The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber himself, who hold the opposite view. Hemingway scholar Carlos Baker calls Margot Macomber "easily the most unscrupulous of Hemingway's fictional females"; a woman "who is really and literally deadly" and who "covets her husband's money but values even more her power over him." Literary critic and early mentor to Hemingway Edmund Wilson observed bluntly, “The men in …these African stories are married to American bitches of the most soul-destroying sort.” Other authors who hold similar views regarding Margot include Philip Young, Leslie A. Fiedler and Frank O'Connor (see below). A related point that has been widely debated is whether Hemingway
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber . . .” "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" was first published in the September 1936 issue of "Cosmopolitan" and later published in "The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories" (1938). The essence of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is courage. Wilson has courage but Macomber, who is afraid of lions, has none. When the cowardly husband, whose wife made her way from Wilson's tent hours before, finds the courage to face the charging buffalo, he forges the identity he wants: the courage to face both wild animals and his wife. Tragically, Macomber's happiness is measured