According to “The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language”, the word “femininity” is defined as “the quality or condition of being feminine or a characteristic or a trait traditionally considered feminine". Furthermore, femininity is formed by various socially defined and biologically created gender roles, played by women and influenced by a number of social and cultural factors. For example, women's traditional gender roles include that of nurturer, birth-giver, housewife and carer. However, marked by a series of women's rights movements since the 19th century, women's gender roles, as well as how society and men perceive women, have been largely changed. This significant change, described as a process of female awakening, has been widely reflected in many works of contemporary literature. This essay will focus specifically on the construction of femininity in two short stories, Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" and Kate Chopin's "The Stoy of an Hour," examining how the authors define "femininity" in the way they they deal with female characters. .“Hills Like White Elephants” is a classic short story first published in 1927 written by Ernest Hemingway, generally recognized as one of the most influential writers in the history of American literature. Starting with a long description of the story's setting in a train station surrounded by hills, fields, and trees in Spain's Ebro Valley, Hemingway told the story from a limited omniscient third person, almost in an entire form of dialogue between one character unnamed A young American man and a girl named Jig while they are sitting in a bar near the train station waiting for the train to Madrid. Throughout Hemingway's straightforward and clean report... in the middle of the paper... we have considered the traditional obligation of women to love and care for her husband. Her love for her husband reveals part of her identity as a conventional and responsible wife, yet her inner desire for freedom defines another part of her femininity as an unconventional and self-sufficient woman. Works Cited "White Elephants" Oxford Dictionaries http://www. oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/white-elephant “Femininity.” American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. June 22, 2014. .http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/hills-like-white-elephants/summary.html http://www.shmoop.com/hills-like - white-elephants/title.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_Like_White_Elephantshttp://iws2.collin.edu/andrade/1302/HillsLikeexample.htm