Women as Other: Hemingway's portrayal of females in To Have and Have Not

Abstract:

This essay explores Hemingway’s depiction of women in the novel To Have and Have Not. In To Have and Have Not, the novel explored in this essay, traits of Hemingway’s renowned sexist depiction of women have been investigated, and the purpose of the essay was to illuminate that the women of To Have and Have Not are reduced to roles which resembles Simone de Beauvoir’s observations, namely the perception of women as the Other, assuming subordinate roles. In order to achieve this task, a close reading has been done on Hemingway’s novel To Have and Have Not, and his portrayal of five female characters in the novel has been analyzed. Simone de Beauvoir’s theory has been applied for an understanding of these female characters in order to see if these women were portrayed in a manner resembling de Beauvoir notions, that is, marked by patriarchal perspectives.

The conclusion drawn in this essay is that all the women in the novel are portrayed as "absolute sex", subordinated to men. Thus, the depictions of the women in the novel To Have and Have Not were found to correspond to patriarchal gender roles as described by Simone de Beauvoir.