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 see why women can’t relate to The Old Man and the Sea, and furthermore, why someone would even need to relate. I read, say, Mieko Kawakami and I love Breast and Eggs despite it being a heavy tackling of women’s issues. And I love James Baldwin, but I relate nothing to racism and its struggles.
Now of course there’s the argument of absence of women and the quality of them, but who is writing, when is it written, and who are the women in his work portrayed against and viewed through the eyes of? I think the answers to these are in hypermasculinity and the mysoginy in the 20th century. And I think there’s value in reading that and other “old” ways of being and thinking.
This for me. I can’t help but wonder why these days everything needs to be relatable to you personally and your specific worldview, otherwise it’s not worth reading. I always thought that literature is supposed to broaden your worldview, train empathy and give you insight into different minds and eras.
Female characters in his books might be rubbish, but that’s also part of the insight into the masculine “male gaze” of the author/time period.