The Hills like White Elephants and The Birthmark
After reading both short stories, “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, both the women in the stories had superior men in their lives. The men they care most about in their lives seem to be the source of if they are happy or not. By making their husbands happy with their appearance, Jig and Georgiana are happy. Both Jig and Georgiana were happy listening to what their husbands were saying and telling them to do.
Georgiana and Jig seem to go to the extreme to satisfy their husbands regardless of the opinions of others. It seems that whatever their husband tells them to do, is what makes them happiest. In Hills like White Elephants, Jig agrees to get an abortion. She doesn’t want a baby to interfere with her life with her husband as is. She constantly says, Will you still love me? Assuring herself that they will both be happy. Georgiana despite everyone else’s opinion of how beautiful she is, she removes her one flaw, her birthmark. This one flaw was pointed out by her husband, which in others eyes, that birthmark was beautiful.
There are many people in this world, which will try to make others happy. Doctors for example, are happy when they are able to cure a person from and illness. Teachers and tutors feel a sense of accomplishment and happiness when they are able to successfully teach a person something. Both Hawthorne and Hemingway seem to make a point that happiness comes from the result of making others happy. It seems that for Jig and Georgiana they become happy when their husbands are satisfied. However, for their husbands to be satisfied, it requires them to go to drastic measures.
It makes sense that the women want to make the men they care most about happy. It happens everyday in our lives even today. But I have to disagree with both authors in the fact that they take a risk in their lives to make them happy. If a person is happy with their own selves and lives, they shouldn’t have to change. You can make a person happy without taking any risks. Jig and Georgiana should have been happy with their own image instead of making themselves beautiful in their husbands’ eyes.
