Martha Ellis Gellhorn:
(St. Louis, Missouri, 8 November 1908 — London, 16 February 1998).
American writer who became the most important female war correspondent of the twentieth century. She was active from the late 1930s to the 1980s and was Ernest Hemingway’s third wife.
In November, you begin to know how long the winter will be.
The line works on two levels:
– Literal:
By November, the cold, darkness and shortening days make the approaching winter feel real; one begins to sense how difficult and seemingly endless it will be.
– Figurative:
The first signs of suffering reveal the probable duration and severity of an ordeal. In the novel’s wartime context, “winter” suggests not only weather but also ‘war, exhaustion, fear and prolonged hardship’.
“Know how long” is therefore psychological rather than calendrical:
November tells you ‘how long the winter will feel’, not its exact duration.
It is a literary observation, not a traditional weather proverb. Editions sometimes print the sentence without the comma after “November.”
📖 Author and origin:
The sentence is by Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998),
the American novelist, journalist and war correspondent.
> “In November you begin to know how long the winter will be.”
It is the opening sentence of her 1948 novel “Point of No Return”, also published under the title “The Wine of Astonishment”. The novel concerns American soldiers in Europe during the final stages of the Second World War and the liberation of a concentration camp.
