Title
Readings of Gender and Madness in Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees and The Garden of Eden
Document Type
Essay
Annotation
Explores Hemingway’s treatment of gender and psychic trauma, relating Cantwell’s disabilities to his mental illness. Anderson considers Cantwell’s bitterness a subtle manifestation of his war trauma madness and explains instances of his vulgarity as revealing psychic injuries from which he has the potential to recover. Argues that male representations of trauma differ from those of women by contrasting Cantwell’s stoicism with Catherine Bourne’s hysteria in The Garden of Eden. Reads Catherine’s madness in terms of her failure as an artist, theorizing that when struggling with “artistic impotence,” Catherine uses her body and her marriage as canvasses for creation, with both ultimately rejected by David.
Published in
Readings of Trauma, Madness, and the Body
Date
2012
Pages
69-83
Citation
Anderson, Sarah Wood. “Readings of Gender and Madness in Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees and The Garden of Eden.” In Readings of Trauma, Madness, and the Body, 69-83. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.