Hubert Elliot is a young poet at Harvard who has saved himself for marriage.

At the
age of twenty-five, he meets forty year old Cornelia Calutina, the owner of a tea
shop. They get married and travel abroad. At first, they try to have a baby in the
various places on their trip through France before settling into a house in Paris. Their
sex life drops off quickly and soon they are sleeping in separate bedrooms. Hubert
writes poetry and Cornelia sleeps with one of her female friends.

"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" Analysis

The relationship between men and women is reduced to sexuality as it generally is in
the work of Hemingway. However, in this story, there is a twist, in which the man is
sexually innocent and defines his relationships by mutual sexual innocence...

"Mr. And Mrs. Elliot" portrays a man with a lack of masculinity. The first line, "Mr. And Mrs.
Elliot tried very hard to have a baby," indicates that they were having difficulty conceiving.
This kind of problem is often used to point out a lack of male virility. Similarly, the women that
ran away from Elliot when he told them he was a virgin also feared a certain lack of
manliness. As strange as it seemed to Elliot himself, these girls were happy to have a man
who had slept with many women. Despite the fact that Hubert did not have casual sex with a
lot of women, he still could not develop a close relationship with Cornelia. He did not know
why they married, and she spent much of her time crying. She was only relieved when her
girlfriend came to visit. Those two could create a much tighter bond than she could with her
husband.

"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" is a story about sterility. The main characters' fruitless
attempts to have a baby mirror the barrenness of their lives as well as those of
their compatriots. Talented and educated, the American expatriates wander
Europe aimlessly.