How does today's world deal with the issue of married couples? Are married couples happy most of the time? Or, are they just always fighting and never agreeing on a particular issue? I honestly feel, in today's world, that there is a great deal of corruption in marriage. The husband or the wife may have different feelings about what makes a good marriage. I believe that married couples should stand on an equal footing and talk things out, not have one mate take over the whole relationship.
We have examples of the above situations in the stories of "Shiloh" by Bobbie Ann Mason and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" by Ernest Hemingway. "I won't leave you and you"ll behave yourself," (Hemingway 271) in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber". This is a threat. Francis Macomber, the husband of Margot, lost control over her actions. She began to do what she felt like doing. In the short story "Shiloh", the wife says "I"ll go to Shiloh with you if you"ll stop staring at me." (Mason 299) Norma Jean shows some dominance over her husband. It seems as if women want to be the ones in control of marriages so that they don't feel constrained by their husbands. This state of affairs becomes possible due to the blindness of love that the husbands experience for their wives.
One difference between these stories is the way the relationship is in the marriage. What has happened throughout the story for the wives in them to do what they did? In "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", Francis at one point "realized that his wife was not in the other cot in the tent. He lay awake with that knowledge for two hours," (Hemingway 269). What do you suppose that she was doing up at that late hour? Margot is sleeping with Wilson, that's what she's doing. She does this just to get Francis angry and upset. At that point, she gains control of the marriage. She wanted to do this because of Francis" overconfidence about his wife not leaving him.
