A young friend asked my opinion of some movie directors who were very concerned with manliness &, after that, of course, Hemingway, the American writer most famous for dealing with manliness, especially in America. The story on his mind is one I recommend: The short & happy life of Francis Macomber. You can read it here online (pdf).
Hemingway published the short story in 1936, alongside another African hunting story, The snows of Kilimanjaro—he had discovered safari... The protagonist of The short & happy life of Francis Macomber is Robert Wilson, an Englishman, a white hunter in darkest Africa. He is hired by Macomber, a very wealthy American, a WASP, who brought his wife on safari—a very American thing to do. The wife is very excited about the experience; this is also very American. Wilson becomes party & witness to the marriage—you cannot call it a family—falling apart.
I recommend you read the story & consider that the man of ordinary intelligence would consider it surprisingly modern. Hemingway was surely often prescient, that’s one of the distinctive qualities of the better writers. But I think the reader of ordinary intelligence would also call the writing misogynist. Presumably, people felt almost the same at the time. It is part of Hemingway’s art to situate his protagonists at a significant distance from his intended audience—his audience is much closer to Macomber, minus the luxury, than to Wilson, leaving aside his English sense of what’s proper. The story is especially useful for an introduction to Hemingway, because the relationship between Macomber & Wilson is almost the same as that between his readers & Hemingway. Not a great surprise—Hemingway knew himself to be a man, but also an educator of an unusual kind, an educator of men.
To be a man is to be apart from & above ordinary people. But in America, especially, to be a man is to take leave of women, to reject the most obvious & perhaps the most important part of the equality that characterizes American life. Hence the African safari, the desire to face the dangers. Hemingway establishes something like a natural alternative to the conventions of WASP America & he shows that the proud in America are not really men. It’s a long conversation to figure out why this is so important to him, but I think it’s rather obvious that he believes the disappearance of manliness has confused Americans, starting with the elite, about themselves. Hence the combination of the two things most removed from one another in our world, facing a lion & quarreling with the wife. However modern or Progressive life becomes, people are still stuck with private lives which do not follow the pattern of public statements. Whatever this may mean to men, it is a matter of urgent importance to Hemingway, a writer. The only thing a writer can offer a civilized audience is superior insight into the motives of human action & a beautiful vision of the society within which people hope to thrive. The tension between public statements & private lives is part of what makes for drama, for stories worth telling, so long as it is possible to dramatize it.
In his youth, Hemingway thought this was still possible. Read the passages I quote below, regarding American women, which come up early in the story, the white hunter’s reflections before the very surprising action:
They are, he thought, the hardest in the world; the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory & the most attractive & their men have softened or gone to pieces nervously as they have hardened. Or is it that they pick men they can handle? They can't know that much at the age they marry, he thought. He was grateful that he had gone through his education on American women before now because this was a very attractive one…
When she left, Wilson was thinking; when she went off to cry, she seemed a hell of a fine woman. She seemed to understand, to realize, to be hurt for him & for herself & to know how things really stood. She is away for twenty minutes & now she is back, simply enamelled in that American female cruelty. They are the damnedest women. Really the damnedest…
So, Robert Wilson thought to himself, she is giving him a ride, isn't she? Or do you suppose that's her idea of putting up a good show? How should a woman act when she discovers her husband is a bloody coward? She's damn cruel but they're all cruel. They govern, of course, & to govern one has to be cruel sometimes. Still, I've seen enough of their damn terrorism.
Read the whole story—it’s remarkably thoughtful; every description of a character bears thinking about, partly because both of the unhappily married Americans are admired, are thought to embody the best America can offer; Hemingway gives good evidence that the war of the sexes makes for a good structure for thinking about human problems—one suggestion, for example, is that an ideal American man & an ideal American woman would not make an ideal American couple.
The Macombers, Francis & Margot, are not treated the same way, though both elicit the contempt of the protagonist at times, as well as his affection. As the quotes above suggest, there is something especially the matter with the wife, which perhaps is already clear in her desire to come on a safari, which the protagonist rather disapproves of; the presence of American & European women in darkest Africa is the only cause of self-contempt in this man. What is there left for men? A more suggestive way to put this observation is that the retreat to hunting big game comes from man’s self-understanding as a lion, possibly on his way to extinction—no match for technological civilization. A more coherent way to put the same again is to say that the gov’t of women over society has removed any possibility of nobility.
It should go without saying, Robert Wilson, white hunter is not Hemingway. He is not even the narrator, though he is the protagonist & Hemingway seems to spend more time entering into his thoughts than than those of the Americans. Yet there is no doubt that the interest, even in this wilderness, is America & the ways in which women are not merely competing with their men, but looking to replace them, it would seem in part because they are better talkers & actors—Margot puts on a much better show than Francis. She is more interesting; there is a moment when the narrator, rather than Wilson, makes a comment about Francis that reveals his weakness; portraying Margot as vicious rather than weak is in a certain sense a compliment, as well as a preview of coming attractions. The short & happy life of Francis Macomber is a very modern story, indeed, a story that announces a gynaikocracy that might prove irresistible & which it is not easy to argue against, either; if unmanliness could be turned into a principle to govern society, it would be niceness, & it almost is… The happiness of Francis, the life of action, does not include any knowledge that would help him as an American; the best he could do, in that sense, would be to escape the rules of American society.