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The Sun Also Rises Gender Roles Essay

1721 Words7 Pages

Keshav Mukundhan
Hassenkamp
Honors English II
June 13, 2018
The Changing Roles of Women and Men in the 1920s as Demonstrated in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises In the early twentieth century as World War I tore through numerous European nations, the population endured physically as well as mentally. Because of the many lives lost in this war, the soldiers of the world were extraordinarily influenced by this new experience of death. World War I caused a lapse of standards and qualities in the generation that suffered through it, permanently damaging the rest of their lives. Ernest Hemingway brings a look into the lives of the people of the lost-generation in his novel The Sun Also Rises. Set after World War I, The Sun Also Rises demonstrates …show more content…

Robert’s girlfriend, Frances Clyne, decide to leave home and travel to England alone. Frances tells Jake about how she and Robert “have dreadful scenes, and he cries and begs [her] to be reasonable, but he says he just can’t do it” (Hemingway 54). At this moment, they are about to break up. Frances wants to marry Robert, but he does not want to commit. The fact that Robert is crying and begging Frances shows his effeminate nature and puts her in more of the man’s role. Usually, a woman would be the one to admit that she cannot do anything, but here Robert is the one giving up, which suggests he is weak. Robert is unsettled by Frances’ behavior when she pushes her way through to get what she wants. New Women “began generating masculine anxiety as “many men feared that women would take their jobs” (Yu 176). Men like Robert are anxious about the emergence of the new woman. Men feel they are losing dominance to the women. Women become a threat to their power because it is possible that they can take the men’s jobs and lower the wages. Brett is not the only person who is shown as a new woman; there are others, such as Frances, who demonstrates the changing roles of women in the

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