Ernest Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring, Once and For All
Keynote Address, Michigan Hemingway Society, Petoskey, Mic higan
Delivered by Judy Henn, University of Haifa, Israel
October 17, 1998
Ernest Hemingway studies are alive and well. We aficionados gathered here this evenin g are proof that
Hemingway’s works continue to generate interest in popular and academic circles alike. In this centennial
year, we are afforded a unique opportunity to pause and re-evaluate our estimation of his writings, to re-open
the Hemingway can on, and to re-examine the great diversity found in his oeuvre. Hemingway’s
kaleidoscopic vision includes journalism, poetry, drama, short stories, novels, memoirs, non-fiction, and
correspondence. His life and times are still a source of fascina tion for the media: witness the excitement
attendant upon Charles Scribner’s recent announcement that the long-awaited African novel, True at First
Light, will be published on Hemingway’s one hundredth birthday. Our task this week-end is to dire ct the
light to one of Hemingway’s slighted works, to demonstrate that with the correct tools, we can bring new life
to The Torrents of Spring.
Despite the hundreds of articles and books written about Ernest Hemingway’s life and writings, hi s first
novella, The Torrents of Spring, (written in 1925 and published in 1926) has remained virtually unknown and
little examined or referred to, like some malformed child shut away in a back room. The Hemingway
Society’s blessed open policy o f encouraging a variety of critical approaches, and its motivation of scholars
to explore marginalized material, has prompted me to create a field-theory of critical stances which include
gender theory and intertextual reading, so that we can all read The Torrents of Spring successfully and with
pleasure.
As Kelli Larson, one of Hemingway’s bibliographers admonishes, “a goodly portion of accessible works
suffer from critical neglect because of their failure to meet our critical ex pectations” (Larson 279). Did
Hemingway go wrong when he wrote The Torrents of Spring, as some critics have maintained, or has it
suffered from misunderstanding? In order to grasp the processes which have prevented The Torrents of Spring
from gaining acceptance in the Hemingway canon for more than seventy years, it is helpful to compare the
histories of Ernest Hemingway’s first three published books.
Hemingway’s early works received some small notice. Three Stories and Ten Po ems was published in 1923
in Paris by Robert McAlmon in a small edition that sold only about a hundred copies, one of which was read
by Edward O’ Brien, the editor of a prestigious annual collection of short stories, who was so impressed by
“M y Old Man,” that “he wanted to dedicate to Ernest Hemingway his 1923 collection of ‘best short stories,’
which would include the Paris race track story” (Reynolds Paris Years 164, 151). William Bird published the
lower-case in our time in 192 4 at his privately owned Contact Press in Paris in a hand-pulled edition of threehundred copies; only slightly more than half were sold (Reynolds Paris Years 106; 181). While Hemingway
was in Austria in the winter of 1924-1925, he missed receivi ng a letter from Maxwell Perkins, editor at
Scribner’s, who invited him to sign a contract, after having read and “been deeply impressed by in our time”
(Reynolds Paris Years 271). Without this information available to him, Hemingway s igned a contract with
Boni and Liveright, who printed “a modest edition of about thirteen hundred copies” of the upper-case In Our
Time, a greatly expanded version of the earlier book with the lower-case lettered title (Reynolds Paris Years
271 ; Gilmer 122). Hemingway believed in his own potential, and was extremely irked by Horace Liveright’s
predilection for “rewriting his fiction” (Reynolds Paris Years 292). Hemingway was also disgruntled by Boni
and Liveright’s lack of promotion of In Our Time, citing that in a letter which he sent together with the
manuscript of The Torrents of Spring, instead of that of The Sun Also Rises, which they were expecting:
"Scott Fitzgerald has read the manuscript and was very excited about it.... Bromfield read the mss. also and
said he thought it was one of the very funniest books he had ever read and a very perfect American satire....
As you will see, although a satire it has a moving story, action all the time, nev er departs into the purely
fantastic and mental, and is full of stuff .... The only reason I can conceive that you might not want to publish
it would be for fear of offending Sherwood [Anderson]. I do not think that anybody with any stuff can be hurt
b y satire.... Funny books are not too easy to get hold of.... it is a hell of a fine book" (Selected Letters 172-4
[hereafter SL] ).
Hemingway reminded Liveright that he had “made no kick about the In Our Time, [especially] the lack of
advertising” (SL 173). Notwithstanding, Horace Liveright would not accept The Torrents of Spring, noting
that it was unpublishable because : “it is such a bitter, and I might say almost vicious caricature of Sherwood
Anderson .... we are rejecting Torrents of Spring because we disagree with you and Scott Fitzgerald and Louis
Bromfield and Dos Passos, that it is a fine and humorus American satire” (Gilmer 124). That rejection
allowed Hemingway to break his contract with Boni and Liveright and join Scribner’s, which remained his
publisher for the rest of Hemingway’s life (Reynolds Paris Years 352).
When The Torrents of Spring was issued on May 28, 1926, some contemporary reviewers had already heard
of Ernest Hemingway, and knew he was Scribner’s newly acquired “piece of property” (Bruccoli 30, 36).
Hemingway subscribed to a clipping service, which “sent him reviews for each new publication;” fortunately
for scholars, as he was a true pack rat who never discarded a piece of paper, these reviews are filed in the
Hemingway Collection in the Kennedy Library (Reynolds Hemingway’s Reading 25). While nearly twothirds of the reviews (29 out of 47) view The Torrents of Spring in a positive light, there are nine negative
reviews and nine neutral reviews (which are mostly one sentence announcements of the publication).
According to Michael Reynolds, Hemingway “was acutely aware of published criticism. To what degree this
reading influenced his writing is for scholars to ponder, but the task should not be taken lightly” (Reynolds
Hemingway’s Reading 25).
How do Hemingway’s contemporaries assess The Torrents of Spring? Harry Hansen of the New York Wor ld,
notes Hemingway’s appropriation of Fielding, and supports the criticism of culture: “Hemingway with a
steady eye on half a dozen targets [is] ... the most promising American author in Paris .... [who] has now
elaborated on his own idea of aut hors and their methods” (Hansen 4M). Hansen astutely notes that although
Sherwood Anderson had loudly voiced approval of In Our Time (in fact, Anderson contributed a sentence of
praise which was printed on the back cover!), Hemingway did not fee l obliged to reciprocate at all cost,
adding “He evidently regards Anderson as long-winded and boring, and something of his attitude can be
gathered from the frequent quotations from Fielding” (Hansen 4M).
Ernest Boyd’s review shows a grasp of the “elaborate and exceedingly witty parody of the Chicago school of
literature in general , and of Sherwood Anderson in particular.... [Hemingway] has a sense of humor which
should prove his salvation” ( Boyd 694). It is hard to imagine that Hemingway wa s not pleased and
encouraged by such canny reviews.
Conversely, one reviewer tersely wrote, “It must have been a hard winter” (San Francisco Chronicle n. pag.).
Another said, “A somewhat straggling bit of nonsense” (Rochester Democrati c Chronicle n. pag.). The
review from the Kansas City Star, where he had been employed for half a year after graduating from High
School, while not flattering, showed cognizance of Hemingway’s uncompromising attitude:
"Although the book is short, this sort of thing goes on seemingly interminably. You will be bored, of course;
that is the purpose of it. Probably you will not be able to finish the book; we were not. But read enough of it to
be satisfied that the grimacing wooden fi gures on the imposing breastworks of Mr. Anderson et al have been
properly riddled with shot from the smooth concrete emplacements of young Mr. Hemingway". (Kansas City
Star n. pag.).
