Culture Watch: The View from Penthouse B and The Paris Wife

Whatever McLain’s reasons, Paris Wife contrasts with Lipman’s book in interesting ways. Reading the two together creates a template for considering the art of the possible in the world of domestic relationships. If Lipman sees the prospect of love and civility, McLain's story unfolds as a micro-universe of ego, competition, and betrayal. Lipman's characters sip wine while McLain’s get sloppy on the hard stuff.

The appealing quality of McLain’s book lies in her decision to let Hadley, "Hem's" first wife, tell the story of her life with the writer. She is always in the foreground. In this way, McLain avoids a "great man" novel. When she meets the twenty-one year old Ernest Hemingway, Hadley is a "Victorian" mid-westerner, twenty-eight — "a lonely maiden aunt." Months after their marriage, the couple lands in Jazz Age Paris.

Hadley holds her own in bed, at the drinking table, and the bull fights. Hemingway values her literary opinions and finds her "good and strong and true." She swears never to stand in the way of his work. Hadley sees herself as essential to Ernest's well-being; her strength, she says, is his strength.

And then there is a child. McLain seems not to know how to weigh this event and increasingly Hadley’s character slips from her grip. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Paris Wife lies in the lost opportunity of exploring whether Hadley, raised in a conservative family, had any chance of finding her way as a "new woman." When a friend says, "you suffer for his career. What do you get?" Hadley responds, "[T]he satisfaction of knowing he couldn't do it without me." But a short time later, Hadley remarks that Zelda Fitzgerald and other friends were "frighteningly shrewd and modern and I was anything but that." Hadley is adrift, stripped of much of her identity and, at the end, a domestic casualty. And yet, while Hemingway makes no mention of Hadley in The Sun Also Rises, written while they were married, at the end of his life, after four marriages, he pours out affection for her and their life together in A Moveable Feast.

Each of these novels is a thought provoking domestic drama. Traditional in style and approach, they make satisfying reading. Sit down with each and then consider what Gwen and Margot would have thought of "Hem" and Hadley, and what the Hemingways might have made of Anthony, Gwen, and Margot. Smiles or snickers? — the contemplation will be interesting, perhaps provocative.

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Culture Watch: The View from Penthouse B and The Paris Wife

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