The Hemingway Review

HEMINGWAY, TRIBAL LAW, AND THE IDENTITY OF THE WIDOW IN TRUE AT FIRST LIGHT CARL EBY University ofSouth Carolina Beaufort IN THE BRIEF TIME SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF True at FlTSt Light, the identity of the Widow has confused more than a few readers. Both the published text and the Cast ofCharacters at the back ofthe book tell us that she is Debba's mother (35; 316). Yet, for a number ofreasons, this simply does not make sense. Close attention to the text, to Kamba culture, and to the manuscript of Hemingway's posthumous memoir all suggest that the Widow was not Debba's mother. Unraveling the Widow's identity, moreover, can serve as a measure ofjust how seriously Hemingway tried to live within the bounds ofKamba tribal lawduring his playful courtship ofDebba. Many readers have wondered how Debba can have both a widow for a mother and a living father, Ernest's Kamba "father-in-law." Of course, one might suppose that the Widow has been widowed in a second marriage or that within Kamba kinship patterns Debba's "father" could be someone other than the husband of her mother—perhaps a paternal uncle. Divorce and remarriage are possible in Kamba society, and Hemingway does raise some questions about the status of Debba's father: "None of us Kamba regarded him as the father of his daughter but since he was technically such by tribal law and custom, I was bound to respect him" (TAFL 126). Under Kamba customary law, a man can, indeed, be the "father" of a child without being the child's biological father or even the current husband of the child's mother. For instance, the protector ofa widow (usually a brother of the deceased husband) can sleep with the widow under his protection , but any children resulting from this union "are treated as being the ??? HLMiNGWAY RLVi[W. vol. 21. no. 2. STRING 2002. Copyright © 2002 The Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Published by the University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho. CARL EBY · 147 children of the dead man and bear his name." These children refer to their biological father as "mwenda asa," or "my paternal uncle" (Penwill 23).' This, however, does little to explain the presence of Debba's living father, so it would seem the Widow could be both Debba's mother and a widow only if she were widowed by a second marriage. Kamba customary law, moreover, demands a rigid formality between sons-in-law and mothers-in-law that we just don't find in the relationship between Hemingway and the Widow—even though Hemingway tried to take Kamba law quite seriously and insists on just such formality with his Kamba father-in-law.2 This is what the Informer invokes when he notes that in any courtship of Debba Ernest must "show a certain politeness and formality to her father and her mother" (TAFL 36). Certainly a mother-inlaw would never be offered as an acceptable sexual substitute for her affianced daughter, as the Widow is offered to Hemingway after Keiti breaks up his post-leopard-hunt bed-breaking party with Debba. Looking at the dejected Ernest, Msembi offers, "Our Bwana can keep the Widow since she has a son and he protects her officially," and to this Keiti and Mwindi nod their assent (TAFL 265). In fact, Hemingway would never have flirted with being the Widow's protector in the first place ifshe were the mother of his "fiancée," because such a relationship would have sanctioned sexual unions with both his mother-in-law and her daughter. True, Hemingway claims, "Some time before I had paid the tribal price to sleep in the bed of my mother-in-law which is a rough thing to do" (TAFI 269)—but this practice, in spite of its titillating tide, is about establishing one's social status and involves no sexual contact between a man and his mother-in-law. As Penwill explains, under Kamba customary law, The portion of the hut that is the sleeping place of a man's mother-in-law—her "wii"—is...firmly forbidden to him, and if he enters it he must pay her a bull...