The Hemingway Women [Paperback]

Bernice Kert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 17, 1998

A unique view of Hemingway, the man and the writer, through the women he loved and who loved him. 

Many books have been written about Ernest Hemingway, but no book has focused on the women he knew and loved and sometimes hated — his mother, who was the lifelong recipient of his invective; his wives; and others who captivated him. Hemingway married four times, each time to a fascinating person: Hadley Richardson, who shared the Paris years and one son; Pauline Pfeiffer, the mother of two more sons, who created a haven in Key West; Martha Gellhorn, a writer and acclaimed journalist; and Mary Welsh, a Time correspondent. Drawing on letters and interviews with the living women, Bernice Kert sheds new light on the Hemingway heroines and their real-life prototypes. "The best book about Hemingway that has been written for a long time."—Malcolm Cowley "A very valuable book, admirably organized, handsomely written, and continuously interesting."—Carlos Baker "The very different women in Hemingway's life come through clearly and strongly . . . a fine balanced work. . . . I couldn't stop reading it."—Elizabeth Janeway Illustrated

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On the overloaded shelf of Hemingway biographies, this perceptive group portrait claims a unique spot. Focusing on his wives, lovers, and female friends, Bernice Kert highlights aspects of the writer's personality that are often shrouded by his hypermasculine public image. Women were certainly attracted by Hemingway's swaggering charm and boundless vitality, but they also discerned an underlying strain of sensitivity and vulnerability he concealed from the world. Although a friend once remarked that Hemingway was the only man he knew who really hated his mother, Kert's stereotype-shattering depiction of their combative relationship limns Grace Hall Hemingway in more nuanced terms than her son ever did and reminds readers that much of Hemingway's creativity and competitiveness came from her. The wives emerge as people in their own right, though journalist Martha Gelhorn was the only one to find her career more interesting than being Mrs. Hemingway. Kert's portraits of the unwitting models for the author's heroines reveal significant differences between the actual Agnes von Kurowsky and the fictional Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms, between Duff Twysden and Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway tended to write about the ideal female; Kert restores the real women who shaped his life and art. --Wendy Smith

Review

Absorbing. . . . Hemingway's life [becomes] a symphony of movements defined by the women he loved. (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - The New York Times )

Product Details

• Paperback: 556 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (December 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393318354
• ISBN-13: 978-0393318357
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #176,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A revealing light on the life of a writer and his muses, April 12, 2000

By 

Mariano L. Bernardez "International Business ... (Chicago, Buenos Aires, Madrid) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hemingway Women (Paperback)

This book, written with style and interest, is a sound ,balanced and well documented research on the lives and marriages of Ernst Hemingway with this four wives , Hadley Richardson (portayed in A Moveable Feast), Pauline Pfeiffer (Green Hills of Africa), Martha Gelhorn -a writer herself- (The fifth column) and Mary Welsh (A dangerous summer), inteligently ilustrated, amusing and covering also his famous lovers: Adriana Ivancich (his Renata in Across the river and under the trees) and Jane Kendall Mason (Brett Ashley herself in the Sun Also Rises) and the affairs that ended and started his marriages leaving a lasting pattern in his literature. It's an amusing and interesting book for those who love, hate or ignore Hemingway. It also explores his difficult and influencing relationship with his mother.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Such Thing As a "Man's Man", September 11, 2007

By 

E. Shirley - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hemingway Women (Paperback)

This is a brilliant biography of a man whose name is, to many, synonymous with all things deeply, simply, brutally mannish. By telling the stories of Hemingway's relationships with women throughout his life- mother, wives, girlfriends, colleagues- Bernice Kert reveals the true smallness of the man with heartbreaking clarity. Yet, make no mistake, this is a thoroughly romantic book, albeit in all the saddest ways possible. Kert is not trying to smash the Hemingway legend,though after reading this book you will never see a Hemingway novel in quite the same way. Some people have commented that the individual stories of these women are insignificant because they did not lead notable lives "of their own", but any fan of Hemingway himself would be fascinated to see how much of these women and their lives were taken by Hemingway and retold in his most famous stories, always casting himself in a favorable light while reducing the woman to a fantasy of sexuality or revenge .... he being the famous author, whose story will we read? Whose myth will we believe? And how tragically familiar is the tale of one who gives up their "own life" to stand by their husband's side, only to see themself 'immortalized' with such coldness and cruelty?

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE REAL HEMINGWAY, December 7, 2007

By 

Anne Salazar "inveterate reader" (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Hemingway Women (Paperback)

This is as much fun to read as a great novel and has all the ingredients of a great read, as they say: love, hate, success, adventure, etc. For the most part, Ernest Hemingway is remembered as a mans's man, an adventurer who loved bullfights, safaris, hunting, shooting, fishing. But at heart he was a man who needed to be taken care of, but resented every woman who tried. All of his wives were from the same basic mold: adverturers and writers (was Hadley a writer?) and all of them wanted nothing more than to be with this exciting man who loved and adored her. That is, until they got married. Then the fun for him was over and he resented being taken care of by a woman who he thought of as a sex object, and he couldn't fathom that they might be able to cohabit the same body. In his letters he pleads for his women to always love him and take care of him, but in reality he resented them for doing just that. He admired Martha Gellhorn, the wife with by far the most spunk, for being a good journalist, until they were married. He wanted her to stay home with him, but she resisted his control. So what does he do? He meets another journalist, Mary Welsh, and immediately, on first sight, falls in love with her and begs for her to take care of him and to always love him. Which she did. And he immediately hated her for it. And it destroyed her.

It is so ironic that the man who professed to hate his father for committing suicide (albeit blaming his mother for it) would in the end take his own life. Of course, by that time he was a shell of the adventurer/writer/lover, and was beset by illness, both psychiatric and otherwise, none of which he would allow treatment for.

Although Hemingway lived and loved in the early to mid 1900s, it seems a long time ago; the world has changed so much! No longer do we see artists and writers living as paupers in France, as expats and proud of it! It was a different time and place, to be sure. But it's fun to read about.

I have not read a lot of Hemingway's novels (The Old Man and the Sea enthralled me when I first read it), but you don't have to be familiar with his writing to love the man and this book. This book, like no other biography I have read, shows the man through the eyes of the women he loved, and resented, and ultimately betrayed, beginning with his mother and continuing on through four wives and several beautiful women who he chased and wooed but for various reasons never made lasting connections with. Please read this book. It is important and entertaining and scholarly all at once.