Hemingway asked Maxwell Perkins twice in the months following publication how the sales of The Torrents
of Spring were proceeding, demonstrating his anxiety about the novella (SL 212, 215).
In addition to the reactions of reviewers in American newspapers and journals, Hemingway also received
colorful letters of encouragement from friends. Ezra Pound, one of the few writers never verbally attacked by
Hemingway, reacted enthusiastically:
"Perhaps better to report to you that Mr. Antheil’s copy of THE TORRENT of Spring having circulated freely
- was magnanimously ... [read by] my mother-in-law, wife, Mrs. T. S. Eliot editor of the criterion and myself
the four above ... [people] have read same with relief and amusement. Of course a purely non-lickeray milieu
like ou rs can’t be expected to be as peeved as the patriots" (Pound ).
Henry Strater, whose 1924 portrait of Hemingway is on the back cover of A Moveable Feast, quipped: “Got
your book as soon as it was off the press. It is fine. It oug ht to knock that whole bunch of pissants for a row
of farts. The Indians were fine. The nigger barkeep was fine. In fact, the whole book was. Especially the
dedication. Keep on writing. Keep on writing” (Strater). The early reviews were positive enough to prompt
Hemingway to jest in a letter to Maxwell Perkins that the Sears Roebuck radio station had invited Hemingway
“to broadcast Torrents of Spring ... accompanied by a short talk,” (SL 213-14).
Five months after The Torrents of Sp ring was published, Scribner’s issued The Sun Also Rises, in November
1926. It was an immediate best-seller, and fast turned into a cult-book of the younger generation. It would no
doubt be interesting to speculate why Hemingway (who was usu ally quite aggressive in urging his editor to
‘push’ his work) did not pursue the sales of The Torrents of Spring. I tend to think that Hemingway saw that
there was little chance that the novella would be understood in the way he had intended, a s “a funny book,”
and in light of the fact that The Sun Also Rises had made him an overnight success, it was not worth his
further efforts; by the 1930s Hemingway no longer referred to The Torrents of Spring in his letters (SL 173).
Sev enty-two years after publication we have the insight to return The Torrents of Spring to the open shelves,
to be studied as authentic criticism of culture as Hemingway saw it in the 1920s.
In Hemingway’s Genders: Rereading the Hemingway Text, Comley and Scholes encourage new vantage
points:
"We believe that Ernest Hemingway remains an interesting writer because it is possible to read him in more
than one way. We believe, even, that it is necessary to do so if his wo rks are to maintain their place in the
literary canon. Literary works survive over time because they continue to be part of a cultural conversation."
(Comley and Scholes ix)
“Cultural conversation” is at the core of this weekend conference , as we examine The Torrents of Spring in
its natural setting, with a set of cultural and topographic maps by which to set our compasses. Indeed, the
heart of dialogue is seen in the interaction posed by Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism and Harold
Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence.
Bakhtin’s concept of the novel includes transactions between characters, between genres, and with literary
forebears, which Hemingway carries out in The Torrents of Spring. In Probl ems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics,
Mikhail Bakhtin provides a definition of the dialogic novel:
"It is constructed not as a whole of a single consciousness, absorbing other consciousnesses as objects into
itself, but as a whole formed by the interaction of several consciousnesses ... [which] provides no support for
the viewer who would objectify an entire event ... and this consequently makes the viewer also a participant."
(Bakhtin Dostoevsky 18).
Through the interwo rking of the characters’ subjective thoughts the reader is pulled into the novella as
Hemingway shows how ridiculous racism, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia are in The Torrents of
Spring, via the lack of tolerance for the “interaction of s everal consciousnesses” that attempt to meet across
boundaries of race, national identity, and gender (Bakhtin Dostoevsky 18).
Harold Bloom discusses the apprehension felt by all creative artists in light of their predecessors’ success. In
an effort to overcome the influence of earlier creators and their works, subsequent craftsmen often employ
parody as a corrective device, as Hemingway does in The Torrents of Spring.
A dialogic “interaction of several consciousnesses” occ urs when Hemingway blurs the borders between
characters (Bakhtin Dostoevsky 18). Scripps contemplates his daughter’s high school building, and suddenly
his identity merges with Yogi’s: “It was a yellow-brick building. There was nothing rococo ab out it, like the
buildings he had seen in Paris. No, he had never been in Paris. That was not he. That was his friend Yogi
Johnson” ( TOS 18). The several “Author’s Note[s]” to the reader reveal additional use of dialogism.
Hemingway takes the read ers into his confidence by sharing gossip about his fellow expatriates in Paris:
"I wrote the foregoing chapter in two hours directly on the typewriter, and then went out to lunch with John
Dos Passos, who I consider a very forceful writer . ... we lunched on rollmops, sole meuniere, civet de lievre a
la cocotte, marmelade de pommes, and washed it all down, as we used to say (eh, reader?) with a bottle of
Montrachet 1919 with the sole, and a bottle of Hospice de Beaune 1919 apiece w ith the jugged hare." (TOS
83-4).
The excessive detail makes for absurd intimacy, while prompting the reader’s salivary glands, thus engaging
him as an olfactory voyeur! Additionally, Hemingway nonsensically erases the border bet ween author and
reader imposed by the confines of the printed book.
Intertextuality, which is, as Jill Felicity Durey notes, similar to dialogism, plays a major role in The Torrents
of Spring :
"the novel as a linguistic e ntity is not a single unified whole but is a hybrid form, a composite collection of
many formulae.... The essence of [t]his theory lies in the concept of a supposed dialogue between the novelist
and earlier writers, not just between the texts themselve s.... Thus the essence of the theory has in its equation
two writers, texts, and other texts, active human participation being integral to the dialogue." (Durey 617).
The anxiety of influence is contingent upon intertextuality and dialogi sm, all of which connect to parody and
satire in their dependence on other texts for frames of reference.
Bakhtin says in his essay, “From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse,”
it is that in parody two languages are crossed with each other, as well as two styles, two linguistic points of
view, and in the final analysis two speaking subjects. It is true that only one of these languages (the one that is
parodied) is present in its own right; the other is present invisibly, as an ac tualizing background for creating
and perceiving. Parody is an intentional hybrid (Bakhtin Dialogic 76).
It is precisely the cross-fertilization that exists between The Torrents of Spring and texts by Gertrude Stein,
Sherwood Anderson, Ivan Turgenev, and Henry Fielding which creates the dialogic / intertextual moment and
reveals Hemingway’s anxiety toward his forebears. Harold Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence
explains how a younger artist attempts to better hi s earlier counterpart and to create something new.
Hemingway challenges numerous figures of culture by mentioning them in The Torrents of Spring .
Typically, Scripps’ new wife, the older waitress, Diana, is so busy with “a man of her own” that she claims
she can no longer waste time “reading” or “worrying” about “Joan of Arc. Eva le Gallienne. Clemenceau.
Georges Carpentier. Sacha Guitry. Yvonne Printemps. Grock. Les Fratellinis. Gilbert Seldes. The Dial. The
Dial Prize. M arrianne Moore. E. E. Cummings. The Enormous Room. Vanity Fair. Frank Crowninshield”
(TOS 56). Each name in this catalogue is identified in Miriam Mandel’s invaluable book, Reading
Hemingway: The Facts in the Fictions, in which we learn that the harried Diana has jumbled together a saint,
a singer, a statesman, a boxer, a dramatist, an actress, clowns, two critics, a journal, and two poets - all of
whom Hemingway was known to dislike! (Mandel 11-55). The effect of juxtaposition is inf lating here, which
adds to the humorous tone.
