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Cassandra Spence
Dr. R. Strickland
ENG 234 – Second Formal Paper
7 May 2007
The Unfair Lot of the Fairer Sex
The 1920’s was an uncertain time for American women. They rung in the decade
by earning the right to vote, a monumental stepping stone toward greater equality with
their male counterparts. Passing the amendment, however, did not necessarily guarantee a
complete cultural shift would occur quickly, if ever. Even as they were emboldened with
the flush of this recent victory, women found themselves entering a new state of societal
limbo.
They had the promise of equality and power at their fingertips but no real way to
reach it because while the laws might have changed, gender norms had yet to catch up.
Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” addresses the effects of social progress
without actual movement, and how being given symbolic equality without the ability to
exercise it may have taken a toll on women.
“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is the story of a former author who gave up the
insecurity of his true love, writing, for an easy and comfortable life. For years he lounges
in contented luxury, living off of his wealthy wife’s funds and doing as he pleases
without so much as a murmur of complaint from his better half. He meets a distinctly
lackluster end while hunting big game in Africa, where he contracts gangrene from minor
scrape.
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While dying he verbally abuses his wife, blaming her for the ruining his dreams.
The woman had done everything to please her husband, went everywhere at his behest –
her only crimes were being rich and marrying him. The ugly words he hurls at her as she
tries to comfort him and fix the situation are unwarranted. He calls her a “rich bitch” and
curses her riches. Rather than take personal responsibility for his own failures, he
torments “this good, this rich bitch, this kindly caretaker and destroyer of his talent”
(Hemingway 1853). She tries to defend herself, insisting that she loves him and always
has. “You liked to do many things,” she says, “and everything you wanted to do I did”
(Hemingway 1852). Despite having tried to fill her role as the subservient wife, she is
still being punished for his self-perceived inadequacies.
There is an undercurrent of imbalance to the story, a tension difficult to pin down.
The reason is because their roles are actually reversed. This story is a possible, if most
likely unintentional, response or result of the women’s rights movement. Readers are
given a glimpse of America’s future, where women are empowered and men emasculated
and both sexes suffer for it.
Because the wife is relegated to a supporting role, one is not apt to notice the
detail in which her life is fleshed out. She comes from money but not only that, she has
made a name for herself in her own right. Her face is famous, having been featured in
magazines geared toward the rich, such as Spur and Town and Country. Despite being a
self-sustaining, independent (at least prior to marriage) woman, Hemingway makes the
choice not to give her a name. His name is Harry; she is simply referred to as “the
woman.” She lives a braver, more honest life than Harry, but as a female she is nothing
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without the man she is attached to. No name. Her identity is derived from her status as
Harry’s wealthy wife.
Hemingway tells of her life before Harry in a revealing passage:
Her husband had died when she was still a comparatively young woman
and for a while she had devoted her self to her two just-grown children,
who did not need her and were embarrassed at having her about, to her
stable of horses, to books, and to bottles. She liked to read in the
evening…by dinner she was fairly drunk and after a bottle of wine…she
was usually drunk enough to sleep. That was before the lovers. After she
had the lovers she did not drink so much…but the lovers bored her. She
had been married to a man who never bored her and these people bored
her very much. [One] of her two children was killed in a plane
crash…suddenly, she had been acutely frightened of being alone. But she
wanted someone that she respected with her. (Hemingway 1854)
Her independence was gained from her husband’s death and wealth derived from
him and her own family. Hemingway paints a vision of a woman with power and money,
free of male influence, who careens blindly with nothing to ground her. Unlike a man,
she cannot simply be wealthy, successful, and single. She tries to focus her energies on
hobbies – her horses, her books. Her own children see her as unnecessary and disdain to
be around her. She suffers from excessive drunkenness and then lasciviousness. Her
addictions supercede everything else, her love of books and zest for life fade into the
background.
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She was not bred for work; she has nothing. No drive, no focus. Her curse is her
upbringing, and women’s liberation came too late. What is most noticeable is what the
Harry’s wife didn’t have: a husband and a job. Though she is supposedly allowed to
work, it does not correlate with what is acceptable in polite society. She is trapped, able
to exercise liberties that prove to be useless – the carelessness of random sexual
encounters, the ability to live on her own without remaining in permanent mourning for
her husband.
