Discussing "Macomber" in the undergraduate writing seminar: what we talk about when we talk about Hemingway.

De Fusco, Andrea

The "Quiet Class" is the bane of the writing teacher's life. Particularly in writing seminars, where a dozen or so students sit in an open circle, facing each other, controversial subjects can silence even the most gifted student communicators. Days or weeks later, when reading journals, we may realize that Student X had valid points or Student Z had a wonderful personal anecdote to share, but didn't--all for fear of being the only one to appear interested. The students are often new to college, and new to the concept of seminar groups. What to do? Some of us have found that, apart perhaps from a bribe of coffee and doughnuts, nothing stirs up a taciturn class like a good discussion of gender roles. Why? Unlike discussions about race, creed or ethnicity, the discussion of society's expectations for men and women feels like a "safe"--albeit emotionally charged--topic, and is one that young adults feel well-versed about enough to speak to. And although the opinions raised usually break down along gender lines (males in the class stick together, ditto for females), there are ways to coax meaningful objective conversations that lead to writing projects.

There are a number of widely anthologized essays that speak explicitly about gender roles: Ortiz's "Oranges and Sweet Sister Boy," Syfer's "I Want a Wife," and Theroux's "Being a Man" come to mind. Ironically, though, I've found that one of the best strategies for eliciting prolific and pointed critical discussion is to assign authors who are careful to veil their issues and their agendas. For honing work as critical readers and writers, and for jump-starting discussions of gender, I like to use the tersest of fiction writers and one of the most portentous modern short stories--Ernest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber."

I will discuss reasons for using that particular text shortly; for now, I'd like to share a strategy that works well with "Macomber" and with other texts as well. For starters, I borrow a strategy put forth in Norman Holland's "The Miller's Wife and the Professors: Questions About the Transactive Theory of Reading." In the essay, which documents a mock professorial workshop on reading Edwin Robinson's "The Mill," Holland proposes a psychoanalytically based theory of how we become critical readers--the "transactive theory of reading." Holland says that

we all, as readers, use shared techniques to serve highly personal, even

idiosyncratic, ends. We put hypotheses out from ourselves into the text.

Indeed, the psychologists tell us this is the way we see and hear any

chunk of the world. Then we perceive and feel a return from the text . ..

[The text] seems delightful...anxiety-arousing, incoherent,

frustrating.... or whatever.... (427)

Although the process that Holland describes is pointedly psychoanalytical, he elucidates one type of reader-response criticism, a type of critical reading valuable not only in its appeal to subjectivity, but also one that, by its nature, is invaluable in terms of the sheer varieties of responses that it generates. Consider Steven Lynn's commentary in his Texts and Contexts:

Reader-response criticism--by bringing the personal, the individual,

even the eccentric responses to our attention--can revitalize texts that

we think we have already learned how to read. Having processed a story

with considerable care, attempting to play the role of a passive reader,

we're ready now to take a more active part as a responding reader,

entering into a debate within a community of readers. (69)

Of course, forming a community of readers and writers is the goal of every writing seminar teacher. We wish to foster respect for the individual's voice: for openness, for diversity. If it is true that we bring ourselves so pointedly to our readings of texts, then it might be refreshing--and refreshingly discombobulating--for students not to feel or assume that they should feel "delighted, anxious, frustrated or whatever." What if the text is open-ended--so open-ended and stark that it becomes shady, a challenge? This is the problem that Hemingway drops into our laps. Let's look at "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber."

"Macomber" is one of Hemingway's "African" short stories. Set on a dusty plain near Nairobi, it tells the story of a young, rich, beautiful, and unhappily married American couple who go on safari in hopes of alleviating their boredom and perhaps making the society pages of their hometown newspapers. Hemingway tells us that Francis Macomber is a "coward" (can't shoot strange animals or control his wife) and his wife Margot is a "bitch" (can't stay out of strange men's beds or control her libido); he throws in lions and buffalo, adultery, gore, and a British guide who reads like a cross between T.E. Lawrence and Indiana Jones. Margot sets her sights on the men; the men set theirs on her-when they aren't looking for hunting trophies. We have all the elements of a good trashy read--and it is--but the sex and violence are just a cloak. In his deceptively blunt style, Hemingway examines what it means to be a "good man" or a "good woman"--not morally good, necessarily, but "good" in the sense of "acceptable" or "successful in fulfilling the expectations of your gender and that of the opposite sex."

When using this short story with students, I ask them to read it the night before class and write in their journals whatever responses come to mind. Then, in class, we take about five or ten minutes to refresh our memory of the text. I use a hybrid version of questions posed by Holland in the mock poetry workshop:

1) What are the demographics of Francis and Margot Macomber? (How old are they? What do they do for a living? What do they look like? Where have they come from?)