As part of his dialogue with the past, while revealing his sense of rivalry with earlier great writers, Ernest
Hemingway uses five quotes from the Preface of Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews in The Torrents of Spring,
creating a new narrative that transcends the centuries, and making the Fielding Preface into an extended
metaphor by which to read The Torrents of Spring (Suggested by Still and Worton 11). Hemingway ind icates
his motive for appropriating Fielding in The Torrents of Spring: “As you know in the golden age of the
English novel Fielding wrote his satirical novels as an answer to the novels of Richardson. In this way Joseph
Andrews was writ ten as a parody on Richardson’s Pamela[sic]. Now they are both classics” (SL 172-73).
Two years later he added,
"The chief criticism [of The Sun Also Rises] seems to be that the people are so unattractive - which seems
very f unny as criticism when you consider the attractiveness of the people in, say, Ulysses, the Old
Testament, Judge [Henry] Fielding and other people some of the critics like. I wonder where these thoroughly
attractive people hang out and how they behave when they’re drunk and what do they think about nights" (SL
240).
Fielding is made a shareholder and setter of modes in Hemingway’s text. As an extremely well read
autodidact, Hemingway wrote, “Education consists in finding sources obscure enough to imitate so that they
will be perfectly safe” (Reynolds Hemingway’s Reading 3). Henry Fielding’s Preface to Joseph Andrews is
the first source I shall examine, as a document that teaches, like Aristotle’s Poetic s, how to write, and how to
create genres. Hemingway heeds the teachings well, and much of the creative integrity in The Torrents of
Spring has its roots in Fielding’s Preface. One key to understanding just what Hemingway is “doing” in Th e
Torrents of Spring can be found in the quotes from Fielding.
In his Preface to Joseph Andrews, Fielding discusses the art of writing - he considers the “comic”, the
“ridiculous”, “foible”, “hypocrisy”, “vanity”, and “vices” - all to test “some human frailty” (Fielding 47-53).
Like Fielding, Hemingway deals with humans as his stock in trade, examining them from a variety of angles,
asserting all the while (through his adoption of Fielding) that “life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer
with the ridiculous” (TOS 3). Fielding takes no prisoners in his admonitions of humanity, but neither does
Hemingway.
The first epigraph from Fielding’s Joseph Andrews directs our attention to the fact that since a gre at poet may
not always have opportunities to join with the important and the praiseworthy, he chooses the comic genre
because truth is more absurd than fiction:
"And perhaps there is one reason why a comic writer should of all others be he least excused for deviating
from nature, since it may not always be so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable;
but life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous." (TOS 3).
The humorous vein continues with the heroic sounding subtitle of The Torrents of Spring - “A Romantic
Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race.” Hemingway lulls unsuspecting readers into a false sense of
genre; just when they expect to receive a generous por tion of simpering nostalgia over the loss of some tribe,
Hemingway assaults them with two unheroic heroes, Yogi Johnson and Scripps O’Neil, who often seem
interchangeable, save for their disparate levels of sexuality.
The word “ridiculous” resoun ds at the end of the first epigraph from Fielding; Hemingway’s appropriation of
it indicates his estimation of too many books which pass for literature. Hemingway wants readers to keep
Fielding in mind while noting the parody of Anderson and others in The Torrents of Spring. Hemingway
liberates Fielding from the eighteenth century, making him an intellectual accomplice. Although Bloom
contends, “The irony of one era cannot be the irony of another,” nevertheless, Fielding’s classic autho rity and
nonsensical tone add to our grasp of the gaps between appearances and absurd reality in The Torrents of
Spring (Bloom xxiv).
The Fielding epigraph which follows the title of Part One - “The only source of the true Ridiculous (a s it
appears to me) is affectation” - reveals Hemingway’s lifelong hatred of sham (TOS 16). In The Torrents of
Spring, Hemingway airs a long list of grievances against pretense, and he spares no one. The novella opens
with a frozen glimpse out onto a snow-covered storage area of “crated pumps,” which presages the quantities
of hot air that Hemingway circulates around Michigan as he parodies fellow writers, the natural man, pseudointellectual women, and the ‘poor downtrodden’ Indians (TOS 17). Anticipating spoofs of noir detective
novels by at least a decade, Scripps O’Neil is described as “standing tall and lean and resilient with his own
tenuous hardness” - evidence of Hemingway’s rejection of purple prose(TOS 17).
As pro mised to us by the subtitle, we should expect that romance will occupy a part in the novella. In his
Preface to Joseph Andrews Fielding provides an appropriate definition:
"a comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose; differ ing from comedy, as the serious epic from tragedy: its
action being more extended and comprehensive; containing a much larger circle of incidents, and introducing
a greater variety of characters. It differs from the serious romance in its fable and ac tion, in this; that as in the
one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and ridiculous; it differs in its characters by
introducing persons of inferior rank, and consequently, of inferior manners, whereas the grave romance sets
the highest before us: lastly, in its sentiments and diction; by preserving the ludicrous instead of the sublime."
(Fielding 48).
Hemingway attempts to adhere to this definition closely in The Torrents of Spring. Interestingly, some of
these characteristics are common to the picaresque narrative, which is defined as “the escapades off an
insouciant rascal who lives by his wits, and shows little if any alteration of character through the long
succession of his adventures” (Abrams 119 ) The picaro is identified as “a wise fool” and “a child-man” who
employs “’comedy of language’” (Pughe 64, 65, 68). In The Torrents of Spring Hemingway examines the
characteristics of various genres by imitating selected aspects; thus Yogi Jo hnson and Scripps O’Neil, in their
adolescent naivete, can be considered “wise fools” or “child-men,” and their unselfconscious use of rhetoric
has comic repercussions which they do not grasp (Pughe 64, 65, 68).
Scripps O’Neil partly fits the mold of the picaresque hero: he journeys on foot from Mancelona to Petoskey.
He acquires a traveling companion: “He picked up a dead bird that had frozen and fallen onto the railroad
tracks,” and the novella deals with working-class people who often lack social graces, and who are placed in
nonsensical situations, in keeping with parameters of the picaresque and Fielding’s “comic romance” (TOS
23; Fielding 48).
When Scripps adjusts to his new town, Petoskey, he finds a job at the pump-factory. We know he was a writer
- “He had sold a story to George Horace Lorimer ... for four hundred and fifty dollars” - so he tries to justify
manual labor by hauling out a mixed bag of cultural figures who also earned their livings doing physical
work: "Why shouldn’t he work with his hands? Rodin had done it. Cezanne had been a butcher. Renoir a
carpenter. Picasso had worked in a cigarette-factory in his boyhood. ... Gilbert Stuart had been a blacksmith....
Emerson had been a hod-carrier. James Russell Lowell had been... a telegraph operator in his youth.... Why
shouldn’t he, Scripps O’Neil, work in a pump-factory? (TOS 29, 37-8).
By setting himself up as a fellow artiste, Scripps now can justify becoming a member of the working class, as
a temporary measure for economic reasons. In fact, just as Hemingway has adopted Fielding as one of his
literary forefathers, so Scripps looks for historical figures who can justify his new vocation; the anxiety of
influenc e extends its shadow beyond the creator to his creation!
The third quote from Fielding (which appears at the beginning of Part Two of The Torrents of Spring ) is a
disclaimer and an apology of sorts:
"And here I solemnly protest I have no intentions to vilify or asperse anyone; for though everything is copied
from the book of nature, and scarce a character or action produced which I have not taken from my own
observations or experience; yet I have used the utmost care to obsc ure the persons by such different
circumstances, degrees, and colours, that it will be impossible to guess at them with any degree of certainty;
and if it ever happens otherwise, it is only where the failure characterized is so minute, that it is a foi ble only
which the party himself may laugh at as well as any other" (TOS 40).
