Brett Ashley

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Brett, Lady Ashley is a fictional character in Ernest Hemingway's first influential novel, The Sun Also Rises. She is usually simply called Brett Ashley in the novel, though that would be technically incorrect. Her husband at the time the events take place (who is not a character in the book; they are estranged) is presumably a British peer or knight, which gives her her title. A highly independent woman, she pursues many relationships and affairs with different men and has been married and divorced more than once. At the time of the events in the book she is married to one man and engaged to another, and she also shares a particular love with yet another, Jake Barnes, but the two are never able to have a sexual relationship due to his impotence, produced by wounds he received in World War I.