The New Woman in Hemingway: Brett Ashley, Catherine Barkley, and the Crisis of Gender After World War I

by Massiel Pita

Summary Blog

The First World War produced profound political, economic, and social transformations that fostered a period of social liberalism in the Western world. In the United States, the 1920s were marked by economic growth, new forms of leisure, and a belief in progress alongside social struggles. Within this context, the “flapper”—not just a dancer but a broader concept describing the post-war New Woman—emerged as a figure who challenged Victorian norms by embracing sexual freedom, public life, and new social behaviors. The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 reinforced a generational divide, granting women greater independence, although they remained subordinate in many areas such as politics and the workplace. This new female identity provoked anxiety and hostility, because it was perceived as a threat to traditional gender roles and moral values.

The flapper became the most visible expression of these changes, extending beyond the United States into Europe. Women increasingly occupied public spaces, discussed topics such as sexuality, and in some cases achieved economic independence.

Hemingway portrays the New Woman through Brett Ashley and Catherine Barkley, who embody this new identity while also revealing postwar tensions surrounding gender and power. Both women, former volunteer nurses during the war, reject Victorian expectations of femininity. They engage in romantic and sexual relationships outside traditional norms, distance themselves from marriage and religion, and move freely in public spaces. Brett, characterized as a flapper, displays sexual independence, masculine style, and heavy drinking, symbolizing both liberation and social unease. Catherine, though less visibly rebellious, challenges conventional femininity through gestures such as her desire to cut her hair and through her attempt to redefine identity within her relationship.

Critical interpretations have evolved from viewing Hemingway’s women as destructive or secondary figures to recognizing their complexity. Rather than simple stereotypes, these characters reflect deeper anxieties about masculinity and power after the war. Their apparent strength often contrasts with the vulnerability of male characters, revealing a broader crisis of gender identity.

Brett Ashley and Catherine Barkley reject traditional ideals of purity, submission, and domesticity, asserting sexual freedom and active roles in public life. They embody the contradictions of female emancipation and highlight the instability of gender roles in the modernist period. Hemingway’s fiction thus engages with the cultural tensions of the postwar era, presenting female characters as central to the exploration of identity, power, and gender in the modern world.

Article

By Massiel Pita

The First World War had profound political and economic consequences and generated significant social transformations. In the aftermath of the war, these changes gave rise to a period of social liberalism across much of the Western world. In the United States particularly, the postwar years were characterized by a strong desire for change. During the 1920s, economic growth fostered new forms of leisure and entertainment, such as dancing, going to the movies, and attending sporting events. This decade was marked by a strong belief in progress, expressed through technological advances and the illusion of economic prosperity, as well as by various social struggles against racism and corruption. Within this context, a new female figure emerged: the “flapper”—not just a term for a dancer, but a broader concept regarding the New Woman—the new, freer character of women following the war.

This article argues that Hemingway’s female characters do not simply reflect misogynistic stereotypes but rather embody the cultural anxieties surrounding gender and power after the First World War.

This decade was especially significant for women in the United States because they gained the right to vote with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. From that moment on, a clear generational divide developed between the New Woman of the 1920s and women of earlier generations. Less constrained by the rigid norms of the Victorian era, these women experienced greater freedom in multiple aspects of life. The flappers rejected what had traditionally been considered “morally acceptable” behavior: they wore shorter skirts, danced to jazz music, smoked, drank alcohol, openly embraced their sexuality, and challenged the sexual and social norms imposed by Victorian morality.

Despite this apparent social progress, women continued to occupy a subordinate position to men in many areas, particularly in politics and the workplace, where they had little influence over major decisions. Nevertheless, during these years, the condition of the New Woman was redefined, especially in relation to her attitude toward leisure and public life.

At the same time, the New Woman openly challenged traditional gender roles, provoking hostility from many men who perceived her presence in the public sphere as a threat to social order and moral values. Some feared what they interpreted as a decline in female morality. In this context, certain physicians and social theorists identified the New Woman as a source of social disorder, reflecting the anxiety generated by increasing female independence.

The flapper thus became the most visible manifestation of the social changes affecting American women during the 1920s. This rebellious spirit transformed the feminine ideal; it also extended beyond the United States into Europe. Before the First World War, women were largely excluded from public spaces such as bars. However, during the 1920s, many began to frequent speakeasies, discuss topics such as sexuality and contraception, and, in some cases, achieve economic independence from men.

Although the flapper movement began to decline after the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, it was far more than a passing trend. It played an important role in the social advances women would achieve in the decades that followed. Its influence extended into film and literature, where numerous authors represented the New Woman in their works. Writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anita Loos, and Ernest Hemingway incorporated this figure into their narratives, reflecting both fascination and ambivalence toward female emancipation.

Hemingway portrayed the New Woman through the characters of Brett Ashley and Catherine Barkley in his 1920s novels The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. Both characters are especially significant as representations of this new female identity. Brett and Catherine served as volunteer nurses (V.A.D.) during the First World War, were of British origin, and left their country to work abroad. In doing so, they distanced themselves from the expectations of Victorian England, where women were expected to be domestic, religious, and sexually pure.

Like many Americans and Europeans of the time, Brett and Catherine embrace greater sexual freedom during this transitional period, although they still face stigma from men who condemn their open sexuality. Both characters openly engage in romantic relationships. Catherine maintains an extramarital relationship with Frederic Henry for several months and later accompanies him to Switzerland, while Brett engages in multiple relationships during the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona.