Just as in the first quote Fielding proposed to allow nature to provide food for comedy, now he protests that
because his source is natural, and since he is dis crete, he must be forgiven if he occasionally singles out a
“foible” (TOS 40).
The second part of The Torrents of Spring is called, “The Struggle for Life” ; the conflict depicted is the
attempt by Scripps and Diana to make a life together . This relationship is doomed from the start, as the gap
between generations, cultures, and genders is too great to breach. All the younger American Scripps and the
older British Diana can do is talk in repetitive cliches - the “mother” tongue is not a lingua franca. Their vapid
dialogue reveals that Scripps and Diana (and by analogy, the United States and England) cannot advance
beyond banal platitudes:
“’I’ve been working all day long... for you’....
‘How lovely!’ she said... .’And I have been working all day long - for you.’....
‘You are my woman,’ he said....
‘You are my man,’ she said” (TOS 47).
This nonsensical banter attempts to transform language and convert the inane into the profound; when i t fails,
we acknowledge the defeat of trans-Atlantic communication and of understanding in heterosexual
relationships.
Simple conversation is no longer merely a dialogue, but becomes in The Torrents of Spring a means of
exposing empty relati onships. The “foible” Fielding refers to in the third epigraph is perhaps precisely the
inability of Scripps and Diana to forge a unique language for their love. The reverse May-December
connection is ruined by “something [that] was stirring within” S cripps - albeit there is a hint that what makes
him “vaguely uneasy” is too many beans! (TOS 50). Throughout, Hemingway continues to “solemnly protest”
that “everything is copied from the book of nature;” his characters are just doing what comes natur ally (TOS
40).
At the end of Part Two of The Torrents of Spring, Hemingway stands back from his creation with an Author’s
Note directed to the reader. Most of it is an aside within parentheses, in which he recaps some of the plot and
then reveals some of his techniques: “The story will move a little faster from now on, in case any of the
readers are tiring. We will also try to work in a number of good anecdotes” (TOS 62).
Hemingway even parodies Fielding’s use of self-reflexiv ity. (1) This stance seems to echo the tone adapted
by Fielding when he uses the personal pronoun “I” in the third epigraph: “And here I solemnly protest I have
no intention to vilify or asperse any one” (Fielding 52). The self-conscious stance ad opted by Hemingway
calls attention to “the process of ... [its] own composition” (Stonehill 19). Therefore, Hemingway, as narrator,
“is visibly engaged in the invention of his narrative” (Stonehill 19). Additionally, according to Martin Wallac
e, “By calling attention to the spectacles and frame (the techniques and structures) that create the effects of
reality, the novelist shows that they are entrancing and dangerously false” (Wallace 176).
The fourth epigraph is attached to Part Three of The Torrents of Spring, which is entitled, “Men in War and
the Death of Society” - a depressing, all-inclusively pessimistic title that seems to aptly fit a writer who had
been seriously wounded in World War I. However, it also suits what society would expect from a man in
Hemingway’s position, and therefore, it is highly unlikely that Hemingway meant it seriously (given his
mistrust of pseudo-heroic rhetoric).
The quote from Fielding returns to the subject of affectation, which h as already appeared in the second
epigraph:
"It may be likewise noted that affectation does not imply an absolute negation of those qualities which are
affected; and therefore, though, when it proceeds from hypocrisy, it be nearly allied to deceit; yet when it
comes from vanity only, it partakes of the nature of ostentation: for instance, the affectation of liberality in a
vain man differs visibly from the same affectation in the avaricious, for though the vain man is not what he
woul d appear, or hath not the virtue he affects, to the degree he would be thought to have it; yet it sits less
awkwardly on him than on the avaricious man, who is the very reverse of what he would seem to be(TOS 66).
Fielding emphasizes the word “affectation” by repeating it three times in the quote, while qualifying its use.
When vanity is the source of affectation, Fielding claims it is not as severe as when avarice is. Selfcenteredness is condoned, whereas stinginess denotes a del iberate misuse of your fellow human in order to
wrest a few farthings away from her. Just to demonstrate how unaffected he is, Hemingway had already
ingratiated himself with the readers in his previous Author’s Note; he complains of the diffi culty he has in
writing a plot that is not chronological: “It is very hard to write this way, beginning things backwards, and the
author hopes the reader will realize this and not grudge this little word of explanation” (TOS 62). The selfreflexivity d emonstrates that Hemingway is in control of the narrative, showing what Stonehill refers to as “a
sophisticated awareness of the inherent limitations of both language and thought” (Stonehill 16).
Hemingway closes Part Three of The Torrents of Spring with two Author’s Notes. Both display “qualities”
that Fielding has disparaged in the fourth epigraph - “hypocrisy” and “vanity” (TOS 66). Hemingway’s direct
appeal to the reader drips sanctimoniousness: “Mr H.G. Wells, who has be en visiting at our home (we’re
getting along in the literary game, eh, reader?), asked us the other day if perhaps our reader, that’s you, reader
- just think of it, H. G. Wells, talking about you right in our home” (TOS 84). Junkins assesses the A uthor’s
Notes to be “a parody of his own authorial pandering [which] are lightening rods that psychologically
attenuate the emotion and the double dare technique that focuses the achievement itself” (Junkins 72).
The final quote from Joseph A ndrews is Fielding’s apology for the introduction of “vices” into his writing:
"But perhaps it may be objected to me, that I have against my own rules introduced vices, and of a very black
kind, into this work. To which I shall answe r: first, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions,
and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here are rather the accidental consequences of
some human frailty or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth
as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the
scene: and lastly, they never produce the intended evil" (TOS 88).
Fieldin g is adroit at wriggling his way out of his apparent lapse. As everything has been taken from nature by
frail, erring humans, the crucial thing to remember is that Fielding does not extol the glories of vices, nor
make them central tropes of his work. Similarly, Hemingway wants to make it clear that he has touted parody,
though others may think it a crime on his part to hold the mirror up to other writers, and call their failures to
their attention.
Hemingway has followed Fielding’s dictates as set out in the Preface of Joseph Andrews. Hemingway’s
“comic romance” has presented “light and ridiculous .... fable and action” , and has preserved “ludicrous ....
sentiments and diction” (Fielding 48). Viewing The Torrents of S pring as an exercise in intertextuality yields
a ripe harvest of dialogue between Hemingway and Fielding.
A gender-balanced reading of The Torrents of Spring may rectify one of the misapprehensions of feminist
critics, who have condem ned Hemingway’s male characters for lack of sensitivity toward women, and have
disparaged the traditional gender-bound roles to which Hemingway relegated women. How do we know that
Ernest Hemingway questions the cultural assumptions of gender-b ased roles? Hemingway’s declaration that
The Torrents of Spring is “a very perfect American Satire,” (2) hints that everything in the novella is suspect
(SL 173). Comley and Scholes’ cogently define gender:
"By gender we mean a sys tem of sexual differentiation that is partly biological and partly cultural. This
system is founded on a basic differentiation of humans into the categories male and female, but it extends into
subcategories and cultural roles assigned to people and to literary characters in a given culture, and to
categories of sexual practice as well." (Comley and Scholes ix-x).
Thus when Rena Sanderson’s observes in her article, “Hemingway and Gender History” - “[h]is fictional
females refl ect his responses to the ongoing reformulations of gender in the culture at large” - we should not
be surprised when Hemingway ridicules gender roles and corrects stereotypes through satire and parody in
The Torrents of Spring (Sanderson 171) . The ideal woman in The Torrents of Spring may be either a travesty
of Victorian women or of flappers; the ideal man will not be in control of his sexuality, but will repeatedly
demonstrate how hormones rule him.