She lives her hollow life in stasis. A woman who is supposedly liberated, unable
to take advantage of it because these are not rights that were meant for her. Hemingway
portrays her as miserable in her supposed freedom, distressed that she is unneeded and
fearful of being alone. In the world of “Kilimanjaro,” she is a woman put in the role of a
man, ignorant as to what that role entails. She weds Harry to restore some semblance of
order to her wayward life.
It doesn’t work because even in marriage, no matter how accommodating and
doting a wife she tries to be, she maintains the upper hand. Her money and heritage make
her the provider; Harry is thrust into the traditionally feminine role of provided-for. She
is oblivious to this role reversal, but he remains acutely aware and dissatisfied with the
arrangement.
Though he claims that his unhappiness is rooted in how eager he was to give up
his talent in exchange for idle comfort, the foundation for his unhappiness is built upon
their unconventional marriage. He is uncomfortable relying on her for absolutely
everything: pleasure, sustenance, the ability to travel. All of it comes from his wife’s
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deep pockets. He circles the subject of why he resents her so, not realizing that it is his
emasculation that he despises the most:
She thought he did exactly what he wanted to. The steps by which she had
acquired him and the way in which she had finally fallen in love with him
were all part of a regular progression in which she had built herself a new
life and he had traded away what remained of his old life. He had traded it
for security, for comfort too, there was no denying that, and for what else?
He did not know. She would have bought him any thing he wanted. He
knew that. (Hemingway 1854)
Harry speaks as though she looked at him as something to be acquired, much like
a wealthy man acquires a trophy wife. And he let himself be scooped up and fitted neatly
into her life; in this act he submits to the life she wants for herself. He calls it a regular
progression, implying that this was all very normal, but in actuality it is the opposite of
what would have usually happened. The woman ought to have traded away her life so the
man could build up his new life.
It is strange to see a man’s existence tossed into turmoil due to his living what is
essentially a woman’s life. He gives up his identity for comfort and security, trusting his
welfare to his wife. “She would have bought him anything he wanted,” he acknowledges.
He could not have bought these things for himself, and he has nothing to offer her but his
companionship. Harry is unable to pinpoint any other reason for having married her,
other than the knowledge that his wife could give him everything – so long as he was
willing to put his real life on the backburner and live in hers.
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It’s important to note that he says she “thought he did exactly what he wanted to”
because she truly doesn’t realize that he is unhappy. How could he not be, is what she
would probably ask. She, after all, has regained her status as a married woman and gets
what she needs from him – someone to cling to, someone to follow, someone to serve.
The twisted part is that in serving him she still upsets the power balance in the traditional
idea of marriage: what she gives him is security, money, and protection from the
harshness of the world. Everything a woman could have asked of her man.
It becomes evident that who Harry truly hates is not his wife, but himself. For
giving up his manhood, his independence, to become this woman’s property. She
essentially owns him, even if she doesn’t realize it. Their expectations of themselves and
each other are spelled out in a short exchange. She says to Harry, “You can’t die if you
don’t give up…You might think about some one else.” He replies, “For Christ’s sake.
That’s been my trade” (Hemingway 1849).
And therein lies the rub: he has already given up. He is dead, his masculine
identity eroded by this woman who is too far above her place. He mocks her insistence
that he think of someone else, namely her, before succumbing to death; had he been a
woman, saying that putting others first was his only trade would have been a noteworthy
accomplishment. After all, a housewife’s role dictates that everyone else’s needs and
wants come first.
Hemingway approaches the issue of female empowerment with suspicion and
contempt. To him, a woman cannot be in control without sapping the supposed masculine
strength that makes men who they are. He marks the progressing rise of female rights as
something to fear, leading toward an inevitable breakdown of the correct social structure.
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The society he predicts is one where no one is happy. Women are distressed because they
have climbed out of their box and now the world is simply to vast to handle; men are
miserable because they are forced into a box that they should never have been contained
in. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is a misogynistic work to the core. Nonetheless,
Hemingway’s story is likely an accurate reflection of concerns held by society during a
time when the gender-normative power structures were in flux and seemingly threatened
the long-standing tradition of patriarchal male-female relationships.
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Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” The Norton Anthology of American
Literature: Between the Wars 1914-1945. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 2003. 1848-1864.
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