In junior-level elective courses, in particular, I start the class by choosing the naughtiest page in the naughtiest book, the passage with the most objectionable language, and tell students to take an evening, read the passage carefully, and if they feel like they could continue in the course, they should. If not, there are other choices.
It is not that I am making an apology for the language and subject matter of the books of the modern period, it is just that I believe it only fair to be as upfront and transparent about these issues as possible. I recall a particularly religious student a few years ago, a diligent student, who did excellent work but presented me, at semester's end, with all the books from the course. She had learned a lot but did not want the books in her house.
The books this semester are not particularly provocative, but beginning Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast this week did reveal a number of assumptions my students hold about sexuality.
Without too much qualification, they branded Hemingway as homophobic because of the comments he makes about Gertrude Stein's relationship with Alice Toklas. (Never mind, for the moment, that coming to Stein's defense is really the first thing they have done that revealed any sympathy for her, at all.) But when contrasted with Hemingway's affection for Sylvia Beach, his attitudes do not seem quite as straightforward. Hemingway's description of his wife's short hair, in the flapper style of the day, is not consistent with his apparent preference for very feminine, very submissive women. We decided that perhaps, with the knowledge that he could dominate his wife, he was willing to give her more latitude publicly than he afforded other people. And, of course, he gives himself the same latitude: he condemns Scott Fitzgerald as nothing better than a woman because he lets his wife walk all over him.
These sharp distinctions, these hard edges, many people maintained, were overcompensation because Hemingway's parents dressed him as a girl when he was a very young child. How fast they turn to pseudo-psychoanalysis! There was no subtlety in these readings.
Ernest Hemingway, and his description of others, gives us many chances to talk about gender expectations in the modern period. I suspect we will see many more nuances when we start reading Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle.
