Hills Like White Elephants

Love Yours

Throughout the late American Literature era, we’ve come across the organizations of realism that compliments the ease into modernism and with the leftover of post modernism giving us a tree with branches of discovering a search of human perspective and outbreak from that perspective discovery. Such discovery of human nature has been evaluated through both male and female but within this era; male dominance has been a leading role with the scraps of feminism. We come to consensus that as bold male dominance is, Ernest Hemingway comes to approach with the feminism flavor and Freudian usage as a male outbreak through his short story; Hills Like White Elephants, that reflects the depths of pure feminism through Charlotte Gilman’s The

Yellow Wall-Paper.
The era of feminism literature has been written by amazing female writers such as Gilman. But Ernest Hemingway gives us the framework of feminism through Hills Like White Elephants as a male writer which is unexpected mainly because of feminism revolving around male dominance. Hills Like White Elephants is a short story that takes place at a train station bar with an American male and a female that doesn’t hold a description of her ethnicity.

The story takes its readers as an “eavesdropper” towards this couple that sits and drink with the discussion of life and being born. But it’s the little things in Hemingway’s story that captures the moments and meanings of life and decision. The beer, the hills, the white elephant etc. All are messages and meaning to what this story is speaking, with the perception of feminism. I specifically connect this to feminism because the story in general revolves a woman that’s named “Jig” that is in a moment in her life where she’s pregnant from the man she loves but he fails to proceed with the baby being born. According to the Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory by Penguin, part of feminist criticism states, “it challenges traditional and accepted male ideas about the nature of women and about how women feel, act and think, or are supposed to feel, act and think, and how in general they respond to life and living.” (pg. 315). Hemingway creates this strong vibe of challenge towards Jig from her male companion that puts her in a place of a motherhood lifestyle that wants to be shed from her companion. His

