Hemingway bisects the crisis of middle-class masculinity at many points in his personal and public life. The author’s many physical attacks upon friends who question his masculinity; the threats leveled at innocent passersby whom Hemingway perceived as “fairies”; his practically manic desire to hunt and kill as many animals as possible; his incessant need to experiment sexually—all of these indicate a symptomatology of angst that Hemingway shared with his fellow middle-class men. Developing such a critique, however, cannot definitively quantify anything about Hemingway; instead, we should search for examples of the middle-class struggle for a masculine identity in the author’s fiction. Finding examples of a crisis in middle-class masculinity in the author’s texts indicates a more readily quantifiable cultural determination at work upon both the author and his fiction. Turning to Hemingway’s short fiction, we see in many tales the same middle-class themes prevalent in the larger culture.
Hemingway's "dual masculinity," may mean Hemingway's ability to explore vulnerability and empathy in his work and life while also "preserving and reinforcing traditionally stoic masculine values", which identifies evidence of this "dual masculinity" in a variety of inconsistencies that have notoriously irked Hemingway scholars, most notably, Hemingway's awe and respect for women, which coexists with his misogyny, and his fascination with sodomy, which coexists with his homophobia.
Excerpted from:
Hemingway’s Short Fiction and the Crisis of Middle-Class Masculinity
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