Brett and Jake

I suppose since everyone is weighing in on it I should probably discuss the Jake and Brett relationship. I don’t find the end of the novel to be particularly affirming or uplifting for the future of their relationship. I read Jake’s “Isn’t it pretty to think so” to be sarcastic in light of his heavy drinking and the way he sort of rubs his material wealth in Brett's face through the decadent meal he eats. I also think that trying to draw conclusions based on the possible phallic imagery of the baton is kind of a stretch. I see the future of their relationship being much the same as their past, while Jake is angry and frustrated with Brett he is still willing to come help her and there is no indication that this will be the last time he serves as an enabler for her. That said I think it is an oversimplification of the relationship to view this relationship as Brett exploiting Jake, though Jake likes to view it this way.

There is a repeated motif of Brett being unwillingly worshipped. For example in the procession at Pamplona there is a moment where “Bret wanted to dance but they did not want her to. They wanted her as an image to dance around.” While here Jake is aware that Brett does not want this he later shows that he thinks Brett really wants this sort of worship when he describes her walking through the festival and acting as if it were all for her when really she just want to talk to him. If we look at the group dynamics we see that they somewhat parallel the dancers and Brett.

With the exception of Bill all the other characters are totally obsessed with Brett. Cohn is the most obvious, he follows her around almost obsessively and is basically there waiting for her to come back to him. The people he is with don’t like him and make perfectly clear that they want him to go away. Therefore his presence is a sort of self-abasement, he stays in this situation in which he is constantly insulted and loses all credibility as a socially competent individual in order to have half a chance of being with Brett again. Mike is less obvious but he is also sort of abasing himself before her simply by sitting back and watching her affairs with Cohn and Romero. We can see that while he never explicitly states it his aggravation at Cohn in some way stems from Cohn’s affair with Brett. Similarly when he frequently talks about how fine he finds Brett to be, betraying the fact that he is actually quite obsessed with her despite the way he is supposed to play it cool.

Jake is quite clearly in this social group for Brett as again with the exception of BIll it is pretty clear he is not exactly fond of Cohn and Mike is quite annoying when he is drunk. Despite all the aspects is which he uses Romero as a surrogate, pimping out the woman you love has to be an act which causes great pain, we can see this pain in the line “Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love.” Even characters which don’t play a large role in the story very quickly become enamored with Brett. The Count offer her a lot of money to go and spend time with him and quickly finds her very entertaining. The possibly gay, or at least very effeminate men who dance with Brett are important to Jake only because Brett is with them and while they are not described as having the same reverence towards her as the others, Jake's description of her as the lone individual amongst a sea of “white hands, wavy hair, white faces” establishes her as the only important person among a sea of lessers, paralleling her role among the dancers in Pamplona.

I think it is clear that while Jake sees Brett as desiring this attention and placing herself in that position, it is entirely possible she does not want the adoration and attention of her entirely male following. Furthermore Jake exaggerates this  group dynamic because he is so focused on Brett. The case with the effeminate men is the perfect example of this, Brett is the only important person to him in that group so she seems elevated over everyone else. Jake tends to exaggerate her sense of self importance and turns her into an object of worship for everyone else because she is one for him.

That said there are people who are genuinely obsessed with Brett, such as Cohn and Mike, and for whom this group dynamic is not just a product of Jake’s exaggeration. While Brett deserves some sort of blame for this, as she is having idle affairs, as Fulton (the author of our presentation article points out both Mike and Cohn were pigs before she got to them and therefore she is not deserving of the Circe label Mike applies to her. I think just as the dancers in Pamplona have no idea who she is when they idolize her, much of the idolization she receives in the bohemian scene in Paris is not for whom she personally is but for the way she represents the consummate post WWI woman.

If WWI has stripped Europe of the old heroic ideal, as evidenced by the way all the characters find Cohn trying to win her heart repugnant. Then Brett, who functions in a very ironic mode,  i.e. claiming she is never going to get drunk again and ordering a drink in back to back sentences, is the embodiment of the new way of being. She pioneers the new fashions, Jake mentions she was the first to start wearing her hair like a boy She has created a new beauty standard.To them Brett is the person who has it figured out and they are drawn to her because of that. I would say the reason why men are particularly drawn to her is that masculinity and femininity have always been defined relative to each other, and so they hope to find out how to be modern men by spending time with the ideal modern woman.

Unfortunately I don’t think Brett finds the meaning she has created particularly satisfying, she clearly isn’t happy with her relationships, be they with Lord Ashley, Cohn or even Mike. She tries out the old heroic ideal with Romero and finds that the two can’t coexist. The others find these relationships similarly dissatisfying but are so dependent on Brett to provide them with some sort of meaning rather then find their own that they feel betrayed and end up blaming her.

Jake by being physically emasculated is unable to define himself as a modern man and doesn’t expect her to do this, because he has reasons other than just the culture shift for why he is emasculated he can stay with her. For the others while she is also the hope of finding the new masculine ideal she is also a reminder that they have been stripped of the old ideal and therefore culturally emasculated, and so when she fails to reinstate their manhood they can’t stand her.
            Brett is not totally to blame for this, she isn’t toying with people, it is just that they constantly expect her to show them how to live in this new world when she doesn’t really know herself. She’s not perfect, and they’re all a pretty dysfunctional bunch, but I don’t believe she can be labeled exploitative; people simply tend to see her for something other than herself. Even Jake does this, if were to simply content himself with a friendship with her instead of constantly seeing her as a reminder of  his lost masculinity then he would be happy with the relationship as opposed to the dissatisfaction he feels.