Ernest Hemingway Relationships

In “Cross-Country Snow” as well as the other short stories compiled in Ernest Hemingway’s novel In Our Time, a strong aspect of the story seems to be the relationship between couples. These relationships are almost always faulty in some way, often causing readers to wonder why on earth the pair is together. On rare occasions in which the relationship is a positive one, or seems to be, it is sabotaged by one of the two people in it. This seems to mirror Hemingway’s own life, as he was married four times and divorced three. Whether it’s Nick and Marjorie, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, Mr. and Mrs. Elliot, or any one of the other pairings in the book, Hemingway seems to be of the opinion that most relationships are fated to fail, whether by circumstances

beyond the pair’s control, an incompatibility, or their own sabotage.
In the stories throughout In Our Time, many characters view relationships merely as an unwanted responsibility. In “Cross-Country Snow,” for example, Nick Adams learns that Helen, either his girlfriend or his wife, is pregnant. He is not particularly thrilled about it, and feels that this new level of responsibility and relationship he now has jointly with Helen is interfering with his freedom and relationships with his male friends, such as George. The waitress that serves Nick and George at the cabin is also pregnant, and, says Nick, “not married,” as she does not have a ring. He further comments that “no girls get married around here till they’re knocked up,” suggesting, perhaps, that he and Helen are not yet married (Hemingway 110). Even without drawing that conclusion, the statement seems to describe a certain reluctance - at least on the part of the named “girls” and Nick - towards marriage, towards entering into such a serious relationship with another person. Marriage is viewed as a last resort in the case of an emergency, not something desirable, based on the waitress’ lack of a ring and George and Nick’s attitude towards it. Their attitude, as Pfeiffer and König note, is demonstrated by their “wish to escape domestic entanglements, and … a deep-seated unwillingness to face those obligations, duties, and responsibilities ahead of” them (König and Pfeiffer 4). However, this feeling gives way to “resignation rather than bitter regret,” submitting to readers that there is no escape from such relationships, that everyone must face themm eventually, however a negative experience it may prove to be (Edenfield 143).
This idea of relationships is not restricted only to “Cross-Country Snow.” In “Three-Day Blow,” Bill tells Nick that he was “very wise … [t]o bust off that Marge business,” as he had just broken up with her in the story before, though he now regrets it (Hemingway 46). The relationship between Nick and Marjorie appears to be one of the best in the story, with both parties genuinely caring for each other. Marjorie notices something is wrong and keeps asking “what’s the matter,” throughout their last date (33). After the breakup, Nick feels terrible and lies down in the sand as though he’s been shot. Later, the idea that he could “get back into [dating her] again” makes him “happy” and “lighter,” though they never do (48). Though the relationship seems a good one, it strangely is one of the very few that we watch end over the course of the book, another being “A Very Short Story.” When the two relationships are compared, Luz and her soldier seem almost immature next to the probably younger couple as their relationship seems ill advised and rather disastrous. Yet both end, suggesting that whether a relationship is good or bad, Hemingway felt they were largely doomed to fail.
Hemingway, for his part, seemed to take a similar stance on responsibility in relationships, most notably when Hadley told him she was pregnant - an episode in his life that was later reflected in “Cross-Country Snow.” He resented Hadley because of it and felt he was being prematurely stripped of his freedom, just as Nick did in the same situation.
The married couples in In Our Time seem to have plenty of problems and don’t handle them in the best ways. In “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot,” the couple grows farther and farther apart until they don’t even sleep in the same room and Mrs. Elliot’s friend takes on the tasks and role of each spouse in the other’s life - typing for Mr. Elliot and sharing Mrs. Elliot’s bed with her. They allow their problem of not being able to conceive to ruin their relationship. Instead of trying to fix the relationship itself, they choose to treat the symptoms of the problem - Mrs. Elliot not having anyone to talk with or sleep with and Mr. Elliot not having anyone to type his works.
Hemingway also experienced problems in his relationships. He and Hadley never quite recovered from her losing all of his manuscripts. Though this is a major problem, one might hope that a person’s significant other would be important enough to him or her to forgive. Instead, it colored the rest of their relationship, which finally ended in divorce. In an instance of which “Out of Season,” was “an almost literal transcription," he and Hadley allowed their relationship problems to affect people around them (Baker 180). Because they were preoccupied with their own problems, they ignored those of their drunk guide, Hemingway even reporting the man to the hotel owner, resulting in the man’s termination and subsequent suicide. Hemingway’s inclusion of this instance in his writing shows that he felt it was an important representation of relationships - that they can bring out the worst in people and negatively affect those around them resulting in what he called a “trag[edy],” (180-181).
Contrastly to Nick and Marjorie’s relationship, most couples in the collection of short stories are far from happy.

In fact, Hemingway takes this so far as to continually ironically describe Mr. and Mrs. Elliot as “very happy” in their story, though they are unable to have a child, Mrs. Elliot cries excessively, and they are all but separated (Hemingway 88). The husband and wife in “Cat in the Rain,” also do not have a good relationship. They are beyond distant from each other. The husband largely ignores his wife and prefers her boyish haircut. She, on the other hand, wishes to grow her hair out and have children. He doesn’t even seem to care very much about her - when tries to make an effort of keeping up conversation with her husband, going so far as to share her dreams and desires, he suggests she “get something to read,” (Hemingway 94). The implication is that the two are so at odds that it would be better had they married other people. This is further cemented with the character of the hotel-keeper. Where her husband ignores her, the hotel-keeper pays attention to the woman. He sends out a maid with an umbrella to help the woman look for the cat in the rain, and when she fails to do so, somehow locates the cat and sends it up to her room. Many couples get a pet as a stepping-stone to having a child, or even in place of one, and I believe this is what the cat is meant to symbolize. Though the husband is interested in neither a child or a cat like his wife is, the

hotel-keeper cares about the woman enough to see that she gets the cat. The introduction of this alternate suitor suggests that the woman should not have married her husband at all.
Even in Nick’s own family there are unhappy relationships.

His own mother and father have a entire conversation with each other without ever looking at one another or entering the same room in “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” and Mr. Adams leaves the house so angry afterward that he slams the door. The pair are very different on the fundamental level of beliefs - he is a doctor and she is a Christian Scientist and thus does not believe in medical care. The union is, in short, both paradoxical and laughable. A similar relationship occurs in “A Very Short Story,” as it is amusing though not paradoxical. The couple, a nurse named Luz and an unnamed soldier, fall very much in love during the war, but their relationship dissolves when the soldier goes back to America to get a job and Luz falls for a major, though they had planned to get married. The story overall is not exactly funny, but the where-are-they-now summarization at the end of the story is where the humor lies. We are informed that “[t]he major did not marry [Luz] in the spring, or any other time,” and that the soldier “contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab,” far from the romantic happily ever after either of them envisioned together earlier in their relationship (Hemingway

66).
Hemingway himself had many unhappy romantic relationships, from a nurse in the war whom Luz is based off of to his four marriages. His and Hadley’s numerous problems have already been mentioned, but he also had problems with Mary, his fourth wife. He was still with her at the end of his life, but their marriage was doing so poorly that it’s been speculated that one motive behind Hemingway’s suicide was that he meant to “t[ake] revenge and punish[] Mary” (Meyers 563). Whether or not this is true, it speaks to the level of dischord present between the pair, as well as to Hemingway’s opinion of relationships on the whole. Though healthy ones are quite the opposite, he thought them to be draining, entrapping, and in the end a disaster - something between two opposing parties rather than partners, perhaps with some exceptions such as what almost was between Nick and Marjorie.