2) Why is it important that the author gives us these details about them?

3) Does the author give us more details about them, or about some other aspect of the story?

4) To what does the title refer?

5) How would you characterize the speech patterns of the main characters: Francis, Margot, and Wilson? Do they differ in tone? Diction?

6) How would you describe the author's tone in describing them

7) What is the most important phrase in the story?

8) What does the last line of the story mean?

9) Does the author expect you to feel sympathy for any of these characters?

10) Does Margot Macomber shoot her husband on purpose, and how do you know?

11) Is the author's agenda to have you believe, as Wilson and Francis do, that she is a"bitch"?

And then, I sit back, and let the class run with it.

For our purposes, let's concentrate on a mixture of student responses. M indicates a male student's response; F, a female's. The following were recorded during last semester's discussion of "Macomber:"

Me: Should we start by talking about the title?

F: Oh, I loved this story.

M: It made me mad.

M: Francis is happy for about five minutes before she pops him, because he finally knows what it takes to be a man.

F: What do you mean, "be a man"?

M: You know, get some balls.

M: Hey, watch your language.

F: So you've got to be a man to have chutzpah?

M: What's chutzpah?

F: Brazen courage. Guts.

M: No, I'm just saying that a man can't be a coward.

F: How about in a stampede?

F: Margot is the only one who's brave when she doesn't have a gun.

M: Please, how Freudian.

F: I mean literally.

F: Wait, back up. You mean he's a man just because he doesn't run away like a wimp?

F: No, he means that he's not going to stand for her having affairs anymore. That's the change she senses in him.

F: I think it's dumb. I think Margot's right. I think he's "redeemed" or whatever because he's such a big man to chase animals in a jeep with bazookas or whatever they use. Big deal.

M: It is a big deal. It's scary. He's not a hunter. These are big animals.

M: No, he's a wuss. Did anyone get what he does for a living?

F: Businessman of some kind.

F: The story says he's rich and he's going to get richer.

M: I say he's heir to something, and probably dabbles in finance.

F: Typical Hemingway rich American.

Me: Let's talk more about them.

M: Okay, Margot is beautiful even though she's getting old.

F: Getting old? Gimme a break! She's thirty, thirty-five. Tops.

F: Yeah, but she's a model. There goes the career.

M: And she knows it.

F: And he knows it.

M: And she still screws around because she knows he's too lame to leave her He's a coward, but she is a bitch.

M: Will you watch your language? Geez.

F: I'm sorry, I feel bad for her.

F: How can you feel bad for her?

F: Because look, they had this set of unspoken rules in their marriage. It was a marriage for show and the society pages only. He made money, she looked good and served as his arm ornament at his golf club banquets or whatever. He pays her no attention, he's lousy in bed.

M: Yeah, that's nice. That's a good reason to have an affair.

M: Affairs.

F: She's referring to emotional abuse. Everybody treats this woman like an object, even Wilson.

F: Especially Wilson.

M: Oh, get over it. Emotional abuse.

F: It's true.

M: So, does she kill her batterer? Hands up? [Nine students say yes (five males, four females). Six say no (four males, two females)]

F: Whoa, of course she didn't.

M: She did! For the money because she knew he'd leave her now.

F: Right, so she could get stuck with Wilson?

F: It's irony, duh. It's what she deserves.

M: I say she didn't for the simple reason that she would have to be an excellent shot to get that bullet in that particular spot.

F: Fine, or figure that she took his life for taking hers. Then, we use this discussion as a spring board to a number of topics. On the board, I list the issues that students have raised.

--The perception of"American women"

--Aging "gracefully," males vs. females

--"Masculine pursuits" vs. "Feminine pursuits"--acceptable and unacceptable

--Sports

--Affairs

--Dress codes

--Careers

--Hobbies

--Codes of Behavior

--Is Hunting (or other "blood sports") a "Guy Thing?"

At this point, we may choose to break up into small groups to discuss the topics; we may also read a prose essay or magazine article discussing gender roles and expectations, or the class may write about their own experiences being a man or a woman. The results are often surprising and usually gratifying: past topics include "Searching for a Code Hero in `Macomber"' end "Hemingway's Overlooked Death in the Afternoon." Students have done research on Hemingway motifs; they've also done arguments and personal narratives, expected and unexpected--"Violent Sports Beget Violence"; "Do Popular Writers Affect Popular Stereotypes or Vice-Versa?";"If I Were a Man: My Gender Issue. "They break free of the "academe-speak," five paragraph essay forms that many of them still cling to as a by-product of high school classes. I attribute this to the fact that they have been spurred on by a fictional argument--and a caustic, open-ended fictional argument, at that. "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber stirs them up--but any essay can do that. What the fiction does is provide an impetus for the writing student to reach into himself/herself. Fiction is accessible--and, for more timid student critics, more open to debate than "something that really happened."

