Martha Gellhorn- A Woman of Substance
Introduction
Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American war correspondent, novelist, travel writer, and journalist. She was the third wife of Ernest Hemingway who was a Nobel prize winner. Martha Gellhorn is considered a stalwart in the field of journalism and Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism which was established in 1999 is named after her.
Her writing career spanned for more than six decades and she always raised her voice to fight the battles on behalf of the downtrodden and poor. She strongly believed in her rights and did not consider women as secondary citizens. Since she was married to Ernest Hemingway and was referred to most of the articles printed those days as his wife, she protested always to receive her due respect. She had vehemently opposed to her status-quo and asked the interviewer ''Why should I be a footnote to somebody else's life?''
In the same interview, Ms. Gellhorn mentioned that she had written two novels before meeting her then-husband Hemingway. It is also perceived that Hemingway tried to erase her contributions as a war correspondent and wanted the world to remember her as his spouse, and not an independent, forward-thinking woman.
Ms. Gellhorn was the only woman to land at Normandy on D-Day on June 6, 1944, and she was one of the first journalists to report from the Dachau concentration camp in Munich, Southern Germany. On April 29, 1945, it was liberated by US troops where more than 40 thousand war prisoners were killed.
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Childhood & Early Life
· Martha Gellhorn was born on November 8, 1908, in St. Louis, Missouri, USA to Edna Fischel Gellhorn and George Gellhorn. Her mother was a suffragist, and in her formative years, Martha Gellhorn participated in rallies for the right of women to vote in elections. Her feminist streaks and her thought process of equality for women in every field pretty much comes from her early years and family values. Her father and maternal grandfather were Jewish, and hence she had a keen interest in the situation of Jews who were tortured in the concentration camps.
· Her father George Gellhorn was a German by birth and gynecologist by profession. Her siblings Walter Gellhorn became a noted law professor at Columbia University and Alfred Gellhorn became an oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
· Martha Gellhorn graduated from John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri in 1926. Later she dropped out of Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia without acquiring her degree.
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Career
· Martha Gellhorn chose her career as a journalist and ‘The New Republic’ decided to publish her articles in their magazine and give her a break in her career.
· In 1930, she went to France as she wanted to become a foreign correspondent. First, she worked at the United Press bureau in Paris, and later wrote for newspapers in Paris and St. Louis, Missouri. She also wrote articles covering various aspects of fashion for the celebrated magazine ‘Vogue.’
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· Martha Gellhorn was a good friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and used to help her to the write correspondence and the first lady’s “My Day” column in 'Women’s Home Companion.' The President Franklin D. Roosevelt had created Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), and Gellhorn was hired as a field investigator to cover the stories of the Great Depression. She travelled across the US and along with Dorothea Lange, a photographer, wrote about the plight of the poor people in the nation. Gellhorn also wrote a compilation of short stories 'The Trouble I've Seen' and published it in 1936 based on the real-life situation of the citizens of the United States during the Great Depression.
· In the 1960s and 70s Gellhorn worked for the 'Atlantic Monthly' and reported about the Vietnam war. She wrote about the topics in which women in that era normally did not show any interest. She covered the civil wars in Central America, Arab-Israel conflicts, U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, and many such events.
Major Works
In 1995 she travelled to Brazil and covered the poverty which had engulfed the country. Her articles were published in the literary journal ‘Granta.’ This was her last piece of work as her failing eyesight did not allow her to work after that.
During her career spanning over 60 years, she published numerous books which included- 'The Face of War' published in1959, 'The Lowest Trees Have Tops' published in 1967, 'Travels with Myself and Another published in 1978 and 'The View from the Ground published in 1988.
Awards & Achievements
There were awards named after her, however, she did not receive any significant award in her life.
Personal Life & Legacy
Between 1930 and 1934, Gellhorn was involved in a romantic affair with the French economist Bertrand de Jouvenel. The affair did not reach to the altar because Jouvenel's wife did not give consent to a divorce.
After a whirlwind romance for four years between 1936 and 1940, Gellhorn tied the knot with celebrated journalist Ernest Hemingway. She was Hemingway's third wife and bought the 19th-century estate Finca Vigía (Watchtower Farm) in Havana, Cuba. She renovated it extensively and now 'The Finca' has become a museum (Museo Hemingway Finca Vigía). Every year more than 100,000 visitors come to visit the museum.
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Gellhorn gave more importance to her career than being a bedpartner to Hemingway and decided to divorce him in 1945. Gellhorn had an affair with U.S. paratrooper Major General James M. Gavin before divorcing Hemingway. She was also associated with Laurance Rockefeller, an American businessman in 1945, and with journalist William Walton in 1947.
She also had a brief affair with Doctor David Gurewitsch in 1950 before tying the knot for the second time in 1954 with the former managing editor of Time Magazine, T. S. Matthews. The marriage lasted for about a decade till 1963 when they parted their ways.
By that time, she already had an adopted son Sandro. She adopted him in 1949 from an Italian orphanage and tried to become a devoted mother. Later, her travel schedules forced her to send her son (rechristened as George Alexander Gellhorn) to boarding schools.
On October 5, 2007, the United States Postal Service issued first-class rate postage stamps to honor Martha Gellhorn along with four other 20th-century journalists. Nicole Kidman played the role of Martha Gellhorn in the movie 'Hemingway & Gellhorn' which was released in 2012.
The last section of the biography
Cause of Death: Suicide at the age of 89
Personality: Aggressive and revolutionary
Character Traits: Liberated, feminist, travel-freak
Sources-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Gellhorn
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/a-memorial-for-the-remarkable-martha-gellhorn
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/17/arts/martha-gellhorn-daring-writer-dies-at-89.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway
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