Hemingway, Eugenic Terror, and the Newest New Woman

Examines Hemingway’s interest in war-damaged white male bodies in relation to anxieties over the rise of the New Woman. Discusses The Torrents of Spring, the author’s satirical response to Sherwood Anderson’s Dark Laughter (1925), as a revision of Anderson’s Nordic eugenic agenda and the sexually liberated woman as a threat to eugenicists. Applies an ethnic lens to The Sun Also Rises, casting the Jewish Cohn, Nordic Brett, and Spanish Romero in key roles. Nies argues that Hemingway frames the “Cohn-stained Brett” as a threat to Romero’s innate purity and iconic national status, thus complicating and renegotiating Anderson’s representation of eugenic ideals