Hemingway's Redefinition of Gender Roles Elizabeth Ann Lahey

The Sun Also Rises offers a snapshot into Hemingway's world and allows the reader to see first-hand the societal changes taking place around the time of World War I. In this era, a new class of woman, free from the stifling ties to men, developed, thus causing the relationship between men and women to be completely redefined. The members of this "lost generation" rewrote the values of the Victorian age and reestablished a less rigid set of morals to implement in the modern world.

Many critics associate Ernest Hemingway with the idea of anti-feminism. However, this opinion is not necessarily founded in factual evidence. The Sun Also Rises introduces a new type of woman, the independent female, who is the polar opposite of anti-feminism. In many ways, this first novel is Hemingway's goodbye kiss to the Victorian ethos under which he was raised (O'Sullivan 81). In this novel, Hemingway creates Lady Brett Ashley to portray the liberated, modernist female persona. Brett represents the new, overtly phallic women (Fantina 84). Straying away from the image of inferior, submissive homemaker, the new woman was a freethinking, outspoken peer, and moreover, a friend.

With the creation of Brett Ashley, Hemingway...