Male Chauvinism In Updike And Hemingway Essay, Research Paper

John Updike and Ernest Hemingway struggle to portray women in a positive light; because of this, Updike’s and Hemingway’s readers come away from their stories with the effect that the lead male characters are chauvinistic, which can be defined as “prejudiced devotion to any attitude or cause” (“Chauvinism” 228).

In John Updike’s “A & P”, three girls shop in the local A & P and are described head to toe by the nineteen year old cashier, Sammy:

“The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs . . . there was this one, with one of those chubby berry-faces, the lips all bunched together under her nose . . . and a tall one, with black hair that hadn’t quite frizzed right, and one of these sunburns right across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long . . . and then the third one, that wasn’t quite so tall. She was the queen . . . She didn’t look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima-donna legs . . . She had on a kind of dirty pink – beige maybe, I don’t know – bathing suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down . . . all around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim . . . She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a bun that was unravelling, and a kind of prim face . . . The longer her neck was, the more of her there was” (147, 148) .

Through Updike’s descriptions of the girls, you can see how critical he is of women. They are merely “wives, sex objects, and purely domestic creatures” (Kakutani, par. 1). While not trying to make his portrayals of women purposefully sexist or patronizing, Updike still presents this view to the reader (Updike 7). He typically gives “magazine cliches about the woes of being a housewife” and “noisy diatribes about piggish ways of men”, rather than giving the reader “an understanding of their conflicts as women” (Kakutani, par. 9).

It is because of these views that characters such as Sammy and the other cashier, twenty-two year old Stokesie, are viewed as male chauvinists. As soon as the girls walked into the store, Sammy immediately lost all concentration. “I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not” (147). He continues after that to analyze the girls’ every move and feature, saying that the “bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones” was “more than pretty,” and that ‘Queenie’ “turned so slow it made my stomach rub the inside of my apron” (148). Sammy and Stokesie then have conversation while watching the girls walk.

“‘Oh, Daddy,’ Stokesie said beside me. ‘I feel so faint.’

‘Darling,’ I said. ‘Hold me tight’” (149).

Even the man behind the meat counter, McMahon, began to watch and react to the girls by “patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints” (149). Sammy continues with his chauvinistic ways when “she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. I thought that was so cute” (150), and when he uncreases “the bill, tenderly as you may imagine, it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known were there” (151).

Through Updike’s descriptions and dialogue, he has made the male characters in “A & P” come across as the stereotypical male pig. After Lengel, the manager, informs the girls that “this isn’t the beach” (150), Sammy immediately blurts out, “I quit.” “The girls, and who’d blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say ‘I quit,’ to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero” (151). Sammy believes that because he is male, and the girls are the typical female who will be flattered be him saving them, that this would be the wise thing to do in the situation. Despite his thinking, however, his actions simply come across to the reader as something that is done because he is a male and believes that he will get somewhere with the girls if he sticks up and defends them by quitting his job (Kakutani, par. 7).

Another male character that comes across to the reader as someone that is self-absorbed and a male chauvinist is the American in Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.” This is due to the difficulty that Hemingway finds in writing and portraying a female character. “Hemingway favored a more simplistic approach to convey his view of women, portraying obvious empathy for his female characters, while his male characters and protagonists appear to be more self absorbed” (Essays). Hemingway portrays Jig as a girl that does not think for herself, and is doing everything that the American tells her to do:

“‘The girl looked at the bead curtain. ‘They’ve painted something on it,’ she said. ‘What does it say?’

‘Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.’

‘Could we try it?’ . . .

‘Do you want it with water?’

‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘Is it good with water?’

‘It’s all right.’

‘You want them with water?’ asked the woman.

‘Yes, with water’” (211, 212)

When the readers first meet Jig and the American, they are having a conversation about whether or not she will go through with an abortion. The American shows little, if any, empathy towards the girl, whom he says he “would do anything for.” He, in fact, belittles the process, and “attempts to minimize its pain and inconvenience for the woman (Grebstein 112).” Hemingway shows this through dialogue that is exchanged through the two.

“‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.’

‘Oh, cut it out.’

‘You started it,’ the girl said. ‘I was being amused. I was having a fine time.’

‘Well, let’s try and have a fine time.’ . . .

‘It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,’ the man said. ‘It’s not really an operation at all.’

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

‘I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.’

The girl did not say anything.

‘I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural (172).’”

Another example in the story that can be used to support the reader’s view that the American is self-absorbed is: “He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train (174).” This passage helps support the reader’s view, because it shows that the American believes that Jig is unreasonable. He thinks this because Jig has not yet consented to go through with the abortion. The American is portrayed through this passage as one who is completely self-absorbed and chauvinistic.

In the short stories “A & P” by John Updike and “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, the male protagonists are viewed by the readers as chauvinistic pigs. Men who are so self-absorbed with themselves that they do not take into consideration the feelings and thoughts of anyone around them, including the females in their lives at the moment. These views of the readers’ are accomplished by the authors’ struggle to portray their female heroines in a positive manner, and thus their inability to portray their male protagonists as anything but the unsympathetic male chauvinist.

Bibliography

“Chauvinism.” The Random House College Dictionary. 1975.

Essays on Hemingway. 9 Sep. 2000. http://hemingwaypapers.com/list.html.

Grebstein, Sheldon Norman. Hemingway’s Craft. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1973.

Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. Eds. Perrine, Laurence, and Thomas R. Arp. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1993. 171-174.

Kakutani, Michiko. “Updike’s Long Struggle to Portray Women.” New York Times 5 May 1988: C29.

Updike, John. “A & P.” In-Class Handout. 30 Aug. 2000.

Updike, John. Interview. SALON 24 Feb. 1996: http://www.salon.com/08/features/updike2.html.