Introduction
The world was exclusively male-centric and male-dominated for centuries, and women were subject to men’s definitions. Classical and medieval male philosophers and social theorists associated femininity with the disorder, inadequacy, savagery, unreason and chaos. In the modernist era, however, the issues around social class, gender gaps, and the struggle against alienation were largely embraced and placed central to societal conversations. Modernist voices such as Meridel LeSueur and Ernest Hemingway, among several other musicians, philosophers, and visual artists, led the communitywide response to the ongoing depression and helplessness that women across the society shared. Despite this change in societal attitudes towards women, LeSueur’s “Women in the Breadlines” and Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” protest the sustained perception of women as complements to the men in their lives than as independent spiritual entities. The two works not only protest society’s social and economic injustices against women but also illustrate women’s efforts to overcome their perceived weakness and incapability in pursuing empowerment and independence.
The Modernist woman’s economic and social struggles
Both “Women in the Breadlines” and “Hills Like White Elephants” reflect modernist exposures to situations that subject them to social and economic struggles in the wake of the societal changes associated with the period. The turn of the 20th century was characterized by industrialization and expansion in scientific innovations that opened new spaces for women to work outside their usual. Such opportunities also imply that women could employ their inherent intelligence, which led to the beginning to question and even defy the traditional spaces women occupied to complement men in their society. The mix-up in the modernist society is reflected by LeSueur, who notes that of the middle-aged women who were at the domestic employment bureau, “some have families, some have raised their families and are now alone, some have men who are out of work.” The awakening also reflects in Hemingway’s poem, where he points out the girl’s resistance to the boy’s emotional manipulation to seek abortion services. Unlike previous generations, modernist women recognize their autonomy over important decisions such as having families, pursuing personal freedoms, and making independent decisions on abortion.
Hemingway delivers the dialogue between the girl and the boy in the poem “Hills Like White Elephants” in a condensed, boiled down, and journalistic approach that enables the readers to reveal the nature of socialization that the two share. At the poem’s heart is the poet’s eagerness to reveal the bad relationship between the boy and the girl and how it disadvantages the girl while putting the boy at an advantage. The boy’s attitude towards the girl champions his and her “freedom” at the expense of honesty, commitment, and accountability. At one point in the conversation, the boy tells her, “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you to do if you didn’t want to.” However, he comes back to her with further manipulations when he tells her, “But I know that it is perfectly simple.” The fact that he is male and has never experienced abortion implies that he only seeks to dominate her mind and manipulate her emotionally to his advantage. Consistent with societal standards, the boy expects the girl to heed his choice of abortion.
The girl attempts to meet the boy’s intentions to control the girl’s decisions and actions with plausible resistance but fails to sustain her independence. During the girl’s willingness to keep the pregnancy frame from her desire to spend the rest of her life with the boy that he loves, the poet uses specific symbols to reveal that the relationship may ultimately fail. The alcohol, the train, and the disorganized scenery symbolize the challenges the boy and the girl face in their intimate communication and the journey ahead when they become family. The boy, incapable of overcoming the mess inherent in the relationship, resolves to manipulate her to seek abortion by telling her, “I don’t want anybody but you.” It would be easy for readers to perceive the girl as weak when she eventually acquiesces to the boy’s overbearing insistence. Still, it is important to note that the stiff reply she offers him reveals that she feels the pain of being incapable of exercising her bodily autonomy. Below Hemingway’s seemingly detached and cold tone lies symbols and wordings that expose the characters’ attitudes toward one another in their socialization.
Unlike Hemingway, LeSeur approaches women’s pursuit of social and cultural liberties from a systematic and reactional worldview. Yet, in so doing, LeSeur employs highly descriptive and figurative language to paint a picture of the changes in behaviour that women registered in the wake of the great depression. One way the author describes the scenes of the women in this era is that women were forced into a situation that was like “being a slave without the security of a slave.” Through the author’s descriptive language, readers can acknowledge how women were not only left to take of their children and families. At the same time, some were rendered second choice to males to access employment. Women’s experience during the great depression reflects the diversity of women’s approaches. For instance, LeSeur outlines that while some became weak and depressed, others, like Mrs. Gray, became enraged about their existence and those of their families. That women were pushed to the position of using their sexual appeals to make ends meet makes readers understand the magnitude of systematic alienation that women faced during the great depression.
