"Up in Michigan"

Plot Summary:

Jim Gilmore, a blacksmith, lives in a very rural corner of Michigan, and dines at a place called "D.J. Smith's," where he is waited on by a young woman named Liz Coats. Liz has a crush on Jim, while Jim seems indifferent to her. Her overwhelming attraction towards him increases when he goes off on a hunting trip with friends. Upon his return, he eats and drinks whisky with the two men from the hunting party at D.J. Smith's, one of the two men being Smith himself. He gets up from the dining area, goes into the next room where Liz is sitting in a chair thinking about him, kisses her and grabs her, leads her on a walk to a boathouse, has his way with her, and falls asleep on top of her.

Criticism:

The girl's emotional longings and the blacksmith's physical impulses are not compatible. Are women and men ever compatible? What degrees of surrender on the parts of more than one party are necessary to qualify for compatibility? When we finish the story we know that something is wrong. But Liz wanted Jim and Jim wanted Liz, so why these complexities? Liz made verbal objections to Jim's "advances" in the boathouse, but he ignored her and the incident therefore qualifies as rape.

The twist that makes the plot more complicated than just the rape of woman is the woman's attraction to the man. Liz wanted Jim on her terms, or perhaps even on some mutual terms that could have developed in the way that a normal relationship might allow. Jim wanted her on his terms, and took her without consideration for a mutual ground. And what is meant by 'want' is distinct to their respective sex. Hemingway delineates these types of desire, assigns them to the sex they are normally attributed to, and clashed them together, hard. Something breaks.