"Brett Couldn't Hold Him": Lady Ashley, Pedro Romero, and the Madrid Sequence of The Sun Also Rises

This essay challenges consensus that Lady Brett Ashley ends the affair with Pedro Romero by sending the bullfighter away after several days with him in a Madrid hotel. In fact, Romero leaves Brett. Through Jake Barnes's words and actions, as well as the inconsistencies of Brett's story, her desperate need for rescue, her acute depression, her lack of self-control, her self-contempt—especially in her references to her fiancé Mike Campbell—and finally her self-pity, Hemingway shows that Brett could not hold on to Romero's affection in Madrid any more than she could physically hold Romero down in Pamplona.