User:Badman Brown

In Hemingway’s “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot”, Hubert comes across as a pathetic,pitiful man contained within the parameters of a marriage circulatingaround Mrs. Cornelia Elliot trying to conceive. The Elliot’s desire forchildren serves as the backdrop to an analytical examination of the husbandand wife. Hubert, a Harvard law student, lives under the pretense that heneeds keep himself pure for his future wife; although seemingly naive andinnocent, he is in fact a man of quantity over quality, as proved by hisability to produce poems that are long at a very fast rate. Even hismarriage to Mrs. Elliot results from seemingly random encounters, just ashe could never remember just when it was decided that they were to bemarried. But they were married(162). Hubert’s ineptness is not onlyreflected in his marriage to Cornelia, but also in their attempts to havechildren. Their desperation to try everywhere they go points to Hubert’s lack of manliness, which later in the story forces Cornelia to find solacefrom an older girl friend in an suspicious homoerotic relationship. Thesycophant’s surrounding Mr. Elliot on his trips around France furtherproves his pitiable status as a man of no substance.

Another explanation for the unhappy union of Mr. and Mrs. Elliot could bethe cause of the unconventionality of Mr. and Mrs. Elliot’s life. Womenaround the age of eighteen were almost always married off whereas Mrs.Elliot was forty when she married, “Many of the people on the boat took herfor Elliot’s mother… In reality she was forty years old,” (161). Becauseof Cornelia being almost twice of Hubert’s age, the generation gap lies asthe boundary of their marriage where both cannot connect emotionally. Inaddition to Mrs. Elliot’s rotting age, her overly emotional statethroughout the story serves as evidence to a forlorn marriage. WheneverCornelia “…cried a good deal,” (163), it would be from dejection orheartache brought on by her husband’s actions. Such actions that made hiswife cry were from being “…very severe about mistakes and…[making] herre-do an entire page if there was one mistake,” on her typing (163). As ofthe introduction of her friend from Boston, Cornelia transformed into a“much brighter” (163) woman and even “…had many a good cry together,”(164). From this sudden happiness illuminating from Cornelia, it hasbecome apparent that she preferred the company of her friend over herhusband especially when “Mrs. Elliot and the girl friend now [sleep]together in the big medieval bed,” (164). Due to this new evidence,Cornelia does not feel emotionally attached to her husband which sets themapart from truly connecting their lives to form a baby which serves as abond from their marriage.