The Elephant in the Room

The Elephant In The Room

Throughout modern times it has been the woman’s responsibility to sacrifice things in support of a relationship. In his short story “Hills Like White Elephants” Earnest Hemingway depicts a precarious situation between a woman and a man. The characters in this story never come to a resolution, but it shows what some women will do for the love and approval of a man.

In the story, the girl asks after the man’s persuading “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?” In this question the girl is more or less saying “I’ll do anything for you to love me.” I have known many women who have given up jobs, friends, and pregnancies for the love and approval of a man. In the end it’s seldom, if ever, worth the sacrifice.

Women often base their self worth on the approval of a man, as a result they allow themselves to be talked into things they wouldn’t normally do if they were depending on their own judgment. It’s in the news all too often, women getting rid of children because their boyfriend doesn’t like them. I have friends that have had abortions, not because they didn’t want or couldn’t take care of the child, but because they were afraid of losing their man. Later, when things don’t work out anyway, they wonder what it would have been like if they had kept the child. They say things like “I could have had a kid that would be going into school now”, and “I wonder what they would have looked like”.

Why do women let this happen to them? In the story the girl says to the man “Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.” She is saying that even though it will hurt her she’ll do it for him, because he wants it. I think a lot of women use this reasoning. They mistakenly think that if they make a sacrifice it will make the man love them. When the opposite is true, in giving up something important to them they are going to be unhappy and in turn make the man unhappy as well.

The lack of communication and not being completely honest is an important factor as well. In “Hills Like White Elephants” the man and woman never openly say what they are discussing and, in fact, try to avoid the topic. When they do discuss the abortion it is