The male character is dominant, defensive and hypocritical and the female character is pendent and is incapable of voting for her decision. In the story the man persistently tells her to abort the child but never uses the word abortion. He keeps on giving more like hypnotic suggestions that she must abort the child because it’s a very simple operation. He is hypocritical because he keeps on saying – “But I don’t want you to do if you didn’t want to”. He says that he doesn’t need a baby in their life - “That’s the only thing that bothers us.
Although Hemingway never uses the words “abortion“ or “baby“, we can clearly tell that is all the characters are talking about. One of the first things readers and Jig notice are the hills surrounding the valley. She seems to be fascinated by them and their white colour reminds her of white elephants. The man obviously does not to care about the landscape, he keeps going back to the topic of abortion, which Jig does neither want to talk about, nor think of. “The girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table“ (90).
She also, obeyed her mother’s request, to bounce whenever she was bullied. To bounce means to ignore and pretend it wasn’t even there. Evyn kept to herself a lot. She never told or showed people how miserable she felt about moving. When Evyn first saw Eleni, with her red lipstick, black pants, and high heels, she thought Eleni looked nothing like a college professor and a mother.
The lack in education and experice results in lower levels of trust in medical care. They are skeptical about receiving care from physicians, nurses and the entire medical care regimen as a whole. Women who are skeptical about the care will reject prenatal testing. For example referring back to the story about tracy, she rejected getting an ultrasound because she believed that the radioactive rays would affect her fetus. If she was educated about the importance of prenatal testing Nahla might have been normal today.
Technically, Mickey’s attacks are not spouse abuse, but straightforward assault and battery. The deliberation of rape, another obvious situation in the case, is never addressed. When Francine seeks help from various social agencies, they let her down, advising her to get a lawyer. For some reason, she is unable or unwilling to take this step, and she even shows a reserve at first to deal with her own court-appointed attorney. Her fears are that the law might turn against her, declare her an unfit mother, or otherwise destroy her
5) Leonce never asks Edna how her day is going, or how she is feeling about certain things, yet he expects her to be completely mesmerized with him and his conversations. If Edna doesn't act the way a lady should, it could ruin Leonce's business. The people of the community will look down on him if they know his wife is out of control like he thinks she is. She doesn't take care of the children, she has an artistic pastime that interferes with family duties, and she wants freedom. This could really ruin Mr. Pontellier's
They were very weak in personality which was described “Oh, yes. But I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine.”“I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way.” (Hemingway, 65). This portrays that she has disregarded any feeling that she may have about having an abortion and is going to have one for his well being and satisfaction. She has lowered herself expectations in life to satisfy someone else’s.
There are not any trees in sight only two distant hills and the woman refers to them as white elephants. They sip on their drinks and through conversation you can conclude that the woman and the man are at odds over her pregnancy. She wants to have the baby, but the man does not. He tries to sway her decision by telling her that the abortion process is simple. “Awfully simple and not really anything.” He wants to keep the lifestyle that they have on track.
The girlfriend says that the hills in the distance look like white elephants, which the man says that he has not seen one. They order a type of liquor called Anis del Toro and start to argue about the taste of it. The Man scolds his girlfriend about it and tells her to enjoy herself. The girlfriend says to the man that she’s trying to have some fun and then takes away her opinion of the hills looking like white elephants. They soon order another round of beers, and the man comments that he wants her to have an operation, but he never says what kind of operation he wants her to have.
Which means she does not care if she gets dirty while playing with the other children. Where as her mother would not like that very much. However it is made apparent that since the narrator never talks about doing any of these activities, she just wishes to do