The Submerged History and Altered Speech of Brett Ashley: Rereading a Misread Woman

Abstract: During the final production stage of The Sun Also Rises , Scribner's added over 90 exclamation points to the speech acts of Hemingway's characters, a significant percentage of which were assigned to Brett Ashley. This mechanical change had the rhetorical effect of causing the published Brett to seem more melodramatic and insincere than she does in the typescript. Restoring Hemingway's original punctuation to Brett's speech acts and recovering parts of her history that have been obscured—such as her experiences during World War I and a global pandemic—enables us to understand why she includes herself in the phrase "one of us" to refer to those who have faced and survived shattering events and why caregiving is a central component of her relationships with men. In this reading, Brett emerges as more complex and sympathetic than she has in much previous scholarship.