Projective Identification, Connection and Gendered Temporality in Ernest Hemingway's Novels

In this thesis project, my structuralist reading reveals a common situation across Hemingway's novels in which his protagonists are broken out of a detached present by a sudden moment of projective identification with the gendered other. In the detached present, these protagonists put up divisions between temporal and gendered spaces. Both spaces are opened after the moment of identification. They are reattached to the world and cross formerly divided spaces. In each novel, Hemingway both creates divisions and attempts to dismantle them throughout the text. I argue that Hemingway places his protagonists on one side of gendered and temporal divisions while also destabilizing their position in divided spaces. I further argue that Hemingway's protagonists use temporal division to protect their gendered merger, but that dividing temporal space to remove gendered division results in death recurring as the realization of permanent merger in each of my focus novels.<p></p>