Male-Female Relationships in 3 Novels

This study will examine and compare the views of male-female relationships and marriage in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (Brett and Romero), Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (Clarissa and Richard), and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (Elizabeth and Darcy). The study will show that the Brett-Romero relationship is the most passionate, shallow and brief, while the Elizabeth-Darcy and Clarissa-Richard relationships are relatively without passion and yet will probably survive precisely because both partners seek a long-term union with stability and security rather than short-term passion. In all three relationships, the more fascinating and more fully examined member is the woman, with each reflecting a different level of passion, liberation, and self-knowledge.

Hemingway portrays the brief and sexually charged relationship between the often drunken Brett and the brave young bullfighter as one in which she seeks refuge from her aimless and meaningless existence and he seeks what he believes to be a powerful love to which he is willing to commit himself. Brett is blatant in the declaration of her lust for the bullfighter. Her first comment about him reveals this physical attraction: "Oh, isn't he lovely. . . . And those green trousers" (Hemingway 169).

Her attraction to the bullfighter remains little more than physical. She does seem to learn something about herself in the relationship, brief as it is, but that lesson is simply that she is not as bad a person as she fea

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dozen times before mentioning her husband Richard, so that the reader could be forgiven for believing that Peter means much more to her than Richard, and that she takes Richard very much for granted. As it turns out, Richard certainly takes Clarissa for granted as well. This is a settled relationship which is largely void of the passion which serves as the heart and soul of the lightning-brief Brett-Romero fling. Whatever her true feelings for Peter in a romantic and/or sexual sense, Clarissa makes clear that being with him and communicating with him is an exhilarating experience indeed. In fact, she thinks how it is a good thing that she did not marry Peter because then they could not have remained so close to and excitedly communicative with one another: For in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in and day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him. (Where was he this morning for instance? Some committee, she never asked what) (Woolf 7-8). If the reader does not suspect already that Clarissa is cheating on Richard with Peter (an erroneous suspicion), then he or she might suspect that Richard is cheating on Clarissa (which would be equally erroneo

Category: Literature - M