Comparing Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ with Kate Chopin’s ‘The Story of an Hour’

Love – it’s the basis for nearly every story plot out there. The prince kills the dragon to save the princess from the tower. Romeo and Juliet defy their families to be together. The hero and a beautiful woman know it’s love at first sight, and they must defeat the thing that stands in their way to find their happily ever after. However, in real life, happily ever after is not always how the story ends. Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” show us that it can be hard sometimes to tell when you’re actually in love or not.

In “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway (331 Gardner), we first see what appears to be a happy couple traveling to Barcelona. However, throughout the dialogue in the story, it quickly becomes apparent that this couple is not completely what they seem. The man and woman in this story – they aren’t specifically named other than the man calling the woman “Jig” at one point – seem to represent the idea of fading love. While neither of them are specifically aware of it in the story, the reader doesn’t go away from it feeling like this is an example of a perfect relationship.

Toward the middle of the story, the man outright tells the woman “I love you now. You know I love you.” (333) The woman responds, “I know. But if I do it [get an abortion] you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?” (333) By asking again if he’ll love her after getting an abortion, the woman outright tells the reader that she’s lied in her previous statement and does not, in fact, know if the man loves her or not. In fact, their entire back and forth conversation that lasts nearly the entire length of the story shows how unsettled their relationship is. The man spends the majority of the story trying to convince the woman to get an abortion, telling her things like “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig… It’s not really an operation at all”, “They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural”, and “”We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before… That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.” (332) However, even though all of this is meant to pressure her into getting the procedure, he shows a slightly manipulative side of their relationship by constantly following his reassurances with “If you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to.” (333)  It’s hard to tell as readers, without being able to see his personal thoughts, if he really cares about the woman. It’s also unclear if he’s being manipulative on purpose, or if he’s aware of it.

Since “Hills Like White Elephants” is written in a third-person objective point-of-view, we don’t get to really see the woman’s perspective of their relationship either. However, toward the end of the story, it becomes evident that she’s tired of him not listening to her. After trying multiple times to get the man to switch to a different topic of conversation, even once directly saying “Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?” (334), she finally threatens “I’ll scream” (334) when he continues to ignore her. This gives the reader hope she might finally be realizing the true effects of this relationship and beginning to think about leaving, or at least standing up for herself.

“Hills Like White Elephants” shows how love, or what someone thinks is love, could force them to stay in a situation where they’re not entirely comfortable or happy because they think that there’s a quick and easy fix to their problems, and ignore all the underlying issues that are really causing the issues.

In comparison, in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin (180) , we see a couple that both believe themselves deeply in love until one of them dies and the other realizes everything they’ve gained. When their spouse returns at the end of the story, not dead as previously assumed, the feelings in the relationship have drastically shifted.

The “The Story of an Hour” begins with Mrs. Louise Mallard finding out her husband, Mr. Brently Mallard, has been killed in a train accident. The reader can immediately sense Mrs. Mallard’s love for Mr. Mallard in her reaction to the news of his death – “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.” (180) It’s hard to imagine the woman in “Hills Like White Elephants” being this distraught over the news of her partner’s death, since she seems so apathetic towards him throughout the course of the story.

However, this contrast only appears in the very beginning of “The Story of an Hour”. Soon after we see Mrs. Mallard’s sudden and terrible reaction to her husband’s death, we begin to see a drastic change in her. Though she acknowledges that “she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead” (181), she quickly follows it with a sudden, welcome realization. “There would be no one to live for her during those coming years: she would live for herself… She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.” (181) In this section, we can see the beginnings of a comparison between Mrs. Mallard and the woman in “Hills Like White Elephants”. They both seem to be having second thoughts or doubts about their partners and the freedom they truly feel with them. While the woman in “Hills Like White Elephants” never explicitly says it, it’s implied in the way she argues with him and repeatedly asks him to stop talking. On the contrary, in “The Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard outright exclaims to her sister that, after the death of her husband, she feels “Free! Body and soul free!” (181) She feels so free at the thought of no longer being married to Mr. Mallard that, when she finds out that he’s not actually dead, she dies of a heart attack or, as it’s described in the story, “of joy that kills” (182). The thought of returning to the confinements of marriage – confinements that, just an hour before she’d had no idea existed – was so terrible that it killed her.

In “The Story of an Hour”, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard’s marriage isn’t free of love – Mrs. Mallard acknowledges that she’d loved him – but in this story, love is not enough to keep their relationship together. In the end, it is actually almost what drives them apart – Mrs. Mallard has spent her life so focused on being in love with him and being the perfect wife in that aspect that she has no time for herself. When she is freed from being in love with Mr. Mallard, she realizes she can turn all that love toward herself for the first time and that’s the thought that truly frees her. While the woman in “Hills Like White Elephants” never reaches this moment, it’s hard. as readers, not to see Mrs. Mallard as an older version of her – they are both in relationships that they may not realize are forcing them to put all their love toward someone else until they have no love left for themselves. Unfortunately, in the course of these two stories, Mrs. Mallard is the only one to realize this, so, as readers, we can only hope that the woman in “Hills Like White Elephants” eventually will as well.

In many stories, love is seen as the cure to all evil and wrongs in the world. However, in real life, it’s much more complicated than that, and can often be the cause of many of the biggest issues in a person’s life. “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Story of an Hour” show us a different view of the typical “Happily Ever After” storyline. This idea of non-perfect relationships could connect to more people than fairytales might, since it’s a more realistic interpretation of love.