.

             As Carol Smith points out, however, ". . . analyzing Brett in terms of bitch-goddess or Terrible Mother does not do justice to her" (55). Smith"s quotation is well-founded. Hemingway has done much more with the character of Brett than it may seem. "She is a good woman the world has broken . . . a complex woman who has endured much" (55). These views are solidly-based as well. The two marriages that Brett entered into were loveless; the first with a man who died of dysentery during the war, and the second with a British Naval officer who returned from war suffering from a rather intense case of shock. Her love life is described by Theodore Bardacke as a " . . . casualty of war in itself, has decayed into alcoholism and a series of causal sex relations" (12). These events have not only marred Brett, but they have also "desexed" her. Brett"s ". . . clothes, her mannish felt hat and bobbed hair, all are indications of her loss of true sexuality" (13). Her traumatic experiences with love and war, ". . . drive her from her bar to bar, from man to man, city to city. None of it is any good: her polygamy, with or without benefit of justices of the peace, leads only to more of the same. . . Brett is not 'good" for the men she knows" (Smith 54). Perhaps the most frustrating relationship for Brett is the one involving Jake. Both of these characters, ". . . struggle with their desire to be with each and [more importantly] the realization that they can never be lovers" (55). Brett expresses her feeling of torment best when she states, "Don"t touch me.I can"t stand it.I simply turn all to jelly when you touch me" (Hemingway, 33-34). All these circumstances have profoundly affected Brett; all of these occurrences as well as the changes that they caused, were out of Brett"s control and can be used as evidence for the argument that Brett is a woman who has been, ".