Finally, although I swear by"Macomber," I acknowledge that it is more of a means than an end in itself. "Macomber"--like other well-chosen pieces of fiction or even poetry in a prose course--does what we ask it to do: As Holland notes: "[Such works] do not `constrain' a certain response ... [The student responses are rich and varied] depending on what [the students] brought to it: what questions, what expectations, what prejudices, what stock responses, what trust, what codes and rules" (431). For Holland, critical reading is "a creative process in which subjectivity questions objectivity," and, ideally, vice versa. If you take a provocative story and share it with the class--a fiction, one they are free to be "subjective" with--the dialogue (and self-examination) naturally flow.

Of course, using Holland's approach exclusively is not without potential glitches. In Holland's works like "The Miller's Wife and the Professors" and "Unity Identity Text Self," his kind of textual response sounds almost narcissistic; Holland implies that we respond to literature only insofar as it reflects ourselves, our beliefs, and/or our desires. So, without speaking in a language more suitable for a graduate class--again, most writing seminars are populated by taciturn demographic groups--I ask if this kind of subjectivity is restrictive, frustrating, or empowering. Also, I've found that in discussions after the students have done research, free writing, or group and individual responses, it's not unusual for an astute student to look for an explicit representation of the writer in the work: for example, they'll ask if Hemingway was Wilson, speaking of Hemingway's own African experiences and infidelities. At this time, one has to speak of what J. Gerald Kennedy calls "the difference between memoir and [fiction]," yet a teacher must acknowledge that the links and knee-jerk connections are there, naturally and sometimes justifiably. Notice, though--the text is no longer one-dimensional. The students are engaged; the shift transcends utter subjectivity. Once they've questioned themselves and each other, the ideal is to have them start digging with their pens, questioning the author, the narrator, and the text.

To chart this territory and direct it to the aforementioned writing topics, it is, helpful to use Robert Scholes' Semiotics and Interpretation.(1) The work deals gracefully with reader-response criticism and the question of point-of-view, yet Scholes' strategy invokes more logic (reader as Sherlock Holmesian detective) than psychoanalysis (reader as intrinsically subjective). In Scholes' analysis of Hemingway, he notes that most Hemingway short stories are technically told in the third person (116-17). Indeed. So try asking your students if the narration is, then, "straightforward." It seems so. Yet the viewpoint the narration veils--manifested in subtle clues and revealed details like physical description or character names (recall Macomber's perfect, prissy safari-wear, or the awkwardly pronounced "Francis Macomber" versus the terse, syllabically balanced "Robert Wilson")--shows that the narrator is not equally sympathetic to all characters and that, indeed, his sympathies (and ours!) may shift. Thus, as Scholes notes, the narrator's point(s) of view can affect our own experience of the story in a myriad of ways--all of them valid, all of them deserving a good essay.

It's true that in the course of discussion many male students do find Margot to be a bitch--yet so do many female students. And, during the discussion of "Macomber" and related topics, many students change their minds. It is also true, as Holland argues, that many of our reader responses are passive, spurred by subjectivity. Yet active discussions can engender active re-readings and criticism, open minds, and hopefully, fine writing. Naturally, this is not to say that, when broaching "hot topics" in writing seminars, we need never again use Randy Shilts, Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, or Camille Paglia. We should be aware, though, that for students, responses to fiction often feel less binding than responses to, say, autobiography. Gender roles can be a good gateway topic for classes who are "afraid to offend" the teacher or each other. If we can talk openly about gender bias or sexism, the move to discussions about caste bias, racism, or ethnocentricity seems simpler. Tongues are loosened, walls are broken down. And if, as Holland suggests, it takes the occasional work of fiction to cause students to write about their own truths, why not use what works, and have fun doing it? "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" fulfills all three requirements.

NOTES

(1.) An excellent and easy-to-follow overview of Scholes' work suitable for student reading and time-pressed scholars is provided in Lynn's Texts and Contexts.

WORKS CITED

Hemingway, Ernest. "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Scribner's, 1938.1-37.

Holland, Norman. "The Miller's Wife and the Professors: Questions About the Transactive Theory of Reading." New Literary History 17 (1986): 423-47.

Kennedy, J. Gerald. "Hemingway's Gender Trouble." American Literature 63 (1991): 188-207.

Lynn, Steven. Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory. New York: Harper Collins, 1994.

Scholes, Robert. Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale U P, 1982.