Smith 1 Sara Smith Professor Lago Experiences in Literature 1500-12 February 24, 2014 Essay 2 Draft 3 A persons identity

and the way they are raised can cause them to see things through a certain light. Whether they are black or white, male or female, rich or poor effects how they view literature. A woman may notice another meaning behind a sentence that a man may have overlooked because he was reading the text through his personal lens. The Feminist Critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing about women (Brizee). Hills Like White Elephants was written by Earnest Hemingway, a man, and this theory is shown clearly throughout the story, but in The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, a woman, there is no weakness shown in the female character. When viewing both of these stories, side-byside, through a feminist lens, it is clear that men and women define the female role differently. Men often present women as weaker than men and more submissive in their writing. These stereotypes are prevalent throughout Hemingways short story, Hills Like White Elephants. His story is written mainly in dialogue form and the first thing the woman asks is, What should we drink (McMahan 276). Hemingway is showing the passive side of women. She could have asserted her self and said exactly what she was in the mood for, but that may not have been proper. She is also pining for love from the man in the story, although he is asking her to get an abortion that she does not seem to want. She asks him if he will love her and if they will be happy after the operation. The man acts knowledgeable and says how happy they will be. He

Smith 2 abruptly brings up the operation saying, Its really not anything and They just let the air in and then its all perfectly natural (277). He is making the operation seem like a breeze although he surely has never had it. This is a typical male role; he makes it seem easy to protect his woman, probably because the woman seems weak. But are women actually weak? Our bodies can carry a human being for nine months and provide food for them after they are born. Mothers are often the ones who get out of bed three times a night when their babies cry, not the fathers, and for the first year or so, they go through their days sleep deprived. All of this is done so that a baby can grow up healthy and happy. Women put others happiness before their own, just like the woman in the story is doing for the man. Women are often portrayed as moody, which Hemingway does a great job of showing. At first the woman asks what they should drink and she goes along with the mans talk of abortion. Then she asks if they can be together and if he loves her but abruptly changes her thoughts and begins to disagree with him, saying they cant have everything. She cuts him off at one point to say, I realize. Cant we maybe stop talking? (278). Her emotions seem to be bouncing all over the place and she ends her role by saying, There is nothing wrong with me. I feel fine, although all of her previous actions make the reader believe she is hurt emotionally (279). When Hemingway wrote who was speaking he called the male character the man and called the female character the girl (276-279). By doing this he belittles the woman into a child, although he obviously had relations with her and hopefully thought of her as a woman at the time. Men often date younger women and that is normal and legal, but they should treat them as an equal because they are in the relationship together. No one in a relationship should believe they are above his or her partner or else the relationship will always lean in a certain direction.

Smith 3 Just like a child, women are seen as sensitive and in need of protection. In Hemingways story, the man offers this to the woman by saying, Ill go with you and Ill stay with you the whole time. Just let the air in and then its all perfectly natural (277). He makes her worrying seem unnecessary by lessening the severity of the abortion process. Physically, an abortion is much more painful than a burst of air would be but emotionally, nothing could compare. There is a baby inside of this woman and the man is acting as if getting rid of it would be a piece of cake. He says, Thats the only thing that bothers us. Its the only thing thats made us unhappy but the woman may not actually feel that way (277). She could love this baby already and she is letting this man convince her to do something she does not want to do. In The Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard, the very recent widow plays a completely different role than the woman in Hemingways story. She does not rely solely on a man for comfort and protection. She does grieve for her husbands death but she also sees how free she will be in the years to come. After the character realizes her new freedom she begins to relax after the initial shock. Chopin writes, She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial (236). There are no harsh feelings toward herself regarding her happiness, but if a man had written a story about a widow, she would most likely be completely grief stricken and inconsolable. In Hemingways story, one can only guess that the man really did love the woman but in Chopins story it is clear. She writes about the husband loving the wife and says, The face that had never looked save with love upon her (236). This means that he only looked at his wife with love. Chopin shows a different kind of love, a true and healthy love. Her idea of love allows each partner to have separate feeling and shows that a woman can go on living happily even with

Smith 4 out a husband. But in Hills Like White Elephants, the relationship shown is the woman relying on the man for support, safety and reassurance. Mrs. Mallard differs from the woman in Hills Like White Elephants because, although they are in love, she does not love her husband unconditionally. She feels passive in a different way. She loved him sometimes but she knows shell be happier without him while the woman in Hemingways story fell under the women are passive stereotype in a different way (237). She let the man do and say what he wanted. She would have done anything, including giving up her child, for that man to love her but Mrs. Mallard does not need a mans love that badly. If it was not for her bad heart, she could have gone on living without a man to rely on. Chopin even mentions a stereotypical feeling that married people seem to have towards each other, they feel that they live for each other and that is a right they have. After realizing that she could live for herself, she wrote, There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have the right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature (237). Mrs. Mallard knew there was no purposeful cruelty intended by her husband but she could not help but feel free. She got herself so worked up thinking about the days she would soon have to herself and she was hoping her life would be long. Her husband, who was supposed to be dead from a railroad disaster, showed up at their front door but he was too late. She had died from what the doctors called, joy that kills (237). Neither the doctors, nor anyone else in the house had reason to believe she was happy about her new freedom so they said she died of happiness after seeing her husband, although it was probably shock that killed her. Now the freedom she was so happy about was gone.

Smith 5 Mr. Mallard could not protect her from her own heart. And his friend Richards, who tried to shield Mrs. Mallard from the sight of her husband, could not protect her either. Men may try to shield women from the truth to protect them, but there is no guarantee they will succeed. The man in Hemingways poem tried to convince the woman that the operation was simple and that they would be happy after but the woman says she also knows people who have had the operation and she says sarcastically, And afterward they were all so happy (227). A man cannot truly protect a woman even if they believe they can. There are millions of stereotypes that can affect the way a person or group of people is viewed. Gender stereotypes are more common in literature written by men and this shows the way that women are still viewed in society. They are often portrayed underneath men, socially. Although women being sensitive is just a stereotype, it seems true in writing. Woman writers are more sensitive to men than male writers are to women because they take both views into account. The best way to read any piece of literature is through someone elses eyes. Since no one will truly know the meaning behind every sentence except the writer, it is important to try and see literature how other people see it and it may be easier to understand.

Smith 6 Works Cited Brizee, Allen, Tompkins, Case. Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism. Purdue OWL. 21 April, 2010. Web. 3 March, 2014. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/11/. McMahon, Elizabeth Ed. Literature and the Writing Process Tenth Edition. Boston: Pearson Education Inc, 2014. Print.