The Torrents of Spring is a parody of 1920s culture, in the form of the picaresque adventures of Scripps
O’Neil and Yogi Johnson as each searches for the perfect woman. Hemingway tests conclusions about gender
which have plagued the criticism of his works for more t han seventy years. As Robert Gajdusek queries:
“where ... is anything ... at all of the macho Hemingway we are asked to believe he supports and affirms?”
(Gajdusek “Mad, Sad” 38). Although referring to the male protagonists of Hemingway’s early shor t stories,
Gajdusek’s message is relevent for our reading of The Torrents of Spring: “he has ... given us a magnificent
analysis of the fears and uncertainties and vanities and disguises attendant upon a male world ill prepared to
come to terms with women and occasionally retreating in cowardice into machoist strategies of defense”
(Gajdusek “Mad, Sad” 38-9).
Comley and Scholes explore stereotypes of women that inhabit Hemingway’s texts in the chapter entitled,
“Mothers, Nurses, Bitches, Girls, and Devils.” The mothers are “primarily responsible for setting the moral
tone,” and in return, the sons have “to make recompense for the physical and mental pain one has caused
one’s mother” (Comley and Scholes 24; 27). In a typical revers al in The Torrents of Spring, it is actually the
mother/daughter relationship which is explored, whereas there is only a brief moment of mother/son
interaction. Gajdusek succinctly says: “the lost or denied mother is frequently in Hemingway’s w orks a
statement of the maternal creative principle being denied or replaced by the male” (Gajdusek “Suspended
Woman” 268). Hemingway reveals his anxiety about mothers by placing all of them in situations from which
it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to extricate themselves, Hemingway contrives one mother into a
heroic stance (Scripps’ mother), while banishing three others from the novella (Lucy, Sr., Diana’s mother, and
the squaw); mothers are either saints or they are expendable in The Torrents of Spring.
Mother-child interaction is shown between Scripps’ mother and Scripps, between Lucy, Sr. and Lucy, Jr. ,
between Diana’s mother and Diana, and between the Indian squaw and her papoose. Scripps’ mother, “ an
Italian woma n from the north of Italy,” is transformed into a Southern heroine who challenges General
Sherman on his infamous march to the sea (TOS 24). Later, she attempts to provide for her son by begging;
however, Hemingway reduces her efforts to a joke, as th e only “message” the young boy gets from his
mother is from a neon sign: “LET HARTMAN FEATHER YOUR NEST” (TOS 26). Hemingway’s parodic
message is, that only ‘men’ with ‘heart’ can provide, and he conveniently switches Scripps’ mother’s ethnic
identit y and age to suit the nonsensical circumstances.
Mrs. Lucy O’Neil and little “Lousy” (Lucy) O’Neil do not appear together as a mother/daughter pair. Scripps
O’Neil’s first wife, Lucy, whom he ‘loses’ in Mancelona, is shown in her brief appearanc e to have a drinking
problem. According to Scripps her only desire is to exist in a non-threatening environment - “All I want is a
place to keep the wind out”, she says (TOS 20). By placing Lucy chiefly in a domestic scene, Hemingway
mocks the traditio nal identification of women with hearth and home. It may be that only by drinking can
Lucy overcome her distaste with being forced into that domesticated role. Her shared experience with Scripps
occurs “when he was drunk” (TOS 18). Scripps says, “They would go down together to the railway station
and walk out along the tracks, and then sit together and drink and watch the trains go by. ... Sometimes they
drank all night.... It did them good. It made Scripps strong” (TOS 18) [emphasis added]. Scripp s does not
recognize that Lucy may have a different opinion of their drinking; significantly, this mutual activity occurs
on the railway tracks, site of escape longings! Hemingway relegates her to antithetical spaces - the railroad
tracks, or home, whi ch, according to her husband, Scripps, she defined as: “a place to keep the wind out”
(TOS 20) [emphasis added] . We should note that Scripps later works in a pump manufacturing factory perhaps he is the wind-bag with whom she wanted to dispense. Th e tracks indicate Lucy’s desire to flee which she does - presumably taking Little Lucy with her - when Scripps’ lack of understanding is too much to
bear.
The saga of Diana the elderly waitress, and her ‘lost’ “Mummy” is at the center of gender relations in The
Torrents of Spring. Diana’s unfortunate “lost” mother is held in suspended motion till the close of the novella,
when the narrator makes short shrift of her by explaining directly to the readers that she had died suddenly of
bu bonic plague, and in order to avoid panic among the tourists who'd come to attend the Paris Exposition, the
authorities disavowed knowledge of her existence and hushed up the incident, replacing her with a French
general. The “Author” denies Diana the information about her mother, and in a way, makes her “lose” her
mother again. Instead of allowing this daughter to redeem her mother’s memory by finding out her fate,
Hemingway satirizes remembrance as mawkish sentimentality.
Through Diana, Hemi ngway plays with multiple meanings of “loss” ; some characters can’t find their way, or
misplace objects, but others die. The juxtaposition of definitions of “loss” parodies all of the meanings of the
word. Diana’s attempt to be a culture-vulture (th rough subscriptions to popular-culture journals such as the
Manchester Guardian, the Forum, the Mentor, and the Saturday Review of Literature) (3) is Hemingway’s
satiric comment on these well-known palliatives for the ku lture-hungry masses, mixed with anger at his
numerous rejection slips from them, and criticism of the culture that created a need for such journals (TOS 47,
57 Reynolds Paris Years 199, 211, 223, 234-6, 244, 262, 270, 280, 343, 345).
The Ind ian squaw is introduced in a confused reverie on the nature of sexuality by a dreamy narrative voice
at the end of The Torrents of Spring :
Inside the beanery. They are all inside the beanery. Some do not see the others. Each is int ent on himself. Red
men are intent on red men. White men are intent on white men or on white women. There are no red women.
Are there no squaws any more? What has become of the squaws? Have we lost our squaws in America? (TOS
94).
This anx iety-laden narrative depicts loneliness and obsessive self-absorption, and hints at homoerotic desire
and fear of loss. There appears to be nothing comic here, but the title of this “Part” of the novella - “The
Passing of a Great Race and the Makin g and Marring of Americans” - is obviously subject to the same absurd
scrutiny that the rest of the novella undergoes. Here Hemingway tests xenophobia, which was rampant in the
United States after World War I.
As if on cue, the squaw enters the bean ery, “clad only in a pair of worn moccasins,” carrying her baby on her
back, and accompanied by “a husky dog” (TOS 94). She is a kind of Earth Mother, whose raw sexuality
threatens all of those assembled in the beanery. The reactions are swift, extreme , and ridiculous:
‘Don’t look!’ the drummer shouted to the women at the counter.
‘Here! Get her out of here!’ the owner of the beanery shouted. The squaw was forcibly ejected by the Negro
cook....
‘My God! What that might have led t o!’ Scripps O’Neil mopped his forehead with a napkin (TOS 94).
Though outwardly everyone registers outrage, Scripps, for one, is assaulted by “some vague primordial
feeling” (TOS 94). He views all of this with “a note of terror in his wo rds” - the direct confrontation with
naked flesh is too overwhelming for the naive Scripps, and by analogy, for white manhood - Hemingway hints
that nineteenth century prurience and fear of miscegenation is still active in small-town USA (TOS 95). The
squaw is doubly disenfranchised because as an Indian and a woman, she is perceived as ‘Other.’ “The
monstrous picture of the squaw” raises serious doubts that “authentic incidents .... [with] the ring of truth” are
precisely what one receives in < I>The Torrents of Spring (TOS 102-3).
