Not an Eden

Caricatures of domesticity and the realities of living with literary giants are beautifully captured in Paula MacLain’s bestseller, The Paris Wife

Never judge a book by its cover, they say. Which is precisely what I went on to do with The Paris Wife. The cover shows a stylish young woman, sitting at a cafe in a kind of 1950s setting, smiling as she scribbles into a tiny notebook. I was enchanted; this would be the story of a woman who was in charge of her life, chasing a creative or passionate pursuit beyond the calls of domesticity that must have been a given in that era. This would be exciting, I thought, as I turned the book over.

The blurb turned out to be even more of a lure. The book was a fictionalised account of author Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage (he would eventually take that tally up to four, with barely a pause between each). Jazz Age Paris, writers, artists, alcohol, gossip, infidelity…the blurb promised a lot. And well, it turned out to be quite the literary equivalent of clickbait.

Don’t get me wrong, author Paula McLain has a great writing style and she wields historical fiction with ease. The book is heavy on name dropping and engages the most luscious artistic and literary settings. It has a tempestuous yet tender Ernest doing his best to be dutiful to his wife and child, but also being caught up in the splendour of being himself and the heady whirlwind of success and artistic company.

All of this makes for great reading, when we have literary names like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound as actual characters in the book. It leads to a wonderful read, especially if you are a bibliophile. But the real problem lies with the premise of the book, which is that it is meant to be the story of Hadley Richardson, whom Ernest married in 1927. Hadley is nothing like the image of the elegant, self-possessed woman on the cover.

In her own words, she is sturdy and stoic, not just in appearance (which one can overlook), but in character. She is one who has resigned herself to being a dull spinster before she meets Ernest. Although she has an interest in the piano, her life and any passion she could have pursued, pales next to Ernest’s bigger purpose, so to speak. Her days are a lesson in monotony, relieved only by her thoughts about Ernest, or the evenings with him, and later, with her baby.

The book was a New York Times bestseller, and I’ll recommend it if you like historical fiction. You can lose yourself in the Gay Paree of yore, and catch an intimate look into the lives of some of the most wonderful writers of the time. Of course, it is a little depressing to discover that they can be as boorish and selfish as the rest of us, while parading off some of their faults as whimsical artistic eccentricities. 

It is rather sad, though, that in a book about her, Hadley turns into the pale watercolour next to a display of vibrant Van Goghs and Gauguins. A sad metaphor for the life of someone who lived in the shadow of literary giants.