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A Farewell to Arms, a la Shmoop. While many people bit the big one during World

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War One…

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…Ernest Hemingway managed to survive and use his experiences to pen one of his best-known

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works, A Farewell to Arms.

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It’s certainly a tear-jerker, but… some argue that it may be flawed. Is Hemingway’s

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depiction of Catherine a bit… sexist? Let’s start with a quick summary of the

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plot…

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Frederic Henry is doing his part to help the Italians during the war when he meets Catherine

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Barkley.

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It's lust at first sight. After Frederic catches a mortar shell in the knee, he's sent to recuperate

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in Milan... and by recuperate, we mean continue his pursuit of Catherine.

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By the time Frederic is healed enough to be cannon fodder again, he's in love with Catherine

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and… oops! She's caught a severe case of… pregnancy.

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Frederic and Catherine end up having to flee to Switzerland so the Italians don't kill

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him, and while you think it'd be all sipping hot cocoa and yodeling…

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…Catherine goes into labor and dies, and the baby dies, and Frederic is left with nothing

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but a bum knee. Many critics think Hemingway was something

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of a misogynist, both in real life and in his writing.

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Catherine isn't the only female character created by Hemingway who, while central to

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the plot of a story…

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…never gets to share her viewpoint and never seems to do anything other than act as a device

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to spur the male protagonist to action.

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And let's face it: Catherine's death is awful. She undergoes the terrible pain of labor…

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with no epidural!... only to lose her baby and then die herself.

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Perhaps this was Hemingway's way of saying she…and all of his female characters…

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were expendable. They enter the story, affect change in the lives of their men, and then

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get booted off the stage. And then there's the dialogue. Oy.

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Gentlemen, try getting your girlfriends to read some of Catherine's lines and see if

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you don't get a slap in the face.

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She pretty much says, on multiple occasions, that Frederic is the be-all and end-all of

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her existence and she is nada without him. Of course, to Hemingway's credit, Catherine

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is a more complicated character than he needed to make her.

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Not only does she demonstrate that she's extraordinarily brave by traveling to a war zone in order

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to care for the injured, but she is also independent and capable of taking care of herself.

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Also, her views on marriage are pretty complex, and while she may tell Frederic that he's…

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her religion and all she's got, she doesn't exist just to do her man’s bidding.

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What do you think?

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Was Hemingway super-duper-sexist?

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Or does Catherine's independence make up for her abrupt exit?

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Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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