use of dialogue through characterization becomes the model of his addressing of feminism. Our male figure that’s not named, lives in a world of suggestive thought and decision towards Jig which feminist perspective generally revolves around. In the beginning of the story the couple sits and orders a drink and out of all things he says knowing that Jig is pregnant, “Lets drink beer.”(Hemingway, pg.475). An automatic dominance is presented through consciousness of him suggesting that a baby to her and him has no purpose of being in this world which exemplifies him as person that disrupts human nature and female motherhood. Most women in this era had no rights politically, and to an extreme to where she had no say in her household through marriage and even pregnancy. Jig colors her thoughts really well by grazing her visions of happiness into the hills but taken and captured by material of a drink. Whenever she brings up “white elephant”, her companion quickly says “let’s have another drink”, which brings the pull of her consciousness as distraction and becomes a cockpit for the male to control. Alcohol till this day has been a usage towards female to lose consciousness of herself for a man to completely dominate her natural space as we see here in our story. The hills are a graze of life’s pattern filled with ups and downs, and the white elephant is a gift of life. According to Ross Bullen, a white elephant represents “A phrase that refers to a burdensome object that is impossible to sell or give away.” Life is a gift.
Hemingway takes their conversation into the depths of psychological approach that portrays feminist critique. According to George Frank, “Conscious resistance protects a person from experiencing the feeling of shame, a feeling that might reasonably be expected if the patient revealed certain ideas, desires, wishes, feelings, beliefs, and/ or fantasies to the analyst” (Frank Pg. 423). I believe that feminist critique revolves strongly around Frank’s statement and through the segments of Jig confessing that there’s no inner her. Her companion insists that she goes through with an abortion but he also states that, “if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you don’t want to. But I know its perfectly simple.”(pg.477). Jig replies as, “Then ill do it because I don’t care about me.”(pg.477). Hemingway brings this eruption of feminst theory as consciouss resistance that Frank adressed in his statement leaving Jig as an absent human nature of herself. She has confessed that there is nothing of her anymore leaving male dominance in charge and as feminst. Hemingway as a male writer has given us a short story of conversation that reflects feminsim from a male written persepctive of Jig and her confessional of absoulte loss of herself and self consciousness.
Ernest Hemingway has shown us the feminsm critique of self confessional and male dominacne, but as we go into a deeper state of feminsm persepctive, we embark upon the reflection of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, The Yellow Wallpaper. Gilman presents us a story of bold feminism and psychoanalytic approach towards our narrator that’s trapped in what may seem happiness. The story involves our narrator that is ill and has a husband named John who’s a physician but to our narrator “this is one reason I do not get well fast.”(Gilman, pg. 1470). She states this feeling onto her journal, after all she is a woman that’s ill and writing privatley is what seems to be her relief and healing to her occupation being in the house for that summer. Confessional writing was a major direction in the feminst era of expression of the female persepctive and our narrator adresses her aduience into giving us the key and opening up the pages to her life and horror experience. Marriage has seemed to be such painful expression in a womans heart during this era. Just like in Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants, the female role seems to be taken as a regret or as our narrator states in The Yellow Wallpaper, “I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort , and here I am a comparative burden already!.”(pg.1472). Marriage is a sealing of pure love till this death do us part, through sickness, and all the agreements to promise each other hapinees forever, but through Gilmans story, this dosent raise the question to marriage promises, but caps it as a forbidden misfortune in my opinion. Sealing a marrige in this era is like sealing the rest of your life as a slave to a man while in this story, John dosent seem to take care of his wife but simply, ease it off through.
Our narrator is a trapped woman inside herself and inside the house that she’s conealed and it brings a haunting darkness to her. But if woman don’t’ have that support system from men into what they want to pursue or in this simple case, how one feels emotionally, then where does that leave her? In this case, the yellow wall paper makes its comfort and for what may seem to be the only truth anyone or anything would even give our narrator. She states, “It is so doscouraging not to have any advice and comapanionship about my work.”(pg.1473). Support system is of absence but following her statement comes the subject of the wallpaper that seems to understand her and as she states her feeling, “I get positivley angry with the imperitance of it and the everlastingness.”(pg.1472). Her state of mind devleops this healing from anger as her truth becomes revelaing as to her husband making her a despressed lonesome wife. All her life she has found positivity into being alone or more importantly a wall. According to Psychoanyltic critiscm, “Freud believed that our unconscious was influenced by childhood events.”(Prude Owl). This plays a big role upon our trapped narrator that has been driven to live in her uncosciouness instead of her consciousness that consists of being uncared and unloved for. She has been through this phase before as a child as she states, “I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture then most children could find in a toy store.”(1473). As a child, her unconsciousness is where she found positivety which doesn’t classify her as “not normal from others”, but different. Through the feminst era, being married was of obidience to the male figure but she brings an outbreak to the table not with just the support of the wallpaper, but by living through her unconscious manner. Freud has also stated through childhood events that, “They also involve fear of loss (loss of affection from parents) and repression. The expunging from consciousness of these unhappy psychological events."(Prude Owl). What may seem to be imagination that’s reflects “unconsciousness” has been a providing affection for our narrator and for a possible majority of most females in this era. All they had was themselves and their inner emotions and feelings and thoughts were concealed inside themselves just like the wallpaper holds the image of our narraorator if she stays withn the walls of that house.
The role of this story comes to the climax of our narrator coming face to face with the wallpaper that depicts a woman behind bars that’s trapped amongst herself and that brings a relevant message to females that their consciousness brings forth their reality. This story brings a break through to feminsm critiscm as really facing reality upon the rest of her life. In Hills Like White Elephants, Jig makes a descion of her unconsciousness to her companion as to our narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper coming to her awakning of her consciousness to breakfree from her bars that hold her back. Feminsm has been an evolving study till even this day, but the root of this has come from male dominace that have helped woman grow stronger. Elaine Showalter states, “feminist criticism demanded not just the recognition of women’s writing by a radical rethinking of conceptual grounds of literary study, a revision of the accepted theoretical assumptions about reading and writing that have been entirely on male literary experiences.”
I rest my case.

Works Cited
Bullen, Ross. "This Alarming Generosity": White Elephants And The Logic Of The Gift." American Literature 83.4 (2011): 747-773.Academic Search Complete. Web. 31. January.2015
Frank, George. "On The Concept Of Resistance: Analysis And Reformulation." Psychoanalytic Review 99.3 (2012): 421-435. MEDLINE with Full Text. Web. 30 January. 2015
Freud, Sigmund. Psychoanalytic Criticism (1930s-present. Owl Prude University. Online Writing Lab. 1995-2015.Web. 2, Febuary.2015
Gilman, Charlotte. The Yellow Wall-Paper. Concise Anthology of American Literature. 7th Ed. Edit: McMichael, George/ Leonard, James. Pearson Education. 2011.
Gualtieri, Gillian. "Canonized Women And Women Canonizers: Gender Dynamics In The Norton Anthology Of English Literature's Eight Editions." Gender Issues 28.1/2 (2011): 94. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 2 Feb. 2015.
Hemingway, Ernest. Hills Like White Elephants from Charters, Ann, Ed. The Story and its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. 6th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.