Hi,
I am curious to know what women who have read Ernest Hemingways books think of his style, writing, etc. as his books are very masculine oriented and typically on the topics of men and their struggles. I recently started reading The Old Man And The Sea and as I was reading it, the thought occurred to me that I really couldn’t imagine a woman relating to what was being said on the page.
So I’m curious, female readers who have read his books…do you relate to much of what its saying? What do you think of his books?
Sorry if this sounds naive/obtuse, that is not my intention.
I don’t like Hemingway. A lot of his work, especially The Sun Also Rises is just the rambling of a self important expat, which tracks considering that is a good autobiographical description of the man himself. I have read A LOT of hemingway over the years and I’ve only ever liked one short story.
A lot of people assume that women don’t like Hemingway for two reasons: (1) the way he writes women and (2) his lack of purple prose (i.e. he writes like a man)
He does write women atrociously, but so do a lot of the classical authors and good authors in general, so whatever. Doesn’t bother me but makes me roll my eyes (the women are almost always vapid cheaters etc. As for his writing style, I find it to be a chore to get through because of the repetition, short sentences, and dry writing. I don’t mind dry writing or lacking of purple prose, some of my favorite authors have a more dry or male sounding style, but he rubs me the wrong way.
Also for the record, women can still relate to the struggles of the guy in OMATS, that’s not chiefly the issue I think most people have with him.
This. The struggles of the old man and the sea are universal. Aging, fragility, longing for youth, losing strength, struggling to provide for yourself, determination, failure. Those are just the themes I related to off the top of my head. The idea that women cannot relate to those concepts is indeed obtuse, regardless of OP’s intentions behind the post. No, I do not love the way he portrays women, but characters with rich internal lives and parallels between their inner and outer struggles are indeed something women relate to. It feels necessary to point out that women are not pieces of a unified mind and some will relate to characters that others will not, and some will like a writing style that others don’t. We are just people. Individuals.