Hemingway’s 4 wives center of the story
Print Edition
FOR a writer who explored the world of men without women, Ernest Hemingway certainly liked to have women around him.
The Nobel Prize-winning author had four wives in all, with barely a day between each changeover, as well as friendships with Ava Gardner, Ingrid Bergman and Marlene Dietrich.
Now a fictionalized account of the marriages, inspired by his letters, examines what it might have been like to be the wives.
“We think of him as a womanizer, we don’t think of him as a husband. That’s a role that’s subservient to the big-game hunter, the deep-sea fisherman, the war correspondent,” said Naomi Wood, whose novel “Mrs Hemingway” has just been published.
“I wanted to investigate what was going on there, why he needed all these women in his life. His life is clogged with women though he’s such a man’s man,” the 30-year-old British writer said.
The four shared good times and bad with him in Paris, Key West, Cuba and Spain, suffered his philandering, moods and drinking, until someone new caught his fancy.
The novel deals with each in turn. There’s the kind, homely Hadley Richardson who shared his early days in Paris, then Pauline “Fife” Pfeiffer, the rich society girl who ousted Hadley just as his fame was taking off.
Martha Gellhorn, the feisty war correspondent, followed, to be replaced by Mary Welsh, who lived with him in Cuba for 16 years and who found his body in their home in Ketchum, Idaho, after he killed himself in 1961.
“This is about four women as well as the flame burning brightly in the middle of it. But I’m not a biographer and I wanted to have space to imagine,” Wood said.
Despite bitterness and recriminations, there’s much sympathy for the four women. And although Hemingway often appears selfish and even foolish, his charm, magnetism and vulnerability also come through.
“Some women have said to me, ‘I don’t want to read a book about Hemingway, he was such a monster.’ But there must have been times that were marvellous. If he had been vile all the time, these four clever women wouldn’t have stuck around.”
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