Page Fifty-Two

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Ernest Hemingway had four wives and likely countless mistresses. This novel tells of Ernest's first wife, Hadley, a woman eight years his senior, the woman whom, at the end of his life, Hemmingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but her.

This novel confirmed what I had already known or gleaned from other texts about Hemmingway. As Hadley remarks, "He loved and needed praise. He loved and needed to be loved, and even adored" (241). The reason why Hadley and Hemmingway's relationship likely worked six or seven years is because of Hadley's ability to provide Hemmingway with what he needed at the time: praise, encouragement, unending support. In a way, Hadley herself reminded me of what Hemingway was trying to achieve in his writing: strong and simple and true. This is likely what attracted him to her. Yet, it is her need and desire to be Hemmingway's supportive wife that ultimately turned my interest in Hadley to slight disgust. Near the end of the novel when it is apparant that Hemmingway has fallen for Hadley's friend, Pauline, Hadley permits Pauline to openly become Hemmingway's mistress before the arrangment finally breaks down and Hadley agrees to divorce Hemmingway. 1920s Paris is life at its fastest: hard drinking and partying; constant traveling; zany, volatile literary figures and their partners like Pound, Fitzgerald, Stein. Hadley feels at odds with the modern Parisian who sees traditional family life and monogamy as stifling and dated. Yet Hadley, who often remarks at how she does not fit neatly into this Jazz-age Paris like her husband and friends around her, begins to sacrifice too much of herself for a husband who is selfish and obsessed with becoming one of the greatest writers of his time.

In the end, Hemmingway gives in to the darkness that is everpresent in his life and commits suicide in 1961. If we can trust McLain's representation of Hadley it seems as though she never got over her love for Hemmingway, the man who "change[d] her life" (341), even after remarrying and only seeing Hemmingway twice since their divorce.