Feminist geography maps spaces which are occupied by women, and views space as “central both to
masculinist power and to feminist resistance” (Blunt and Rose 1). In their article, “Introduction: Women’s Co
lonial and Postcolonial Geographies,” Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose paraphrase the anthropologist Shirley
Ardener, who
argued that the ‘social map’ of patriarchy created ‘ground rules’ for the behavior of men and women, and that
the gender roles and relations of patriarchy constructed some spaces as ‘feminine’ and others as ‘masculine’
and thus allocated certain kinds of (gendered) activities to certain (gendered) places (Blunt and Rose 1).
As we can already see, Hemingway puts into practice precisely these gender-defined constructs; their
appearance in a parody demonstrates how he disparages them.
According to the statement of purpose in the journal, Gender, Place and Culture, the aim of feminist
geography is to, “address questions of geographical and gendered knowledge; of women, work and
community; and of gender / sexual / ‘racial’ identity and behaviour” (Bondi 3). The female characters in The
Torrents of Spring are portrayed mainly as stereotypes “of gender / sexual / [and]‘racial’ identity,”
demonstrating Hemingway’s testing of cultural norms (Bondi 3).
Mandy is first noticed by Scripps after he and Diana are “man and wife” - she is the “relief waitress ... [who
is] a buxom, jolly-looki ng girl, and she wore a white apron” (TOS 49). The apron is an item that was
formerly identified as being gender-specific to women in their kitchens, and later associated with people in the
food-services and health-care industries. Scripps repeatedl y notes its cleanliness, indicating the value invested
in immaculate womanhood. According to Gillian Rose, in her book, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of
Geographical Knowledge, women’s “everyday routines... are never unimportant, because th e seemingly banal
and trivial events of the everyday are bound into the power structures which limit and confine women” (Rose
Feminism and Geography 17). Hemingway builds what was an acceptable “power structure” for the 1920s, in
which women are seen in domestic scenes, or in the service industries, and the men create industrial products,
or control the communications industry, and then undermines it all through parody.
Scripps’ gaze falls on Mandy, “standing robust and vigorously lov ely .... He watched her hands, healthy,
calm, capable hands, doing the duties of her waitress-hood” (TOS 50). Hemingway tempers Scripps’ innocent
awe with a hefty dollop of authorial irony - but the look indicates Scripps’ role as a masculine voye ur
(suggested by Walters 54). Scripps fragments Mandy, by focusing first on her hands and then on her breasts;
in fact he identifies her as “the buxom w aitress” (suggested by Walters 55; TOS 52). By giving Mandy some
of the characteristics of th e flapper, yet withholding others, Hemingway draws our attention to that cultural
construct, critiquing it. Mandy’s literary anecdotes and her aggressive tone satirize the New Woman of the
1920s, “a boyish girl who combined the flappers’ physical freed om, sexuality, and stamina with feminist selfassertiveness”, as much as Diana is reminiscent of “female models like Grace Hemingway and Gertrude
Stein” (Sanderson 173, 188).
Mandy edges the older Diana out of Scripps’ life, by serving him anecdot es about Henry James and Gosse
and the Marquis of Buque instead of beans (TOS 52-3, 101-2). Diana resents “that interminable stream of
literary gossip” that causes Scripps to fix “his eyes on Mandy,” but her proffered gift, “a wonderful editorial
... b y Mencken about chiropractors” is not enticing enough (TOS 97; 99; 100). (4) The gossipy Mandy, who
“had a gift for the picturesque in speech” is far more attractive, and Scripps ruminates, “A chap could go far
with a woman like that to help him!” (TO S 53) [emphasis added]. Hemingway never misses an opportunity
for sexual innuendo in The Torrents of Spring.
Though Comley and Scholes find “the position of daughter is scarcely occupied” in the works they discuss,
there are two daughters in Th e Torrents of Spring (Comley and Scholes 28). The first is little Lucy O’Neil,
whose nickname, “Lousy”, “playfully” given to her by her father Scripps, is so shocking that one can only
gawk at its outrageousness (TOS 18). While searching for Luc y at her studies in order to part from her,
Scripps ruminates outside the Mancelona High School, “Far into the night they worked, the boys vying with
the girls in their search for knowledge” (TOS 20). The use of the verb “vying” demonstrates that the girls are
the major receivers of education, while the boys must compete with them. Scripps, in fatherly pride,
proclaims, “day after day and night after night, Lousy was learning. She had the stuff in her, that girl” (TOS
20). Perhaps because Lousy can successfully “vie” with boys, she rates her father’s approval. Though Scripps
appears to respect his daughter’s intellectual capability, he never mentions her again, and his wife only
receives passing mention as being the one who (according to Scri pps) betrayed their marriage vows.
The elderly waitress, Diana, is the second daughter in The Torrents of Spring: her biography, as previously
noted, turns on her “lost” relationship with her mother. The lack of a mother in her formative y ears has left
Diana with a low self-opinion, and she castigates herself for the dissolution of the marriage, even though
Scripps is the guilty party: “She couldn’t hold him. She had tried and failed. She had lost. She knew it was a
losing game. There w as no holding him now” (TOS 97). Hemingway has cast her in the role of the forsaken
heroine in a melodramatic romance novel.
The male characters in The Torrents of Spring, Scripps and Yogi, are so egocentric that neither can envision
the oth er’s quandary, nor imagine a woman’s ‘truths’. This is indicative of “one of the features that runs
throughout Hemingway’s writing ... the recurrence of failed communication between men and women”
(Sanderson 190). The two major male characters have as a common denominator problems with sexual
function. While Comley and Scholes suggest that the ideal man in the Hemingway Text is able to handle his
sexuality without “lighting out for the territories,” Scripps O’Neil deserts two wives and takes up wi th a third
woman while ogling a fourth (suggested by Comley and Scholes 24). Yogi Johnson, after agonizing over his
impotence throughout the novella, finally regains his sexuality by joining the naked squaw and then they
actually do “light out for th e territories” together (suggested by Comley and Scholes 24).
According to a sociologist’s study, “To speak of the masculine is to invoke terms of power: primarily,
masculine entails the pursuit of professional power and status. In aid of this ar e such characteristics as strong
and adventurous, but also rational and analytical “(Visser 596). The ‘power’ that Yogi and Scripps have is
insufficient for decision making. Yogi, for one, lacking all ‘rational and analytical’ strength, does not trust the
seasons to change, and queries (nonsensically erring), “could it be that what this writing fellow Hutchinson
had said, ‘If winter comes can spring be far behind?’, would be true again this year?” (TOS 17). Yogi’s gentle
masculinity is a reversal; hi s idea of ‘adventure’ is to play billiards in an Indian club with a quadriplegic
Indian, and his ‘power’ skill of logical thinking seems totally lacking. Parodying the British concept of ‘the
playing fields of war,’ Hemingway has Yogi compare football and war, appropriating rhetoric of aggressive
male sexuality: "Football, like the war, was unpleasant; stimulating and exciting after you had attained a
certain hardness, and the chief difficulty had been that of remembering the signals. Yogi was thinking about
the war, not the army. He meant combat. The army was something different. You could take it and ride with it
or you could buck the tiger and let it smash you (TOS 71). After fighting in World War I, the naive Yogi u
nwittingly participates twice in nude performances. On the first occasion, in Paris, Yogi mistakes a prostitute
for “a beautiful woman” (TOS 95).The intimacy he had hoped for was revealed to be sham, and “the beautiful
thing” with “the beautiful wo man” turns out to be a peep show, with Yogi as an unsuspecting actor (TOS 96).
