Book Selection Status: READ
Month: December 2011
Genre: Historical Fiction
Book of the Month: The Paris Wife
Author: Paula McLain
Question source: http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/features/paula_mclain/author/
Discussion Questions:
1. In many ways, Hadley's girlhood in St. Louis was a difficult and repressive experience. How do her early years prepare her to meet and fall in love with Ernest? What does life with Ernest offer her that she hasn't encountered before? What are the risks?2. Hadley and Ernest don't get a lot of encouragement from their friends and family when they decided to marry. What seems to draw the two together? What are some of the strengths of their initial attraction and partnership? The challenges?
3. The Ernest Hemingway we meet in THE PARIS WIFE—through Hadley's eyes—is in many ways different from the ways we imagine him when faced with the largeness of his later persona. What do you see as his character strengths? Can you see what Hadley saw in him?
4. The Hemingways spontaneously opt for Paris over Rome when the get key advice from Sherwood Anderson. What was life like for them when they first arrived? How did Hadley's initial feelings about Paris differ from Ernest's and why?
5. Throughout THE PARIS WIFE, Hadley refers to herself as "Victorian" as opposed to "modern." What are some of the ways she doesn't feel like she fits into life in bohemian Paris? How does this impact her relationship with Ernest? Her self-esteem? What are some of the ways Hadley's "old-fashioned" quality can be seen as a strength and not a weakness?
6. Hadley and Ernest's marriage survived for many years in Jazz-Age Paris, an environment that had very little patience for monogamy and other traditional values. What in their relationship seems to sustain them? How does their marriage differ from those around them? Pound's and Shakespeare's? Scott and Zelda's?
7. Most of THE PARIS WIFE is written in Hadley's voice, but a few select passages come to us from Ernest's point of view. What impact does getting Ernest's perspective have on our understanding of their marriage? How does it affect your ability to understand him and his motivations in general?
8. What was the role of literary spouses in 1920's Paris? How is Hadley challenged and restricted by her gender? Would those restrictions have changed if she had been an artist and not merely a "wife"?
9. At one point, Ezra Pound warns Hadley that it would be a dire mistake to let parenthood change Ernest. Is there a nugget of truth behind his concern? What are some of the ways Ernest is changed by Bumby's birth? What about Hadley? What does motherhood bring to her life, for better or worse?
10. One of the most wrenching scenes in the book is when Hadley loses a valise containing all of Ernest's work to date. What kind of turning point does this mark for the Hemingway's marriage? Do you think Ernest ever forgives her?
11. When the couple moves to Toronto to have Bumby, Ernest tries his best to stick it out with a regular "nine-to-five" reporter's job, and yet he ultimately finds this impossible. Why is life in Toronto so difficult for Ernest?
12. Why does Hadley agree to go back to Paris earlier than they planned, even though she doesn't know how they'll make it financially? How does she benefit from supporting his decision to make a go at writing only fiction?
13. Hadley and Ernest had similar upbringings in many ways. What are the parallels, and how do these affect the choices Hadley makes as a wife and mother?
14. In THE PARIS WIFE, when Ernest receives his contract for In Our Time, Hadley says, "He would never again be unknown. We would never again be this happy." How did fame affect Ernest and his relationship with Hadley?
15. The Sun Also Rises is drawn from the Hemingways' real-life experiences with bullfighting in Spain. Ernest and his friends are clearly present in the book, but Hadley is not. Why? In what ways do you think Hadley is instrumental to the book regardless, and to Ernest's career in general?
16. How does the time and place—Paris in the 20's—affect Ernest and Hadley's marriage? What impact does the war, for instance, have on the choices and behavior of the expatriate artists surrounding the Hemingways? Do you see Ernest changing in response to the world around him? How, and how does Hadley feel about those changes?
17. What was the nature of the relationship between Hadley and Pauline Pfeiffer? Were they legitimately friends? How do you see Pauline taking advantage of her intimate position in the Hemingway's life? Do you think
18. Hadley is naïve for not suspecting Pauline of having designs on Ernest earlier? Why or why not?
19. It seems as if Ernest tries to make his marriage work even after Pauline arrives on the scene. What would Hadley it have cost Hadley to stick it out with Ernest no matter what? Is there a way she could have fought harder for her marriage?
20. In many ways, Hadley is a very different person at the end of the novel than the girl who encounters Ernest by chance at a party. How do you understand her trajectory and transformation? Are there any ways she essentially doesn't change?
21. When Hemingway's biographer Carlos Baker interviewed Hadley Richardson near the end of her life, he expected her to be bitter, and yet she persisted in describing Ernest as a "prince." How can she have continued to love and admire him after the way he hurt her?
22. Ernest Hemingway spent the last months of his life tenderly reliving his first marriage in the pages his memoir, A Moveable Feast. In fact, it was the last thing he wrote before his death. Do you think he realized what he'd truly lost with Hadley?
