Frederic’s Conflict between Homosociality and Heterosexuality: War, Marvell, and Sculpture in A Farewell to Arms

For many years, Ernest Hemingway had been regarded as symbol of unabashed hetero-masculinity. He performed as highly macho man; he fell in love with many women and married four times; he often went hunting and fishing expeditions to prove his strength and bravery. That myth, however, has been radically modified since posthumous publication of The Garden of Eden in 1986.... What does Hemingway's possible inclination in contrast to his public performance of hetero-masculinity suggest to our current debate over homosexuals' enlistment in American armed forces? This question is important not just because vigorous controversy has continued over discriminatory policy of Ask, Don't Tell (1993) but .also because Hemingway experienced military life during First World War and described conflict between intimacy and institutional homophobia in army in A Farewell to Arms (1929). Farewell depicts how military one hand produces physical and emotional intimacy between soldiers and other hand requires homophobic exclusion of homosexuality and compulsive performance of heterosexuality. ********** PROPONENTS OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM assert that identity is not natural given but an unfixed existence where social categories such as race, sex, and gender, are constructed over time. In ease of gender, Judith Butler argues that gender is effect of discourse and performance, a set of repeated acts within highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce appearance of substance, of natural sort of being (45). Gender identities are individual acts of conforming to, contesting, and compromising with prevailing conventions within heteronormative culture. For many years, Ernest Hemingway had been regarded as symbol of unabashed hetero-masculinity. He performed as highly macho man; he fell in love with many women and married four times; he often went hunting and fishing expeditions to prove his strength and bravery. That myth, however, has been radically modified since posthumous publication of The Garden of Eden in 1986; novel depicts inversion of couple's sexual roles and couple's transformation into same sex in act of coitus. Researchers such as Mark Spilka and Carl P. Eby have examined hidden side of Hemingway's hetero-masculinity, revealing new insights concerning androgyny and femininity in his fiction. Moreover, Debra A. Moddelmog insists that Spilka's concept of Hemingway's androgyny tends to conceal writer's disposition, showing how Hemingway's sexual identity might be constructed on border between heterosexual and homosexual (51). What does Hemingway's possible inclination in contrast to his public performance of hetero-masculinity suggest to our current debate over homosexuals' enlistment in American armed forces? This question is important not just because vigorous controversy has continued over discriminatory policy of Ask, Don't Tell (1993) but also because Hemingway experienced military life during First World War and described conflict between intimacy and institutional homophobia in army in A Farewell to Arms (1929). Farewell depicts how military one hand produces physical and emotional intimacy between soldiers and other hand requires homophobic exclusion of homosexuality and compulsive performance of heterosexuality. This essay clarifies that Frederic Henry, protagonist in novel, expresses anxieties about construction and performance of sexual and gender identities in army, homosocial institution, and in postwar civil society, heterosexual landscape. In Between Men, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick asserts that patriarchal culture constitutes homosocial network through male traffic in women: the use of women as exchangeable, perhaps symbolic, property for primary purpose of cementing bonds of with men (25-26). …