Chapter I introduces us to Robert Cohn, who will serve as a foil to the novel’s narrator and protagonist, Jake Barnes. Cohn is descended from two prominent New York Jewish families. He encountered anti-Semitism in college, at Princeton, and learned to box as a response to it. Soon after college, Cohn married a wealthy woman with whom he had three children, but his wife left him for a painter. Cohn founded a journal and then became involved with a jealous and controlling woman named Frances who was determined to marry him. He traveled with her to Europe, settling in Paris after a year. They have stayed for two years. Financially supported by his mother, Cohn wrote a novel that was not well-received by critics.
