In Hemingway’s novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, the role of women is something one can not avoid noticing. Although only two women appear in the book, the distinction of their characters, and their influence on the situation are apparent from their introduction. Pilar, even from the beginning is constantly referred to as being like a man. One of her main features and personality traits is that she has the confidence, knowledge, and look of a man. This is apparently a quality because the men compliment her on it constantly. She also has the ability to really understand the strategies of war, to the point of becoming the new leader of Pablo’s band fairly early in the story.
However, she has not lived her life as though she were a man. She is technically the woman of Pablo, and has had many experiences with other men before. She tells us of her time in Valencia. “We made love and then sent for another pitcher of beer with the drops of its coldness on the glass… .” (86) She seems very feminine and beautiful in this passage, and in many other descriptions of her past, but Hemingway always tells us, quite frequently through Pilar’s own dialogue, that she is masculine and ugly. (97) Maria, the second female character, is just the opposite of that.
She is perhaps the only representation of feminine nature at all, not including the country of Spain, for which they are fighting. She is described as very beautiful despite the fact that she has recently been in captivity where she was raped and had her hair cut off. She is submissive, yet not weak. She has an inner strength that comes with surviving torture, but it is not one of her overwhelming characteristics.
The Essay on Believes That Men Women Man Stereotypes
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Robert Jordan calls her “little rabbit” which seems a suiting cognomen. She is small and dependent like a rabbit. She lets Pilar tell her what to do for the most part, and when Robert Jordan comes she becomes his woman at Pilar’s suggestion. We are not told if this behavior is due to the fact that she was captivated for so long, or if she was like that before her entrapment, but it seems likely that her recent living arrangements had something to do with it. It is clear that Robert Jordan likes her behavior, and that to him it accentuates her beauty, but even Jordan is surprised occasionally.
Before their first sexual experience, when he thought she just came to visit, and it was him who had invited her into his sleeping bag, he discovers that she is not wearing any shoes. “”Thee came barefooted” he said. “Yes.”And you had no fear.”Yes. Much.
But more fear of how it would be to take my shoes off.” (72) He realizes that Pilar had planned the whole thing, and she knew why she was coming to his sleeping bag. It is a questionable theory that one good sexual experience would completely heal the emotional scarring from repeated rape, but it seems to work for Maria. Because of Maria’s overwhelming feminine quality, made more obvious by the comparison of her to Pilar, she is occasionally a hindrance to the group. When Jordan first comes to the camp he says that he doesn’t have time for women. They would slow him down, and distract him from the mission. Also Joaquin tells about how he had to carry her to safety, and how they had to rest several times, and share her load.
However, she is so submissive and eager to please that the band makes good use of her. She will often pour them drinks or help carry things for them. Something Pilar would never be asked to do. Right before they go through with the mission Robert Jordan asks Pilar if she understands the plan, which of course she does.
She becomes greatly irritated, with good reason. “How many times dost thou have to tell me? … You are getting like an old woman Ingles.” (402) This shows that Jordan still doesn’t have complete faith in her with something of this weight, possibly because she is a woman. It could be that he has an excessive amount of stress because the mission is so close, and doesn’t want anything to go wrong. As a reader we pity and admire Pilar at the same time. She holds the band together when Pablo becomes weak, and knows that the mission is more important than having a cave to live in.
The Essay on Code Hero Jordan Hemingway Mission
The Code Hero Robert Jordan has been defined as a Hemingway code hero. In Hemingway's books, a code hero is usually male, as Hemingway's books seem to have a similarity to Hemingway himself. These code heroes may have been previously wounded or gone through some sort of an ordeal, and so they could have a drinking problem, or a problem sleeping. They seem to be disillusioned, and / or self- ...
On the other side, we feel bad for her that she is ugly, and has to live her life out acting as a man does. There is a slight feeling that she should have the option to live as Maria does, and that perhaps she would want to, but in reality that is preposterous. The pity is unnecessary in that playing the role of a man is actually to her benefit in the male dominant world she lives in. If she lived a life like Maria does, she would certainly not be happy, or live up to her potential as a fighter in these missions. Maria does have some brains and is not entirely an object, and Pilar becomes jealous of Maria on several occasions, which makes their characters more complex, but the main male characters of the book certainly have more facets to their personalities. Maria and Pilar don’t really have secrets from the reader, and if they started out with one, it was revealed quickly.
Because there are only two women in the book, one might have thought that they would have represented all women, but their characters are so distinct that it is hard to see that as the case. It is possible that Hemingway himself has a biased against women, but in a book such as For Whom the Bell Tolls in which a war takes place, perhaps it was the fact that in general women participate in battles like these less frequently. It could be simply a case of statistics rather that trying to prove a point, or Hemingway’s base.
