Ernest Hemingway Misogyny

Hills Like White Elephants

Ernest Hemingway is regarded as one of the greatest writers of his time; however, he was notorious for his misogyny (University of Alabama). His misogyny was seen prominent throughout many of his short stories such as “Hills Like White Elephants” and “Cat in the Rain.” Throughout Hemingway’s life, he published many short stories and novels that had a very strong influence on American literature in the 20th century. Within these pieces of work, many scholars have criticized Hemingway for his portrayal of women often as helpless, weak, and easily influenced. Specifically, Stanley Renner is well known for her criticism on his work “Hills Like White Elephants” in which she analyzes and concludes that Hemingway’s
She begins to state that she will in fact do it but only because she no longer cares about herself. Hanum supports the theory of Renner by stating that her mindset is changing in a way that she is beginning to notice that the man is taking advantage of her so she attempts to reveal his selfishness by using sarcasm (Hannum 1). Jig is no longer blinded by the fact that the man is manipulating her into getting an abortion and she is beginning to feel skeptical about it. The third stage involves the environment that Jig describes and sees. After she got up to walk at the end of the train station, there are two different described environments; one with hills that appear to look like white elephants and the other is a field of grain. The first setting is to symbolize life and happiness if she were to keep the baby but the second environment is the choice of abortion and symbolizes the lack of life (Renner 5). The last stage is development of Jig’s decision to keep
As Hashmi stated, many critics have agreed that the relationship between the girl and the American has fallen regardless of the outcome (Hashmi 72). Critics have also agreed that there are three scenarios that can happen in which there is no one answer. However, support from many critics such as Hannum suggest that a fourth scenario is possible in which the girl will have the abortion but the man will go against his word and leave her (Hashmi 74). This outcome is strongly visualized and support by Howard Hannum in which he argues that she has the abortion but she decides not to be with him because she can not tolerate his acts no longer. This could be a plausible outcome because throughout the story the relationship between the two is lacking love and excitement. Also the emotions shown by both are very bland until the ending in