Yogi’s discovery of this betrayal of his innocent trust appears to be the cause of his impotence. When Yogi
discovers how he was tricked, he cries in anguish: “I blamed it on the war. I blamed it on France. I blamed it
on the decay of morality in general. I blamed it on the younger generation” (TOS 96-7).
While Yogi is trying to find a culpable target, Hemingway is parodying his own use of the epigraph from
Gertrud e Stein which is at the beginning of The Sun Also Rises, “You are all a lost generation.” As he notes
in a letter to Maxwell Perkins (19 November 1926), after reading some of the reviews of the newly published
novel, The Sun Also Rises, < BLOCKQUOTE>It was refreshing to see someone have some doubts that I took
the Gertrude Stein thng very seriously - I meant to play off against that splendid bombast (Gertrude’s
assumption of prophetic roles). No one knows about the generation that follo ws them and certainly has no
right to judge (SL 229). In undermining his own epigraph Hemingway also repudiates Stein’s importance to
him.
Yogi is cured of his impotence when, on seeing the naked squaw, he is struck by “a new feeling” which he
hastens to attribute to Mother Nature:
He was all right now. By the merest chance he had found it out. What might he not have thought if that squaw
had never come into the beanery? What black thoughts he had been th inking!.... Let spring come now. Let it
come. It couldn’t come fast enough (TOS 95).
Yogi is so changed by gazing at the squaw, that he joins her ‘back to nature’ movement and “silently strips off
his garments .... [so that] in the end he is clad only in a worn pair of pump-maker shoes” (TOS 104). Two
“woods Indians” gaze at Yogi and the squaw, and are so stimulated by “some strange pagan disturbance” that
they “hurried along the track” back to town to “get in town before rush” at the whore house, where they plan
to pay the fee by selling Yogi’s cast off clothes (TOS 106, 105). Hemingway parodies the romantic view of
the Indian as the noble savage, and avoids sentimentalizing what could be seen as the plight of the
beleaguered Yo gi Johnson. The “motif of a lost paradise,” in Hemingway’s ‘serious’ works, which is,
according to Sanderson “a way of attaining prelapsarian bliss by establishing ... a complementary union with a
member of the opposite sex,” is parodied in The To rrents of Spring (Sanderson 175).
Scripps O’Neil, him of the “tenuous hardness,” drifts from woman to woman, looking for the one who will
cause ‘stirrings’ inside him (TOS 17). His first wife, whom he “lost” in Mancelona, shared a daughter and
alcoholism with him:
They would go down together to the railway station and walk out along the tracks, and then sit together and
drink and watch the trains go by. They would sit under a pine tree on a little hill that overlooked the ra ilway
and drink. Sometimes they drank all night . Sometimes they drank for a week at a time (TOS 18).
This relationship seems normal to Scripps, as he sees only his point of view: the drinking, he says, “did them
good. It made Scripps stro ng” (TOS 18). He assumes he understands what is best for Lucy, without
consulting her, and then is caught unawares when he learns she thought differently.
Scripps is surprised to discover that the housing he had provided for Lucy was inappropriat e: “Perhaps, after
all, she had wanted a palace instead of this place. You never knew how you were treating a woman” (TOS 2).
He recognizes that there are verbal codes exclusive to women, which he has not yet cracked. Yet there is also
a nurturing s ide to Scripps, which he learned from his mother. Just as she sheltered him from the freezing
cold of the Chicago streets, he revives a dead bird by placing it inside his shirt, feeds it, and carries it
everywhere. Hemingway inserts a double-entendre that his contemporary readers would recognize - ‘bird’ is a
slang term for the male sexual organ. Exposing the ‘bird’ hints at a homoerotic display of the ‘wares’:
The telegrapher looked at him curiously.
‘Say,’ he asked, ‘are you a fai ry?’
‘No,’ Scripps said. I don’t know what being a fairy means.’
‘Well,’ said the telegrapher, ‘what do you carry a bird around for?’
‘Bird?’ asked Scripps. ‘What bird?’
‘That bird that’s sticking out of your shirt’ (TOS 28). In their chapter called “Toros, Cojones, y Maricones,”
Comley and Scholes examine the case of a bullfighter in one of Hemingway’s unpublished manuscripts who
“is so macho and so narcissistic that he turns himself into an object of the gaze” (Comle y and Scholes 139).
In this manner, Scripps, as an unconscious flasher, is portrayed as a naif whose character mocks “extremes of
male behavior” (Comley and Scholes 140).
In general, Comley and Scholes privilege marginalized sexual beha vior, since they feel that “Hemingway was
interested in how sexuality got defined and how it changed, and he was especially interested [in] the
alternatives to ‘normal’ sexual patterns” (Comley and Scholes 137). (5) They add that the “extremes of ma le
behavior that are coded as offensive or ridiculous in the Hemingway Text .... should help us to attend more
closely to those representations of homosocial desire” (Comley and Scholes 140). While Scripps is looking
for heterosexual fulfillment, he i s unknowingly masquerading as a homosexual.
The character of Scripps, “a tall, lean man with a tall, lean face,” is parody of what would later be called the
Hemingway ‘code-hero’ (TOS 17). Hemingway appears to be anticipating himself by creatin g an anti-hero
before the hero arrives! Scripps is always prepared to act; though in typical satiric fashion, he usually leaps
before looking. Scripps’ soul-searching philosophizing mocks pretentious arty types, while revealing
xenophobic anxiety: < BLOCKQUOTE>The long black train of Pullman cars passed Scripps as he stood
beside the tracks. Who were in those cars? Were they Americans, piling up money while they slept? Were
they mothers? Were they fathers? Were there lovers among them? Or were the y Europeans, members of a
worn-out civilization world-weary from the war? Scripps wondered (TOS 25).
Neither Yogi nor Scripps trusts his own decision-making, and both react to random opportunities. After
planning “to get to Chicago that n ight, if possible, to start work in the morning,” Scripps reneges and decides,
“After all, he did not need to go as far as Chicago. There were other places. What if that critic fellow Henry
Mencken had called Chicago the Literary Capital of America?” ( Visser 596; TOS 25). This sentence carries
double weight, as Hemingway simultaneously belittles the prominent purveyor of culture, Mencken, and the
Chicago School of writers, to whom Sherwood Anderson belonged.
Scripps is plagued by an inability to ‘settle down’ with one woman: after ‘losing’ his two Lucies, marrying
Diana, and gazing excitedly at Mandy, he speculates on ‘possibilities’ with the naked squaw: “Mandy talks
on. She is his woman now. He is her man. But is he her man? In Scripps’ brai n that vision of the squaw....
Mandy talking on in the beanery. Scripps listening. But his mind straying away” (TOS 103). For Scripps,
feminine perfection is just over the next horizon. In a clever reversal, in The Torrents of Spring, Pollyanna is a
man. The issue of gender mixes with the parodic aims of The Torrents of Spring , so that while Hemingway is
formulating images of sexuality, he is simultaneously joking about those very constructs.
We must not overlook Hemingwa y’s remarkable energy - immediately after finishing the first draft of The
Sun Also Rises, he completed The Torrents of Spring in about a week. The juxtapostion of these two works
leads us to a neglected target of Hemingway’s parody in The Torrents of Spring , which is The Sun Also Rises
. Sanderson notes how in The Sun Also Rises,
Hemingway distinguishes between the impermanent beliefs and practices of his generation (including its
gender constructi ons and sexual mores) and the natural, biological cycles that assure the perpetuation of the
race and the survival of the earth (Sanderson 177).
