The Trouble I've Seen
The next book, two years later, and the one that made her reputation.
Read our take
What Mad Pursuit
Her first novel, at twenty-five, and the one she spent the rest of her life leaving out.
- 1934
About Martha Gellhorn
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThree young women leave college and go looking for work, meaning, and sex, and mostly find disappointment; one of them contracts a venereal disease. Four publishers turned it down as too bold for a young woman before Frederick A. Stokes took it in 1934. Reviewers who noticed it were unkind, it was never reprinted, and Gellhorn afterwards tended to omit it from lists of her own books. It is included here because it is the first thing she published as a novelist and because her later reticence about it is part of the record.
The story, in more detail
Three young women leave a women's college in the early thirties and go looking for the life they have been told is waiting. Charis leaves after her friend Sue is expelled for spending a night at a neighbouring men's college — the man is not punished — and Judith follows her out. What the three of them find is work that does not pay, men who do not stay, and a decade with no particular use for them.
Gellhorn was twenty-five and writing directly against The Sun Also Rises and the imitators it had produced. The lost generation in this novel is not glamorous, the expatriate poet is a disaster rather than a figure, and the people who pay for the freedom are the women. She spent the rest of her life leaving the book off her bibliography.
The full plot
Sue's expulsion is the book's opening argument: she is sent down for a night the man walks away from. Charis and Judith leave with her, and the three go into the thirties knowing what the terms are.
Sue's life in New York is short and reckless. She takes up with Ian Bradmore, an expatriate poet, then marries a man called Ross. Judith drifts into an affair with Ross, understanding that he will never marry her; it ends when he returns to Europe. Charis works for a while as a reporter in Pennsylvania, then goes to Paris, where she loses her virginity to a Romanian law student named Fene and contracts syphilis.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
Sue leaves her husband for an evening with Ian, and Ian kills her and then himself. Charis, diagnosed, cannot marry Michael, the man she loves; he and Judith leave together and appear headed for the settled future the novel has withheld from everyone else. The last movement stays with Charis, who does not collapse. She goes upstairs, first hurriedly and then, in the book's phrase, with due dignity, to face the illness alone. Nothing is cured and no one is reconciled, and the closing note is nearer resolve than despair.
Themes and analysis
Charis and Judith discuss Ian
In the dialogue reproduced by H. L. Salmon, Judith answers a question about Ian by placing him within the Lost Generation. Charis responds by recognizing a familiar kind of book. This shift makes literary identity something the women can examine rather than simply admire. Her smile and dismissive description puncture the prestige attached to the label: suffering does not automatically make its bearer interesting or authoritative. The exchange gives the women the power to judge the stories through which a man presents himself.
The second flight
The ending quoted by Salmon gives Charis two different ways of climbing the stairs: first an eager rush, then a deliberately composed ascent. The change in pace lets an ordinary movement carry the final emphasis. Charis is still moving forward, but she also chooses how to carry herself. Read closely, this is a smaller promise than a guaranteed happy ending. The sentence supplies neither a cure nor a new relationship; its resolution lies in a bodily adjustment that makes self-command visible without removing uncertainty.
Why we recommend it
The book before the reporting
Written before Spain, before the dispatches, before the voice everyone recognises. It shows what she sounded like without it.
Rejected as too bold
Four publishers passed on the manuscript for its frankness about sex. That is a fact about 1934 publishing as much as about the book.
A record she preferred to drop
Writers editing their own past is an ordinary thing that rarely leaves this clear a trace.
What this book explores
Timeline
1931–1933
Traveling across Europe in her early twenties, Gellhorn pours the pacifist-youth movement and her own restlessness into the manuscript, written against The Sun Also Rises and its imitators.
1934
After four publishers turn it down as too bold for a young woman, Frederick A. Stokes publishes her debut in New York to harsh reviews; she spends the rest of her life leaving it off her bibliography, and it is never reprinted.
November 1934
Kirkus publishes a dismissive contemporary review, outlining the three women’s contrasting experiences.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Frederick A. Stokes Company
- 1934
Reader reviews
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What Mad Pursuit: frequently asked questions
Who wrote What Mad Pursuit?
Martha Gellhorn. It was her first novel, published in 1934.
What is What Mad Pursuit about?
Three young women leave college and go looking for work, meaning, and sex, and mostly find disappointment — one of them contracts a venereal disease.
Was What Mad Pursuit controversial?
Yes. Four publishers turned it down as too bold for a young woman before Frederick A. Stokes took it in 1934.
Is it autobiographical?
It draws on the restlessness and disappointments of Gellhorn's own early twenties.
Where does it sit in her career?
It is her first book — before the Depression reporting and the wars that made her name.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document What Mad Pursuit, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1What Mad Pursuit
NovelMartha Gellhorn, 1934Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Martha Gellhorn: A Life
BiographyCaroline Moorehead, 2003Used forUsed to verify What Mad Pursuit's bibliographic context and its place within Martha Gellhorn's published work.
3Martha Gellhorn — War Correspondent and Writer | Blue Plaques
WebsiteEnglish HeritageUsed forUsed for independent archival, institutional, or historical context surrounding Martha Gellhorn and What Mad Pursuit.
4Ernest Hemingway Collection — Martha Gellhorn (Hemingway) | EH@JFK, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
WebsiteJohn F. Kennedy Presidential Library and MuseumUsed forUsed to cross-check chronology, publication history, and the circumstances in which What Mad Pursuit appeared.
5Martha Gellhorn | Historic Missourians
WebsiteThe State Historical Society of MissouriUsed forUsed for an additional scholarly or biographical perspective on What Mad Pursuit and Martha Gellhorn's wider career.
6Kirkus — contemporary review
WebsiteUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the What Mad Pursuit page.
7Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Relationship — MA thesis
WebsiteUniversity of North Texas, 2003Used forContains the primary passages used in the two scene readings; not a complete reading of the novel.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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