Hills Like White Elephant Feminist Analysis
One of the defining features of Hemingway’s proto-minimalist short story, “Hills Like White Elephants,” is the skeletal framework of dialog that runs throughout its length. With the sparing use of dialog tags as well as minute physical action present in the short story, Hemingway instead uses the voices of his characters to drive the plot both narratively and thematically. Pamela Smiley, a Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin, claims that the manner in which the American and Jig interact and speak with one another is done so in ways that is distinctly gender specific, something she describes as “gender-marked language”(1-2). Meaning that, where the American is “precise and to the point… [as well as] declarative”
Jig is just the opposite; she is “profoundly imprecise” and full of questions (Smiley 1-5; Lakoff 66). For example, where Jig’s dialog choices flirt from topic to topic—she asks about drinks and comments on the rolling hills in the distance—the American drives straight to the point in mentioning the elephant in the room; “It’s really a simple operation, Jig,” he says, mentioning the one thing Jig seems to be avoiding (Hemingway 664).
Jig is just the opposite; she is “profoundly imprecise” and full of questions (Smiley 1-5; Lakoff 66). For example, where Jig’s dialog choices flirt from topic to topic—she asks about drinks and comments on the rolling hills in the distance—the American drives straight to the point in mentioning the elephant in the room; “It’s really a simple operation, Jig,” he says, mentioning the one thing Jig seems to be avoiding (Hemingway 664).