Women have a way in following in movements. It starts slow at first, one or two women show the others what it's like to be independent and live their own life, then the others follow. Women define who they are and who they want to be through their actions. Men in the 1920’s had a certain power, women yearned for that feeling of power. So, just as men found who they were back then, women eventually did too. In The Sun Also Rises through the character Lady Brett Ashley, Ernest Hemingway shows a new sense of womanhood established for that time period.
In the 1920’s women were expected to be the utmost form of feminine. Lady Brett Ashley through the story and shows that times for women were beginning to change and this new form of what a woman
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She is dressed like a man, she has her hair like a man, and she speaks in a way in which men would usually speak. Brett’s manly appearance and manly actions remained throughout the book. Brett’s first appearance was with a group of gay men, also a very uncommon action from women of that time. Jake describes her as, “damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was pushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.”(p. 30). This was the very first indication in the book that men did not mind Brett’s appearance or actions. Brett’s first spoken words in The Sun Also Rises was, “Hello, you chaps.” (p. 28), this was a phrase that was commonly used by men among other men but normally not used by women in that time period. Xiaoping Yu (2010), a student studying the english language says, ”The most important characteristic is the previously mentioned blending of the feminine and the masculine in both appearance and behavior”. (para. 4). Brett displays a boys appearance and also acts very masculine at times but she can not cover up her womanly figure or her overall good looks, this attracts many