Brett Ashley: Femme Fatale?
As I was reading ‘The Sun Also Rises’, especially the passages featuring Brett, the archetype of a ‘femme fatale’ kept popping up in my head. As defined by these guys at Berkeley, a femme fatale (literally, a ‘fatal woman’) is a woman who “refuses to play the role of the devoted wife and loving mother that society prescribes for women. She finds marriage to be confining, loveless, sexless, and dull, and she uses all of her cunning and sexual attractiveness to gain her independence.” Although the use of the femme fatale as a character originates in the noir films of the 1940s, I believe this broad archetype can be applied to Lady Brett Ashley.
The key characteristic of the femme fatale I want to focus on is her distaste for marriage. Femme fatales are almost invariably trapped in marriages they find both tired and boring. She longs to escape her husband (who is generally old and unattractive) into the arms of a young male lover, typically resorting to murder to get her way. I think it’s clear that Brett feels a similarly intense hatred for the institution of marriage- for her, the mere idea of monogamy is odious. It’s clear that being in a traditional marriage would be suffocating.
Another important feature of the femme fatale is her use of sexuality. The femme fatale is defined by an extremely sexual image, which she then uses to control men. The femme fatale throws traditional ideas of womanhood out the window- she is not modest, she is beautiful, she is strong, and she is fully aware of herself and what she can do. Through being nontraditional, she has achieved a unique power in the typically more one-sided man-woman dynamic.
Although Brett may be less murderous than the typical femme fatale, I think the connection is there. The femme fatale is iconic for her disregarding of typical ideas about women and marriage. Marriage as entrapment is central to the archetype, and is definitely a theme that repeats itself in Brett’s character- for example, when asked when she was going to marry Mike, she replied that it would happen “as soon as they could get a divorce.” Brett values men solely for what they can do for her, and when she’s tired of a guy (and sometimes even before that) she wants to be able to move on without a glance back. I don’t think we have enough information about her character to say whether or not she’d go so far as to kill to escape marriage, but given that she knowingly manipulates Jake into introducing her to a new guy to seduce while she’s engaged, it seems that Brett will let little get in the way of sexual gratification.
Further, I think that Brett’s use of her sexuality as power tool is very femme fatale-esque. She is not only beautiful, but charming, “one of the boys”, and doesn’t have problem using this much-cultivated power for her own gain. An example is when she goes with Cohn to San Sebastian- it’s clear that she did this not out of genuine feelings for him, but to make Jake jealous and keep him wanting her while simultaneously making sure he knows where he stands.
So what do you think? Can we use the archetype of the femme fatale to better understand Brett and her place in pop culture? Or does it not apply?
I feel that using the archetype of femme fatale definitely helps to understand Brett's character, as there are definitely many parallels between them. Brett definitely seems to use men for her own gain in a similar fashion to a femme fatale and she certainly doesn't like the idea of being tied down for long. However, Jake makes this comparison a little more complex. Depending on whether or not you see Brett as a sympathetic character, her relationship with Jake could either further support this archetype or go against. If you are sympathetic towards Brett, then you see Brett as having an emotional attachment to him, and values their relationship deeply. If you don't like Brett, then her relationship with Jake further supports her position as a femme fatale, as you see Brett as manipulating Jake for her own gains, and then leaving him whenever she needs something that he can't give, only to return when she feels that he is useful again.
ReplyDeleteI agree with some of your points as to why Brett is a femme fatale – she is sexually liberated, she doesn’t conform to gender roles, and definitely has control over a lot of men.
ReplyDeleteBut to me, the term femme fatale has a sneakier, more sinister vibe to it – like the woman is using her sexuality to deceive men. I don’t think Brett is so much deceiving men, as she is just manipulating them, if that difference makes sense? Although she is manipulative, I think she uses emotion as leverage, rather than her sexuality. Sure, she attracts men because she is beautiful, but she has such a strong hold over them (we can see this with Jake especially) because of her emotional control, so she isn’t exactly a femme fatale.
There's definitely a femme-fatale element to some of the ways Jake writes about Brett--the whole "I would have been okay if only she hadn't come into my life" aspect. Hemingway's prose style was enormously influential on what became American "hard-boiled" detective fiction in the 1930s and 40s (even the term "hard-boiled" traces back to Jake's self-description of his own prose style in _The Sun Also Rises_), and it was these novels (by Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, et al.) that popularized the "femme fatale."
ReplyDeleteJake doesn't ultimately view Brett this way, given his continued devotion to her at the end (if that's how you read his "hard-boiled" final line), but Cohn very much views her as a malevolent "Circe" figure who victimizes the men who fall for her. I don't know if Jake sees himself as "victimized" by the end, although he does at least wonder whether Brett might be taking advantage of him.