While Ernest Hemingway is commonly associated with living the masculine ideal, in many of his stories he shows a more tenuous grasp of gender roles than one might think a man nicknamed “Papa” who spent his life pursuing such adventures would hold. Hemingway drove an ambulance in a civil war that did not even involve his country; he was a huge fan of bullfights; he was an even bigger fan of hunting. However, such characters as Lady Brett Ashley, whose very name shows a diagonal meandering across gender lines, is a woman who acts like a stereotypical man in terms of her sexual appetites and emotional approach to relationships. The latent homosexuality in some of Hemingway’s other characters shows a similar crossing of gender roles. The relevance of this for “Hills Like White Elephants” is that the man in the story simply does not want what one would expect a stereotypical man at that point in his life to want. In “The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant,” the narrator is a boy in a similar situation to the man in “Hills Like White Elephant” – both are in an awkward situation involving a woman. The desire of the young boy is more conventional than that of the man in Hemingway’s story, and this difference is where the stories part ways.
Both the boy in “The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant” and the man in “Hills Like White Elephants” are in uncomfortable situations with the women in the stories. The boy is a fourteen-year-old who has asked an older girl (Sheila) to go to a concert with him. Since he can’t drive yet, he creatively offers to take her by canoe. A fishing aficionado, he leaves his line in the water while he goes to get her, but he finds out that Sheila despises fishing. When the bass strikes his line, he cuts bait because he wants Sheila to like him. He gives up on who he is – someone who enjoys fishing – to improve someone else’s opinion of him. The end result is not what he wants, of course, because she leaves with another boy who can drive. He learns to stick to what he likes and look for someone who has that similarity with him, rather than change himself in order to please other people.
In “Hills Like White Elephants,” the man and Jig, the woman, are traveling around an unnamed country, and they are stopped at a rail station, waiting for a train. Their luggage is up at the station while they sit at a bar, having a couple of drinks and passing the time. This appears to be their pastime – traveling around the world and having one experience after another, as typified by Jig’s observation that they go from place to place, simply trying new drinks. However, it is apparent that something has changed in their relationship, based on the characters’ vague references to getting something done. The most explicit reference to this procedure is “letting the air in,” but it is clear from their responses to this conversation that Jig is pregnant, an event that will stop their traveling, partying lifestyle for good – if they keep the child. The procedure that would involve “letting the air in” clearly refers to an abortion, a procedure that was much more difficult to attain at that time than it is in modern times. The man seems to prefer the abortion, as it will allow them to keep living the way they are living. Jig seems ready to go along with this in order to keep the man happy, but she also seems to be more than a bit ambivalent, as is suggested by her request that they “please please please please please” stop talking about the matter (Hemingway, web). At the end of the story, they go to the train station together, but this giant topic – this white elephant – is still occupying the emotional space between them, and the resolution is uncertain. What a conventional man would want in that sort of situation, at least according to the mores of Hemingway’s time, is that he would marry the girl and begin a domestic life together. However, it doesn’t seem like he is ready to go down that conventional road. Similar to the young boy in “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant,” the man wants to keep on living like he wants to, without making any major changes. The principal difference, of course, is that Jig is involved now in ways that Sheila Mant doesn’t even come close to approaching.
Both of these stories involve a crossroads for the male characters in terms of their emotional development. The boy in “The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant” learns an important lesson about boundaries. However, the man in “Hills Like White Elephants” does not seem to learn very much at all, except that Jig will not turn out to be as simple as he might have liked.
Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.”
http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/fms/Colleges/College%20of%20Humanities%20and%20Social %20Sciences/EMS/Readings/139.105/Additional/Hills%20Like%20White%20Elephants%20- %20Ernest%20Hemingway.pdf
Wetherell, W.D. “The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant.”
http://campuses.fortbendisd.com/campuses/documents/teacher/2009/teacher_20090915_130 5_2.pdf