In the thick of the women’s economic situation, LeSeur brings to the readers’ attention the women’s resolutions regarding their choices to have families, bear children, and pursue economic progress as men do. While their resolve might be interpreted to imply women’s deliberate destruction of society’s social structure, it is worthy to note that it emerges from their systematic humiliation in society. Since men such as Mrs. Gray had ceased to be dependable caretakers of their families and their children died from starvation and diseases, women chose to rise above their societally expected roles of procreation. The author quotes Mrs. Grey, saying, “The young ones know though. I don’t want to marry. I don’t want any children” before all other women decide that they would commit to no man in marriage and they would have no children. Instead, they would “arm themselves alone, keep up alone,” and have all the fun they wish to experience. In these short, clearly drawn sentences, LeSeur uses descriptive language to illustrate women’s walk toward their freedoms. Women’s destitute state motivates them to pursue freedom from systematic oppression.
The two modernist works also reflect Women’s desperate struggles for meaningful empowerment and independence and society’s deliberate actions to take away the gains they made toward empowerment. “Hills Like White Elephants” offers an inside perspective into men’s unwillingness to empower or handle empowered women. Although not entirely presented from an economic point of view, this poem implies that men’s resistance to women’s empowerment is not a new phenomenon. Jig seems to understand that no matter the end decision in the abortion conversation, her life will change forever. She loses her delusional innocence and love that made her loveable and assumes an attitude that implies her efforts to become independent and empowered to make informed decisions about herself. She says, “It’s ours,” when the boy brings about the persuasive sentiment, “No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.” While her protestation may be taken to mean the pregnancy, Jig appears to refer to her innocence and love towards the boy. She appears to have made the informed decision to pursue her independence and let his objectification of him remain in the past.
Consistent with Hemingway, LeSueur’s short story focuses on women’s quietness, unobtrusiveness, and isolation in the wake of challenges and injustices. LeSueur attempts to paint a picture of the crashed economic dreams of American women in a society that had begun to thrive, and women’s economic ambitions began to thrive. She writes that women sat in the “women’s section” of the “city free employment bureau” and attempted to wait for unopen jobs. LeSueur particularly focuses on the humiliations women at the employment bureau face upon realizing there would be no job opportunities. The short story engages animal imagery to describe the “animal terror” displayed by the women when all the work is given away to the men at their expense. She writes that the women sat in the room “like cattle.” The experiences of poverty endured by other women in the short story only add to the image of the economic difficulty that the women faced. It is the will of some of the women that display their determination to gain financial independence, albeit against systematic repressions.
LeSueur also demonstrates that poverty and lack of income opportunities make it hard for women to remain humans. Much of the short story concerns women’s predicament and reactions to the state of poverty systematically set against them. Through the experience of multiple young and older women that LeSueur offers as examples, readers can understand the economic predicament surrounding modernism. For instance, she states that while all women were trying to get employment opportunities, some jobs were preserved “for the attractive and the adroit.” Other girls and women such as Bernice and Mrs. Gray, to whom she refers as “the others, the real peasants,” finding meaningful work proved unrealistic due to their appearances or ages. For instance, Bernice, a Polish woman of thirty-five, has been absent from any steady income-generating activities for more than a year. There is also the experience of Mrs. Gray, who loses three children to hunger and Ellen, who attempts to show her legs to a café attendant to be given free food. The image these examples create in the readers’ minds reflects the depth of modernist women’s economic struggles.
Conclusions
Modernist works like LeSueur’s short story “Women in the Breadlines” and Hemingway’s poem “Hills Like White Elephants” reflect an era when girls and women were gravely affected by society’s assumptions regarding their position. Hemingway uses metaphors and imagery to emphasize the societal view of women as second-class humans subject to men’s direction on issues such as reproduction rights that are more important to them. On the other hand, LeSueur combines descriptive language with imagery to paint a picture of society’s perception as a non-human object that does not deserve opportunities for economic empowerment. The hopelessness these works reveal about modernist women makes them embarrassed and incapable of properly raising families both in marriage and as single parents. In the end, both works illustrate situations where injustices imposed upon the women in society ruin the family as society’s basic unit and change women’s attitude towards undertaking important roles like reproduction. In a world where women are still treated as inferior to men and unfair expectations imposed on them, these two works should portray the ideal society that would rise without change.
Works Cited
Levine, Robert S., editor. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume A and B,9th ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393886139#!
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