Ernestine Hemingway
Want to know where Hemingway’s hunting, boxing, and bullfighting machismo came from? Well, his mother was hugely domineering. When Ernest was born, Grace had desperately wanted another girl, and for at least the first five years of his life, she raised him and his older sister Marcelline as twins.
Grace would dress them in identical pink, flowery dresses and bonnets and always refer to her son as “Ernestine.” She even held his sister back from school for a couple of years so they could attend the same grade. Now you know, it makes a lot of sense why Hemingway “rebelled against that identity” and hunted, fought, womanized, and boozed for the rest of his days.
Advertisement
