The Sort of Thing You Should Not Admit : Ernest Hemingway’s Aesthetic of Emotional Restraint

Challenges the popular understanding of Hemingway as a traditional masculinist, contending that masculinist theory emerged to assist men in redefining masculinity in the changing professional world of the early 1900s. Strychacz argues that Hemingway’s style is actually “marked by powerful rhetorical transformations and emotional swings.” Offers a close reading of Death in the Afternoon, focusing on descriptions of horses dying in the bullring, arguing that Hemingway’s emphasis on emotional excess and disarray conveys “the real thing.” Concludes that critics’ preoccupation with navigating their own gender identity has obscured true interpretations of Hemingway’s style and meaning over the years