Fragile Masculinity and Unspoken Trauma in the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway and Katherine Mansfield

Abstract

The aftermath of the First World War precipitated a profound crisis in traditional gender paradigms across the Western world. Modernist literature captured this crisis by portraying the fracturing of Edwardian ideals of masculinity. While critics often examine Ernest Hemingway for his depictions of hyper-masculinity and Katherine Mansfield for her pioneering explorations of female interiority, this paper addresses a significant gap in modernist scholarship by comparing how both authors use structural silence to depict male fragility. This paper argues that both authors utilize structural omission and subtext to dismantle the traditional masculine ideal, portraying masculinity as a brittle, performative shield against unspoken trauma. By examining Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” and “Big Two-Hearted River” alongside Mansfield’s “The Fly” and “The Stranger,” this study reveals a shared methodology of omission. Hemingway constructs masculine silence as an internal evasion of trauma, while Mansfield employs an external critical gaze to expose the emotional inadequacy of male patriarchal figures. This comparative reading bridges the gendered divide in modernist criticism, showing that the architecture of silence was a universal modernist tool for critiquing the performance of masculinity in the wake of unspeakable loss.