Gender Roles In Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

The continuous push for equal rights for women has become widely popular and successful only in recent history. Women have evolved out of traditional roles of the stay at home mother, the housewife and the submissive gender to the more "assertive" males. This of which is demonstrated by Alice Munro’s “boys and girls”. Many controversial issues surround women’s rights of freedoms including the widely debated right to choose what one does to one’s self, which is a topic that mainly refers to abortion. Ernest Hemingway's “Hills Like White Elephants”, expressed a feminist movement focusing around this issue that was not very common at this time. Through the character’s development and ability to come to their own decisions despite the men’s constant
Near the beginning of both story’s they are the typical submissive and passive behavior expected of women in that timeframe. You look at “Hills Like White Elephants” through the restaurant when they are ordering drinks, the gender roles of male dominance and female submissiveness. The story begins with Jig, the female character asking, “What should we drink?”(Hemingway pg. 211). The male taking control and ordering the drinks shows the dominance while Jig is portrayed as submissive or weak compared to the man. We can compare this to the female narrator in “Boys and Girls”(whose name we never find out). The narrator had a younger brother named Laird who she was always compared to. The parents seemed to care more for him then for her. Even though the narrator could do more work than her younger brother, she was still under appreciated; “Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have a real help” (Munro, p. 1). This quote shows how they do not acknowledge her work, she wants to do the same work the boys do as she is not interested in the girl work that is expected by her mother and father, but like Jig, she is submissive to it. Another example going back to Hemingway's story is when Jig continues to show her passiveness when she needs to ask permission from her boyfriend to try the drink “Anis del Toro” at the table. “ “We want two Anis del Toro”, “With water?” “Do you want it with
In “Hills Like White Elephants” Jig mentions that the hills look like white elephants, an animal that is considered sacred, symbolizing the child. Towards the end of “Hills Like White Elephants” Jig is sitting with her boyfriend on the side of the train station. This is where Jig will finally be able to separate herself from her boyfriend. She leaves the table and walks to the other end of the station with the view of the other side of the hills. When she walks away she gives herself the opportunity to think about what she wants to do without being influenced by any outside pressure, and for the first time, think for herself. By standing up for herself against her boyfriend Jig displays her defiance of her gender role of being submissive. The very end of the story completes Jig’s development as she decides against having an abortion. We can connect this to our female narrator in “Boys and Girls” when she finally stands up to her father when the horse runs away. “ Instead of shutting the gate, I opened it as wide as I could. I did not make any decision to do this, it was just what I did. Flora never slowed down; she galloped straight past me, and Laird jumped up and down, yelling, "Shut it, shut it!" even after it was too late.”(Munro, pg. 1). She also says “I had never disobeyed my father before, and I could not understand why I had done it. I had done it.”(Munro, pg.1).