2 comments:
1. Ernest is an exciting planet around which Hadley can orbit and find utility, which her life lacks due in part to her mother’s illness/death and her father’s suicide. Orienting her life around him is exciting at first, but once his success expands him beyond her, she is once again hollow and wanting.
2/3. Ernest is passionate, driven, hungry for life, all alluring, desirable qualities in a man. Hadley sees herself as the lone counterpoint to these extremes. But fame turns these qualities into exaggerated caricatures of themselves, and Hadley cannot stand against them.
5. Hadley doesn’t dress or behave to be thought extraordinary. She doesn’t see herself as a repressed woman nor does she seduce for kicks. Despite her insecurity, she seems more self-possessed than many of the other women in the novel. Ernest loves and cherishes her this way but desires Pfife for wanting something bad enough to take it.
6. Hadley’s determination to love, tolerate, and self-repudiate for Ernest and his need for her stability keep them together. Pound and Shakespeare have incorporated infidelity into their marriage, and Scott and Zelda have a wild imbalance that prevents either of them from straying too far.
7. Ernest’s POV illuminates his issues and points to his hopelessness so clearly that their situation becomes even more pitiable.
8. The spouses are to tolerate and temper their beloveds’ passions. In opting out of the piano recital, Hadley misses her chance to gain some hand in her marriage that she could never otherwise obtain. Short of that, because she’s a chaste, ordinary, determined-to-be-content woman, she just accepts her lot.
9. Bumby gives Ernest more to worry and rant about, as the case may be. He gives Hadley life, love, and a reason to go on when she otherwise might not.
10. When Hadley loses those pages, she knows she has also irrevocably lost Ernest and his complete trust. How can he truly forgive when he’s long harbored suspicions that she doesn't really want him to write as much as he does?
15. The book is about chaos, passions, and life-as-sport. Hadley is the antithesis of those things. Grounding Ernest, she allows him to get lost in the fracas, ruin himself, recover, then write. Without the safety of Hadley, none of it would be possible.
17/18. Pfife likes and envies Hadley and steals her husband as proof. But because she can compartmentalize her feelings, she can say, “I like you and I’m going to take your husband.” Had Hadley had suspected Pfife’s intentions, her passive fear and silence would have paralyzed her early on and prevented her from doing anything about her suspicions.
19. Ernest tries to make his marriage work for himself only. Hadley would have lost herself completely had she stayed. Hadley knows from the beginning that their marriage can work only as long as he’s committed to it. She could fight all she wants, but in the end, Ernest would not yield. She knows that, and surprised that she cannot live with his terms, she ends it.
21. Hadley is extraordinary because she saw him for exactly what he was and loved him for it. Ernest never changed: his passions and extremes just had greater boundaries in which to play. She regarded him as grand, important, and wonderful, all that “prince” connotes, from day one and never changed her opinion. And constancy, after all, is the essence of love.
22. Yes, he realized it! But he also knew that he couldn’t have stayed with her. She wanted tradition and monogamy; he wanted evolution and options. Those desires were mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t negate the love Ernest and Hadley shared.
1. I think life with Ernest offers her excitement and purpose which is something she has lacked since the death of her mother. I think she risks losing herself in Ernest - he is all encompassing and not forgiving.
2. I think Hadley and Ernest share "chemistry" with one another and both of them are ready to go out and see the world. The challenges are that Ernest is just starting out in the world and Hadley really wants convention.
3. I think Ernest was very magnetic and larger than life - but he wouldn't have been the type of person I would choose for a long-term partner.
4. Life was difficult for them in Paris at first and I think Ernest found his stride much quicker than Hadley. I think that Ernest was quick to meld into a place and make it his own where as Hadley was more tentative - she had nothing there and Ernest had his writing.
5. Hadley has more conservative views than most of their social circle and feels uncomfortable which lowers her self-esteem. I think in the end it gives Hadley a stronger sense of self, the ability to stand up for herself and know what it is that she really wants.
6. I think Hadley is patient and tolerates a lot during their marraige - and also trys to fit in even though she isn't always comfortable. Their marraige is monogamous much longer than anyone around them and it is more conventional than anyone else in their circle.
7. I think having Ernest's voice allows you to understand how he views things - how his life has impacted him. It made me want to go read more of his work - especially A Moveable Feast.
8. Literary spouses had no "role" except one of support. Hadley is restricted into acceptable roles of that time - even the 1920's had limited opportunities for women - the women around her are wives, artists, writers, or out for someone's money (for the most part). If she has been an artist she would have had a voice of her own - but I don't think she would have been attractive to Ernest.
9. I think motherhood gives Hadley purpose, but it is a restriction for Ernest and in some ways it seemed to be the beginning of the end of their relationship - at least the better part of their relationship.
10. Ernest questions whether Hadley is supportive of him when she loses the valise of Ernest's work...and I don't think he ever trusts her quite as fully again.
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