55 pages • 1-hour read
The Paris Wife
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Themes
The Competing Demands of Love and Artistic Ambition
In The Paris Wife, the demands of romantic love clash with the solitary and consuming nature of artistic ambition, questioning whether a true partnership can survive when one person’s creative genius becomes the relationship’s central focus. The novel traces the evolution of Hadley and Ernest’s relationship and marriage, ultimately suggesting that the ideal of a partnership focused solely on the needs of one person leads to an inevitable erosion of both selfhood and intimacy.
Initially, Hadley’s role as Ernest’s primary reader and supporter is depicted as the very foundation of his creative life, especially as they meet when he is just beginning his fiction writing career. When he first shares a sketch with her in Chicago, he confesses, “Sometimes I think all I really need is one person telling me that I’m not knocking my fool head against the bricks” (14). Her validation provides the confidence he needs to pursue his literary goals, and in their early years in Paris, her domestic support creates the space for him to work. Hadley finds purpose in enabling his talent, but this supportive role quickly fosters isolation and causes her to wonder who she is outside of a writer's wife. Ernest’s need for solitude leads him to rent a separate room to write, a physical manifestation of the emotional distance that his all-consuming ambition creates. Hadley’s purpose becomes confined to the home while his expands into the world of cafés, intellectual circles, and new experiences that fuel his fiction.
As Ernest’s ambition intensifies, the partnership further deteriorates. He begins to seek intellectual camaraderie from figures like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, whose artistic insights Hadley cannot provide. During their visits, Hadley is relegated to the “wives’ corner” with Alice B. Toklas, cementing her position outside the sacred sphere of Ernest’s creative life. She reflects, “I loved to be around interesting and creative people […] but for the time being I was removed to the corner” (87). His artistic development increasingly requires experiences that exclude her, from his journalistic assignments to the bullfights in Spain that would become the basis for his first major novel. This growing chasm culminates in the catastrophic loss of his manuscripts. Hadley, in a misguided attempt to help, packs all his work, including carbons, into a valise that is subsequently stolen. This event symbolizes the ultimate, tragic collision between her loving support and the inviolable sanctity of his work, illustrating how Hadley’s attempts to play a more active role in Ernest’s writing result in devastating consequences. McLain portrays this conflict not as a simple choice between love and art but as the result of an uneven dynamic, in which their marriage is wholly focused on the needs of one while ignoring the needs of the other.
Defining the Self in a Man’s World
The Paris Wife traces Hadley Richardson’s difficult journey of self-discovery as she moves from a state of sheltered dependency to an identity defined by her famous husband, and finally to a woman forced to reclaim her own sense of self. The novel examines the struggle for women of the era to forge an identity outside of their relationships with men, particularly when confronted with overwhelming ambition and the rise of the “modern” woman, through Hadley’s evolution from dependence to self-reliance.
Before meeting Ernest, Hadley’s identity is shaped by family tragedy and a sense of stagnation. Living like a “spinster” in her sister’s house, she feels her life is stalled. Her connection with Ernest offers a vital escape, a “powerful transfusion of good cheer” that gives her a new sense of purpose (3). Early in their relationship, in Chicago and early Paris, her identity merges with his; she becomes the supportive wife to a burgeoning genius, a role that initially makes her feel alive and essential. She embraces the idea of being the quiet force behind his success, finding a measure of fulfillment in enabling his ambition. Her selfhood is not her own, but a reflection of his, a source of stability and meaning after years of feeling adrift and undefined by anything but loss.
This borrowed identity proves fragile as Hadley confronts the “modern” women of Paris. She feels like a “Victorian holdout” (7) next to the stylish and self-assured flappers she encounters, a feeling that intensifies in the company of women like Kitty Cannell and Pauline Pfeiffer. These women are chic, independent, and intellectually engaged with the artistic scene in a way that highlights Hadley’s more traditional values and growing insecurities. She reflects, “It was shockingly unmodern—and likely naïve, too—but I did believe any sacrifices and difficulties in our life were worth it for Ernest’s career” (184). Her attitude, when juxtaposed with the women in her sphere, underscores her reliance on Ernest for her sense of purpose and exposes her fear that she is not intellectually stimulating enough to keep him. Pauline’s arrival, in particular, threatens both Hadley’s marriage and her identity as Ernest’s wife. The erosion of their relationship forces Hadley to confront the limitations of a selfhood built entirely on another person. Their painful separation becomes the necessary catalyst for her to finally learn to live for herself and her son, Bumby, forging an identity that is wholly her own. Through Hadley’s evolution, in which she begins to center herself and her needs, McLain suggests that true self-definition for women of her generation often required a painful severing from the very relationships that once seemed to give their lives meaning.
The Gradual Erosion of Trust and Intimacy
The Paris Wife depicts betrayal not as a single, dramatic event but as the gradual erosion of trust and intimacy within a marriage. Paula McLain illustrates how even the most seemingly unbreakable union can be dismantled by unspoken resentments, emotional withdrawal, and the insidious introduction of a third party into a once-sacred partnership. By detailing the slow dissolution of Ernest and Hadley’s bond, the novel suggests that the deepest betrayals are those that happen by degrees.
In their early years in Paris, Hadley and Ernest’s marriage is portrayed as a bastion of strength and intimacy. The couple is poor but deeply connected, believing themselves “safe in the marriage [they] had built” (xvii). Their bond is so admired that their friend Don Stewart declares it “holy,” a testament to its perceived purity and resilience in a world where few believed in marriage’s permanence. Hadley’s unwavering loyalty and Ernest’s dependence on her create a foundation that appears solid, forged through shared struggles and triumphs that seem to render their intimacy impenetrable. This initial portrait of a sacred union serves to heighten the tragedy of its eventual decay.
The slow poisoning of this bond begins before the introduction of Pauline Pfeiffer, but her relationship with the Hemingways accelerates their marriage’s demise. She enters their lives first as Hadley’s friend but quickly infiltrates their home and their relationship. The true betrayal is not the eventual physical affair but the emotional infidelity that precedes it. Ernest’s connection with Pauline is built on intellectual camaraderie and shared ambition, conversations from which Hadley is excluded. This delineation between the two women’s roles in Ernest’s life creates significant cracks in the connection between Hadley and Ernest, exacerbating her feeling of being on the outside of his artistic life and leaving Hadley feeling isolated long before she has a concrete reason to be suspicious. The complete breakdown of their relationship reaches its peak with the “three-person arrangement” Ernest orchestrates in Antibes, where Hadley is forced to socialize with and accommodate his mistress. This arrangement normalizes the betrayal, shocking their friends; as one comments, “I don’t mind saying I thought you two were indestructible” (292). By the time the physical affair is undeniable, the core of their intimacy has already been hollowed out, leading Ernest to respond, “Let’s cut the postmortem” (292). With her evolving portrayal of their disintegrating marriage, McLain thus argues that the most devastating betrayals are not sudden ruptures but quiet, creeping invasions that slowly corrode a relationship from within, leaving it fragile and ultimately indefensible.
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