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Kellie Krick
Anderson
English 123
27 June 2010
It’s Hard to Be a Girl
Some of the hardest things in life that we go through are things that we cannot change.
We can’t change our gender, we can’t change what innocence does to us, and we can’t change
how society dictates us. Found in the book The Hudson Book of Fiction: 30 Short Stories Worth
Reading is two short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Kate Chopin and “Hills Like White
Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, where two main characters in the story have three things in
common gender, innocence, and society. All three of these things influence how the character
reacts and is reacted to. It influences their decisions they make or do not make. Both short
stories deal with serious issues from depression to abortion and their struggles with both. Both
women in the story also have a man in their lives, who manipulate and take advantage of them
being women, play on their innocence, and use society’s rules to their advantage.
Gender plays a major role in both of these short stories. As a woman who has been
suppressed by her husband, in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator of this story
is locked into a room to pretty much not do anything except stare at the wallpaper. Her
gender is what has gotten herself into this. She just had a baby (which men can’t do) and may
be suffering from postpartum depression [in the story it’s referred to as a “temporary nervous
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depression” (pg. 16)] and her husband (the doctor) has taken her to this house where she is to
stay for 3 months. As a woman she doesn’t have a say in anything. The narrator says that she
is “forbidden” to do things such as exercise and not to have any sort of stimulation because that
is the worst thing for her to do (pg. 17). And this is why in the wallpaper she sees a woman who
is trapped. But you have to think to yourself that of course she would see this woman, who we
have to assume is a reflection of her being trapped in this room, trapped in the marriage, and
trapped by being a women. If I were being referred to as a “little girl” by my husband (which,
the husband refers to his wife as in page 23) I think I would go a little crazy as well. I think that
the same thing happened in the story “Hills Like White Elephants” where a women, who is
pregnant, is trapped by a man and is clearly not being able to have an opinion on what is best
for her. What he says to her makes it seem like she has a choice by saying in their conversation
“I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to” (pg.
151). If she really had a choice, he would have never said to her that he thought getting an
abortion was the best thing to do. Obviously, it would be better to him if she didn’t have the
baby then for her to keep it and as a young girl who is now becoming a woman, who wants to
have a baby where the father doesn’t want to be present? Especially in 1927 when unwedded
mothers would definitely been looked down upon to begin with. Being a woman in the 1890s
and 1927 when these stories were written, you didn’t have much choice in the matter of what
was right for you.
I also feel that innocence played a major part in the lives of the women in the story.
Both women are perceived as young, almost naïve in a way. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the
narrator in the story is locked in a room, and is referred to as “little girl” and “blessed little
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goose”, where everything this girl says is shot down. Such as on page 23 when the narrator is
telling her husband that she doesn’t feel any better now than the day that she came and she
was wanting to get out of the room, she said “‘Better in body perhaps—‘ I began, and stopped
short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could
not say another word.” If I did not read this whole story, but just that small section I would
think that this was a father and daughter having a discussion, not a husband and wife. And
because of her innocence of really not knowing she could stand up for herself, she is continually
treated like a young child who has no say. I might start to go crazy myself if my husband was
acting like my father. This is also true in “Hills Like White Elephants”. The girl in the story is
constantly being manipulated by her companion and this is because he knows she doesn’t know
any better. For instance when trying a new drink she says “It tastes like licorice” (pg. 150),
when she compares a drink to licorice it shows that she is young in her thinking. Licorice, being
a candy, would most likely be compared from someone who is still young in age and young in
mind. It also is true for when she says “They look like white elephants” (pg. 149) in reference to
the mountains in the distance, because imagination is something that we often compare with
innocence. In both stories innocence holds both women back in that they aren’t yet fully
matured woman, old enough to be married and have sex, but young enough to where they
aren’t able to think for themselves and almost not allowed to think for themselves. Clearly, in
both cases decisions are made for them, whether they like it or not.
In essence, society had an impact on both features of gender and innocence at the time
of the writing of these two short stories. We always put doctors at a higher status and sort of
on a pedestal above the rest of us. We don’t question whether a doctor is right or wrong or
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whether a man is right or wrong. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the husband is a doctor and so is
the narrator’s brother. She never questioned outright her husband’s method of her treatment
and just went along with what society’s treatment of “nervous depression” was at that time.
This story also contributes to the notion that women are little, delicate, flowers that we have to
look after and talk to in the most delicate of ways. For instances the husband says the narrator
(his wife) “‘Bless her little heart!’ said he with a big hug, ‘she shall be as sick as she pleases! But
now let’s improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!’” (pg.
23) Clearly this husband has total control over his wife, and nobody would think anything of
this. Same for in “Hills like White Elephants”, society has total control over this situation as
well. Though it seems it is just a choice between the man and the women, the choice of having
a baby out of wedlock in 1929 was taboo. The man in the story clearly knows that he has to
continue to live by society’s rules in that he has to get his girlfriend to have an abortion. In the
end the girl says “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.” (pg. 152), which leads us to
believe that she has chosen societies and the man’s path, to in fact, have an abortion. This way,
nothing was wrong with her and she and the man can go about life normally back to the way it
was before she got pregnant.
Looking at these two stories I have dissected and reflected on how gender, innocence,
and society play an important role in the characters of these short stories. It seems as though
both women in the story are affected personally by all three of these elements. They can’t help
they were born girls, they are both still young minded, and society affects them as it affects us
now. I would also say that both girls have a love for their partners that we sometimes let take
hold of us and we don’t think right minded. Maybe that is why they seem so innocent, but
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really all they are trying to do is please there partner. Though all we can do is speculate on
these accusations we can for sure say that these are great short stories that keep our minds
wondering and keep us talking. If these writers were alive today and said they just wrote these
stories to write them I would tell them, “As deep as these stories are there has to be some sort
of meaning to them.” Another thing that we could speculate is maybe these writers were
dealing with these situations in their own lives (of course Hemingway was not a woman, but
maybe he knew somebody who was dealing with abortion). What is truly great about these
stories is that woman, especially, can relate to these struggles we still encounter today and in
some aspects, see ourselves in a world still ruled by men.
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Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper” The Hudson Book of Fiction: 30 Stories
Worth Reading. Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 16-28.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants” The Hudson Book of Fiction: 30 Stories
Worth Reading. Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002 149-152.