User:GoodmanBrown

In Hemingway's "Mr. and Mrs. Elliot", Hubert comes across as a pathetic, pitiful man contained within the parameters of a marriage circulating around Mrs. Cornelia Elliot trying to conceive. The Elliot's desire for children serves as the backdrop to an analytical examination of the husband and wife. Hubert, a Harvard law student, lives under the pretense that he needs keep himself pure for his future wife; although seemingly naive and innocent, he is in fact a man of quantity over quality, as proved by his ability to produce poems that are long at a very fast rate. Even his marriage to Mrs. Elliot results from seemingly random encounters, just as he could never remember just when it was decided that they were to be married. But they were married(162). Hubert's ineptness is not only reflected in his marriage to Cornelia, but also in their attempts to have children. Their desperation to try everywhere they go points to Hubert's lack of manliness, which later in the story forces Cornelia to find solace from an older girl friend in an suspicious homoerotic relationship. The sycophant's surrounding Mr. Elliot on his trips around France further proves his pitiable status as a man of no substance.

Another explanation for the unhappy union of Mr. and Mrs. Elliot could be the cause of the unconventionality of Mr. and Mrs. Elliot’s life. Women around 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 her for Elliot’s mother… In reality she was forty years old,” (161). Because of Cornelia being almost twice of Hubert’s age, the generation gap lies as the boundary of their marriage where both cannot connect emotionally. In addition to Mrs. Elliot’s rotting age, her overly emotional state throughout the story serves as evidence to a forlorn marriage. Whenever Cornelia “…cried a good deal,” (163), it would be from dejection or heartache brought on by her husband’s actions. Such actions that made his wife cry were from being “…very severe about mistakes and…[making] her re-do an entire page if there was one mistake,” on her typing (163). As of the 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 has become apparent that she preferred the company of her friend over her husband 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 them apart from truly connecting their lives to form a baby which serves as a bond from their marriage.