadley, they may be after a long awaited dream such as opening a little bookstore like Sylvia Beach. The modernist times perceived women different dependent on their background and attitude towards the modernist world. Hemingway describes both these women always to the highest regard, but Hadley to the highest. Hemingway demonstrates throughout his career just how much Hadley had impacted him and allowed him to be a writer. It was a love that he would have always kept and still remains in the roots and depths of his pages. Just like the love that Sylvia Beach would have cherished and remembered forever down the little road to her bookstore Shakespeare & Company.