MovieChat Forums > The Sun Also Rises (1957) Discussion > Lady Brett

Lady Brett

posted 17 years ago by legadillo
12 replies | jump to latest

I saw this for the first time just last night. The movie makes it look like Lady Brett would marry Jake in a hot minute, but that he's too noble to saddle her with his problem. Now that just doesn't work. I mean, if Jake is trying not to be a burden, he should marry Brett and give everybody else a rest.

The synopsis here on IMDB, however, makes it sound like Brett won't marry Jake, and that's different. I didn't read the book, not being a Hemingway fan (for all the reasons people who aren't aren't), so I don't know which way he intended it. Can somebody clue me in?

[–] BleedingFetus 17 years ago

I did this book for A Level Literature in School.

Jake and Brett do not marry because Jake is impotent and Brett is essentially, a whore.

I haven't seen the movie yet, sadly.

Iin the book, Brett is a VERY promiscuous woman. She is supposedly in love with Jake. However, she is engaged to a man named Mike Campbell. While the fiancé is away, she has affairs with a man named Robert Cohn and then The Count.

She leaves everyone else for some bullfighter who too she leaves in the end and makes Jake come rescue her. Then, she ends up marrying Mike.

She can never be with Jake because she loves sex too much and he can't have sex.

[–] legadillo 17 years ago

Well, that makes more sense. The movie makes it look like she's throwing herself away because she can't have Jake, whom she'd be happy to marry even though there would be no sex, but that he's too noble to allow her to do it.

[–] strokefan7 16 years ago

I'm sorry... but that was a terrible synopsis/character analysis...just... yeah...

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Shearer_Goddard_Russell 16 years ago

<<I'm sorry... but that was a terrible synopsis/character analysis...just... yeah...>>

mfan is right. If you have read the book, that description is spot-on.

"Just close your eyes...but keep your mind wide open."

[–] Chicago_Jake 15 years ago

My opinion, both the book and the movie made it seem like BOTH Jake and Brett knew that marriage between them would never work. But it would have been pretty to think so.....

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[–] MycroftHolmes 14 years ago

Exactly.

What we have here is failure to communicate!

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] VanTammen 11 years ago

the thing I would change about your definition of the charecters & their relation, is that in a way I've always felt that Brett is promiscuous because she can't have Jake, it's sort of a way of punishing him for becoming impotent during the war.

[–] kavan30013 10 years ago

Brett's promiscuousness though pre-dates Jake. In the novel there are only a few lines about Brett's past pre-Jake, but Jake refers to her true love dying during the war. And that finding out her husband was dead caused her to go to pieces.

My sense is her husband's death and her work nursing during the war shattered her and that she was never going to whole again. She was less broken with Jake but only for short times.

And in the book I thought Jake would have married her in a hot minute even knowing everything up until the bullfighter but that was such a mess it changed his view of her.

[–] Echo_in_big_sky 12 years ago

It was very shortsighted of both of them. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Always the officiant, FINALLY the bride. http://www.withthiskissitheewed.com

[–] sionxxii 8 years ago

I saw this last night and swore that Lady Brett was Rita Hayworth.