Neither woman conforms to traditional expectations of marriage, and both also demonstrate a clear distance from organized religion. Furthermore, they move comfortably in public spaces such as bars, horse races, and bullfights, where alcohol consumption is common. In Brett’s case, excessive drinking becomes one of the defining features of her character.

Regarding physical appearance, Catherine is barely described in A Farewell to Arms. However, when Hemingway refers to her hair, it is Catherine herself who expresses the desire to cut it short to appear more masculine. This gesture reflects her rejection of traditional femininity and her willingness to challenge conventional gender expectations.

Brett, by contrast, is introduced from the outset as a flapper: “Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that” (Hemingway, 2014).

Critics have long debated how Hemingway represented women in his fiction. For example, Leslie Fiedler argued that Hemingway felt most comfortable writing about male relationships and what he termed “men without women.” According to Fiedler, Hemingway repeatedly returns to masculine spaces such as war, fishing expeditions, and male companionship, while female characters often appear as disruptive presences within these worlds. In his influential reading, Fiedler distinguishes between different recurring female types in Hemingway’s fiction. Women associated with marriage, pregnancy, or the assertion of sexual power are frequently portrayed as threatening figures who challenge male autonomy and become, in Fiedler’s terminology, “bitches.” Within this framework, Brett Ashley occupies a distinctive position. Unlike the American women whom Fiedler describes as “unmitigated bitches,” Brett is presented as a more ambiguous figure. As he observes, “The British bitch is for Hemingway only a demi-bitch, however, as the English are only, as it were, demi-Americans. Catherine is delivered from her doom by death; Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises is permitted, once at least, the gesture of herself rejecting her mythical role” (Fiedler, 1998).

However, more recent criticism has complicated this interpretation. Scholars such as Carl P. Eby argue that Hemingway’s female characters cannot be reduced simply to misogynistic stereotypes. Rather, they often reflect deeper anxieties related to gender identity and power relations. Eby suggests that many of the women in Hemingway’s work occupy a paradoxical position: they appear powerful, or even “phallic,” precisely because the men around them experience vulnerability, trauma, or a form of symbolic emasculation following the First World War (Eby, 1999).

In this sense, characters such as Brett Ashley gain narrative authority not only as destructive women, but as figures that reveal the crisis of masculinity that followed the war. Brett Ashley embodies the cultural contradictions of the flapper figure. As Mark Spilka observes, Brett represents both the liberation and the danger associated with the sexual freedoms of the 1920s. Her short hair, masculine clothing, and sexual independence anticipate later characters such as Catherine Bourne in The Garden of Eden. Brett thus becomes a symbol of the modern woman who simultaneously fascinates and unsettles the male characters around her (Spilka, 1990).

From this perspective, Catherine Barkley also becomes more complex than the passive heroine she has often been assumed to be. Her famous declaration to Frederic Henry—“There isn’t any me. I’m you. Don’t make up a separate me” (Hemingway, 1929)—can be interpreted not simply as submission, but as an attempt to redefine identity within an intimate relationship. Rather than completely surrendering her individuality, Catherine attempts to construct a shared identity that destabilizes traditional boundaries between the masculine and the feminine.

Ultimately, Brett Ashley and Catherine Barkley are no longer defined as domestic beings. In open rebellion against the bourgeois values of the nineteenth century, they reject traditional feminine ideals of purity, piety, and submission. Instead, they assert sexual freedom, self-expression, and an active presence in the public sphere.

As representations of the New Woman, both characters challenge patriarchal expectations and reveal the cultural tensions surrounding female emancipation in the early twentieth century. By refusing to perform the role of the passive Victorian woman, they embody the contradictions and possibilities of female identity within literary modernism.

These tensions firmly situate Hemingway within modernist literature, not only as a chronicler of postwar disillusionment, but also as a writer deeply engaged with the instability of gender identities in the modern world. Hemingway cannot be easily classified as either misogynistic or a feminist pioneer, as Eby suggests. The complexity of his female characters emerges from deeper psychological and artistic tensions within his work. Eby himself has argued that Catherine Bourne in The Garden of Eden may be interpreted as an extension of Catherine Barkley and even as a feminine alter ego of Hemingway, further enriching this debate.

Moreover, early drafts of The Sun Also Rises reveal that Hemingway initially conceived the novel as centered on Lady Brett Ashley. In an early version he writes: “This is a novel about a lady. Her name is Lady Ashley, and when the story begins, she is living in Paris, and it is Spring” (Hemingway, 2014). Although this approach was later abandoned and the published novel begins with Robert Cohn, this draft suggests that Brett was originally conceived as the narrative center.

From this perspective, Brett’s characterization also exemplifies Hemingway’s well-known iceberg theory. Rather than explicitly describing her as a “flapper,” the author simply writes, “She started all that,” allowing the cultural meaning of the New Woman to remain implicit beneath the surface.

In conclusion, the figures of Brett Ashley and Catherine Barkley reveal how Hemingway’s fiction engages with the profound transformations of gender roles in the post–First World War period. These characters embody both the promises and the tensions of female emancipation during the modernist era.

In this sense, Hemingway’s women are not merely secondary figures within male-centered narratives, but central elements in the literary exploration of identity, power, and gender in the modern world.

About the Author

Massiel Pita served as museologist at Finca Vigía (Ernest Hemingway’s home in Cuba) from 2018 to 2022. She is currently Director of Cuban Affairs at the Florida Hemingway Society and advisor to the Ernest Hemingway Historical Literary Movement of Miami. Publications include: The new woman in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms (Spanish edition) and The Three Legs of the Tripod: A Story from the Green Hills of Finca Vigía (Spanish and English editions), available on Amazon.

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