Gender Roles In Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

Feminists believe that women’s rights should be completely equal to those of men. Lois Tyson defines feminism as “...the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women”, In most modern day situations, women are capable and encouraged to make their own decisions. However, in past decades women have had to overcome many hardships in order to gain the same privileges as men. Nobel Prize winner and American author, Ernest Hemingway wrote most of his pieces during the 1920’s and 1950’s. During this time, relationships between men and women were very unstable. Ernest Hemingway married four different women and integrated his personal relationship issues into his writing. Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants reinforces traditional gender roles and results in the female character succumbing to being powerless.

Traditional gender roles portray men as rational and decisive. …show more content…
Many people believe that sexist stereotyping is a thing of the past but there are various current-occurring situations that show otherwise. In Lois Tyson’s “Critical Theory Today” she states, “These gender roles have been used very successfully to justify inequities, which still occur today, such as excluding women from equal access to leadership and decision-making positions (in the family as well as in politics, academia, and the corporate world), paying men higher wages than women for doing the same job (if women are even able to obtain the job), and convincing women that they are not fit for careers in such areas as mathematics and engineering.”