Brett Ashley, the heroine of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, along with Catherine Barkeley and Margot Macomber, has been the most maltreated and villified literary figure as a "bitch." However, a feminist reading enables us to read and excavate a different aspect of Brett Ashley, who is portrayed more than simply a femme fatale (fatal woman) or vagina dentata (vagina with teeth). In fact, she can be seen as a benevolent woman who takes care of Robert Cohn or Mike Campbell, and loves the castrated Jake Barnes, while refusing Count Mippipopolous' offer of great money for her sexual privilege. In particular, the fact that she refuses Pedro Romero, an embodiment of powerful patriarch, can be interpreted that she actually represents a "new woman" in the 1920s. The text which has been considered one of the most masculine and patriarchal texts, is heavily loaded with its implication and allusion of oral pleasure between Jake and Brett and homosexuality between Jake and Bill Gorton, the practices of which could not be described explicitly in the 1920s. It succeeds, however, to contain such issues as oral sexuality and homosexuality by adopting the style of stoicism -- the author's famous technique of iceberg, or "saying less telling more," and thus escapes censorship to be published. The feminist reading which regards Brett as a new woman or a benevolent woman prompts us to read the whole Hemingway oeuvre in a subversive way. In short, Hemingway has proven not to be such a writer who has been believed notoriously for his admiration of a strong man and negative portrayal of a woman.
