The Psychology of David and Catherine
By Daniel Rechtman
“He had many problems when he married but he had thought of none of them here nor of writing nor of anything but being with this girl whom he loved and was married to and he did not have the sudden deadly clarity that had always come after intercourse.” (13)
In these edenic settings, David and Catherine act upon only their most natural desires—eat, drink, sex, and sleep. After their marriage they left behind their rational selves and became blissfully ignorant animals. The novel begins just as paradise is wearing off and their “firsts” as husband and wife start happening as their newborn selves begin to see the stresses of life with deadly clarity.
Hemingway explains his writing style to the reader through David: “Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.” (37) The psyches of David and Catherine are complicated, but they seem so simple. We must deduce the nature of their psyches from the clues given. For instance, Catherine’s Freudian slip on page 54: “When you start to live outside yourself it’s all dangerous. Maybe I’d better go back into our world, your and my world that I made up; we made up I mean. I was a great success in that world.” Here, we see that Catherine is basking in her agency (pun intended) and is showing signs of narcissism (like Eve in Paradise Lost).
Catherine’s obsession with tanning and cutting her hair is sexual. On page 64, Catherine tells Colonel John Boyle that her dark skin is “very becoming in bed” as a way of explaining her preoccupation with it. Her changing allows her the sexual agency that is normally associated with a man. Her short, animal-like hair, soft cheeks, and dark skin are part of the fetish she has created. On the other hand, David’s new sexual passivity troubles him so much and so immediately that Chapter One ends with his silent farewell to Catherine from his heart. David is clearly repressing an internal conflict regarding Catherine, his gender role, and his writing.
David’s life as a writer preoccupies him now that Catherine wants to defy her assigned gender role. On page 45, David’s first-person thoughts about his need to write more can be applied to his situation with Catherine. He says, “everything’s going too fast and you’re going with it and you’ll be through before ever you know it. Maybe you’re through now. All right. Don’t start. At least you remember that much.” Whether he is talking about writing or his sexual passivity, he is troubled by something. Unfortunately for him, Catherine’s desire for a male role is growing. On page 70, during lunch at the café, Catherine becomes passionate: “You want a girl don’t you? Don’t you want everything that goes with it? Scenes, hysteria, false accusations, temperament isn’t that it?” It is no longer just the female sexual role that she wants to defy.
In conclusion, David’s repression of his feelings about his sexuality and gender role has caused him to regress into his writing career, in which his unconscious self-doubts are manifesting, and Catherine’s fixation with fulfilling the male role is spreading from her sexual to platonic life.