nurse when he was wounded in the war while in Italy. Agnes H. von Kurowsky inflicted a massive blow to Hemingways heart when she wrote him once he arrived in the states to inform him that she had fallen in love with someone else. Hemingway was enraged and actually became physically ill over the end of the relationship. In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingways desire for the real relationship to have a different ending is revealed with Catherines constant pleading, asking Frederick, not to go away. Hemingway however, took up a desire for revenge, and it was his main motivation in writing the book. Later, he worked these feeling out in several short stories as well as in the characters of Catherine Barkley whom he kills off (Gladstein 57). Catherine also represents a mothering figure, frequently visited in Hemingways novels. Hemingways indestructible women characters, then, are projections of his responses to the three main women in his life during the years when his understanding of the female sex was being formed they have an inner strength, an ability to cope with whatever life dishes out for them. As these three women mothered Ernest, so his indestructible women characters often mother their Villareal 4men they represent the various characteristics, positive and negative, of the Great Mother, an aspect of the archetypical feminine (Gladstein 58).In essence, Hemingways women represent the indestructible, and sometimes destructive, women in his life who have shaped his overall perception of women as a whole. Juana is a representative of Steinbeck's theme of women's strength and endurance. Juana is a constant. She is not docile or greedy. These qualities are stressed through the imagery that depicts Juana as the Great Mother, always on guard to protect her own. [Juanas] values never change. She is, from beginning to end, devoted to the preservation of her loved ones, man and child (Gladstein 86). Clearly, if Steinbeck had mere...