In both novels nature appears in the form of seasons, weather, and human sexuality; the title s and epigraphs
in both engage us with nature. Gajdusek reminds us that the “very title [of The Torrents of Spring] speaks of
the emergence from the suspension stasis of winter, as the thaws of spring create release to life” (Gajdusek
“Suspende d Woman” 269). However, whereas in The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway sees his message as
“tragic,” in The Torrents of Spring the news is delivered via parodic slings and arrows (SL 226).
Consequently, in The Torrents of Spring, one cannot predict either ‘gender constructions’ or ‘natural,
biological cycles’. The only thing which Hemingway playfully claims is predictable is caution. After
resolving the tale of Diana’s mother he concludes the novella with a rejoinder that mocks xenophobia - and
mothers - “Of course, what it shows is that when you’re traveling abroad alone, or even with your mother, you
simply cannot be too careful” (TOS 108).
An intertextual reading of The Torrents of Spring , which keeps in mind t he numerous sources, hidden and
outright used, with the authority vested by satire and parody, and with an open eye to Hemingway’s
overturning of conventional attitudes toward gender, surely makes “the Hemingway who did these things ... a
more interes ting writer than the Hemingway seen as the advocate and the embodiment of a mindless
machismo” (Comley and Scholes 141). It affords an opportunity to rectify the misapprehensions of feminist
critics, who have condemned Hemingway’s male characters for lack of sensitivity toward women, and have
disparaged the traditional gender-bound roles to which Hemingway relegated women. By revising our
estimation of The Torrents of Spring, we enrich Hemingway’s multifaceted canon, and we in turn are reim
bursed a hundred-fold. Hemingway ends the novella, “I will just say a simple farewell and God-speed, reader,
and leave you now to your own devices” (TOS 108). The centennial of Hemingway’s birth is an apt moment
to re-examine our “devices” by taking a fresh look at The Torrents of Spring.
NOTES
1. For an example of Hemingway’s parody of Henry Fielding’s self-reflexivity, see Joseph Andrews: “The
authentic history with which I now present the public is an instance of the great good that book is likely to do,
and of the prevalence of example which I have just observed,” in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and
Shamela (London: J. M. Dent, 1993) 58.
2. The title of this article is taken from Ernest Hem ingway’s letter to Horace Liveright sent with the
manuscript of The Torrents of Spring for publication on 7 December 1925, in Ernest Hemingway: Selected
Letters 1917-1961 (New York: Scribner’s, 1981) 173.
4. Note that The Torrents of Spr ing is dedicated, tongue-in-cheek, “To H. L. Mencken and S. Stanwood
Mencken [sic] In Admiration” . It would be hard to find a more incongruous pairing; H. L. Mencken was a
prime-mover in intellectual circles in the 1920s and had evoked Hemingway’ s eternal wrath by repeatedly
rejecting his short stories for publication in The American Mercury, of which he was editor. S. Stanwood
Menken (Hemingway deliberately misspelled the name) was a known isolationist in World War I, and thus
was equally dis paraged. See Michael Reynolds, Hemingway: The Paris Years (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1989).
5. A reading of the index of Hemingway’s Genders: Rereading the Hemingway Text, reveals the terms
“androgyny,” bisexuality,” “eunuchs,” “hermaphrodites,” “ homosexuality,” “incest,” “lesbianism,” and “sex
changes” , but not “masculinity” or “femininity” (Comley and Scholes 151-53).
Works Cited
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 4th ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, an d Winston, 1981.
Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and
Michael Holquist. Austin: U Texas P, 1981.
--------. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Ed. and Trans. Caryl Emerson . Intro. Wayne C. Booth.
Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1984.
-----. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford U P, 1997.
Blunt, Alison, and Gillian Rose. “Introduction: Women’s Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies.” Writing
Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies. Eds. Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose. New York:
Guilford, 1994: 1 -20.
Bondi, Liz and Mona Domosh. “Editorial.” Gender, Place and Culture 1.1 (1994): 3-4.
Boyd, Ernest. “Readers and Writers.” Independent Weekly Review 116 (12 June 1926): 694.
Comley, Nancy R., and Robert Scholes. Hemingway’s Gende rs: Rereading the Hemingway Text. New
Haven: Yale UP, 1994.
Durey, Jill Felicity. “The State of Play and Interplay in Intertextuality.” Style 25.4 (Winter 1991): 616-35.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. 1986.
Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews and Shamela. Rev. Ed. Ed. Arthur Humphreys. Intro. Donald Thomas.
London: J.M. Dent, 1993.
Hansen, Harry. “An American Parody.” New York World 30 May 1926: 4M. Gajdusek, Robert E. “The Mad
Sad Bad Misreading of Hemingway’s Gender Politics/Aesthetics.” North Dakota Quarterly 64.3 (1997): 3647).
-----. “The Suspended Woman in the Work of Ernest Hemingway.” Hemingway: Up in Michigan
Perspectives. Eds. Frederic J. Svo boda and Joseph J. Waldmeir. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1995: 26574.
Gilmer, Walker. Horace Liveright: Publisher of the Twenties. New York: David Lewis, 1970.
Hemingway, Ernest. Selected Letters 1917-1961. Ed. Carlos Baker. New York: Macmillan, 1981.
----- . The Torrents of Spring: A Romantic Novel in Honour of the Passing of a Great Race. London: Collins,
1977.
Junkins, Donald. “’Oh, Give the Bird a Chance’: Nature and Vilification in Hem ingway’s The Torrents of
Spring.” North Dakota Quarterly 63.3 (1996): 65-80.
Larson, Kelli A. “Stepping into the Labyrinth: Fifteen Years of Hemingway Scholarship.” Hemingway: Up in
Michigan Perspectives . Eds. Frederic Svoboda and Joseph J. Waldmeir. East Lansing: Michigan State UP,
1995: 275-81.
Mandel, Miriam B. Reading Hemingway: The Facts in the Fictions. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1995.
The Only Thing That Counts: The Ernest Hemingway / Maxwell Perkins Corres pondence 1925-1947. Ed.
Matthew J. Bruccoli with Robert W. Trogdon. New York: Scribner, 1996.
Pound, Ezra. Letter to Ernest Hemingway. 31 July 1926. Ernest Hemingway Papers. John F. Kennedy
Library, Boston.
Pughe, Thomas. “Reading the Picaresque: Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Saul Bellow’s
The Adventures of Augie March, and More Recent Adventures.” English Studies 77.1 (1996): 59-70.
Reynolds, Michael S. Hemingway’s Reading 1910-1940: An Inventory. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981.
-----. Hemingway: The Paris Years. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
Rose, Gillian. Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity, 1993.
Sanderson, Rena. “Hemingway and G ender History.” The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway. Ed. Scott
Donaldson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996: 170-96.
Still, Judith, and Michael Worton. “Introduction.” Intertextuality: Theories and Practices. Eds. Michael
Worton and Judi th Still. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1990: 1-44.
Stonehill, Brian. The Self-Conscious Novel: Artifice in Fiction from Joyce to Pynchon. Philadelphia: U
Pennsylvania P, 1988.
Strater, Henry. Letter to Ernest Hemingway. 12 June 192 6. Ernest Hemingway Papers. John F. Kennedy
Library, Boston.
Rev. of The Torrents of Spring, by Ernest Hemingway, Rochester Democratic Chronicle 20 June 1926: n. pag.
Rev. of The Torrents of Spring, by Ernest Hemingway, S an Francisco Chronicle 13 June 1926: n. pag.
Visser, Irene. “The Prototypicality of Gender: Contemporary Notions of Masculine and Feminine.” Women’s
Studies International Forum 19.6 (1996): 589-600.
Wallace, Martin. Recent Theories of Narrative. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986.
Walters, Suzanna Danuta. Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory. Berkeley: U California
P, 1995.