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Michael Miller

Reading into the Conversation: A Disagreement about Cat in the Rain

In her essay Id Rather Not Hear: Women and Men in Conversation in Cat in the

Rain and The Sea Change, Lisa Tyler makes three assertions about the female role in these

Ernest Hemingway stories that strike partly into truth, yet miss essential components of the

modern novel such as attempting to portray the bleakness of modern relationships, the

breakdown of communication between humans, and its use of foils to create striking contrasts

between these relationships, that can lead to a different interpretation of the female role in Cat

in the Rain.

Tylers first assertion is that the wife in Cat in the Rain is seeking recognition and

attention from her husband by trying to change her hair for him and give him a special

candlelight dinner . . . complete with silver (71). In Hemingways text, however, the wife, or

American girl, has just switched her complete attention from saving a wet cat to examining her

physical appearance in the mirror with shocking, childlike rapidity before commenting on her

hair (93). If, as Tyler argues, she wants to change it to gain her husbands attention, why does

she argue against his opinion that he likes her current style when it is the first time in the story

that he has stopped reading and is giving her his full attention (93)? Furthermore, Tyler argues

that her desire to not look like a boy with short hair is a statement of longing for freedom of male

reflection, a central tenant in her argument, when, in the text, her desire to not have short hair is

actually a childish fantasy of having long pretty hair that could be pulled back tight and smooth

and make a big knot at the back that I can feel . . . I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr

when I stroke her (Tyler 70, Hemingway 93). This reflection leads on to a fantasy of fancy

dinners (with the candles and silver that Tyler previously mentioned), an instantaneous
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change of season to suite her mood, a kitty, and some new clothes, finally ending in a childish

tantrum of, I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I cant have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat

(Hemingway 94). The wife in this story is not seeking a kitty, long hair, a fancy dinner, or

anything else to please her husband or try to break his attention from reading, she is expressing

the immature desires of an American girl abroad with her more mature husband who, although

admiring her looks and complimenting her hair, would rather read than listen to her perpetual,

immature outbursts.

Following this first claim, Tyler also states that the wife in the story relates to the cat

feeling abandoned and alone, its suffering unrecognized because men typically want a

refuge of quiet in their homes whereas women typically want a refuge where they can

express their thoughts freely (72). Looking past this obvert classicism of historically sexist roles

by a modern feminist literary critic, Tyler unfortunately offers little evidence in her essay to

support this ubiquitous claim, further diminishing her argument equating the cat with the wifes

feelings of abandonment. Beyond that, it is arguable that the cat serves merely as a momentary

childish fixation for the wife, evidenced in the story by the narrator calling it a cat and the girl-

wife calling it a kitty, the fact that even the female maid thinks it is childish that she is looking

for a cat in the rain, and the obvious fact that the girl-wife likes feeling like a small girl while

momentarily fixated on saving the kitty (91-93).

Tylers final assertion is the importance of a feminist reading of the text, because male

critics are wrong to assume that the wife in the story wants a child whereas female critics are

right to point out that the wifes needs are meagre, that the cat may also represent the childish

part of the wife that the husband wont indulge, that the wife loses her titles of possession

(wife) and becomes a girl after seeking out the cat, and that the gift of the orange cat at the
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end is another example of men repressing her identity (74). Although it is easy to agree with the

majority of the feminist viewpoint offered, there are alternative interpretations to the meaning of

the cat as a device used to diminish the wife or repress her identity. Perhaps, in fact, this orange

cat is the same kitty for which the wife sought so desperately, since the narrator notes that a

light has appeared in the square where the cat had gone missing just before the gift of the orange

cat is presented to the wife by the female maid from the male hotel manager who always went

out of his way to make the girl-wifes fantasies come true (94). Perhaps, if not the exact cat, the

orange cat is just a gift to indulge the girl-wife from the hotel manager that liked to gratify her

childish whims (92-94). Or, perhaps most likely, the gift of the orange cat is merely a modernist

tool that Hemingway employed to help create greater contrast between the husband-wife

relationship, seemingly mature but disinterested, and the wife-hotel manager relationship,

indulgent in immature fantasies, in order to further expose the bleakness of modern relationships

based on the sexual politics Tyler congratulates him on using so successfully (75).

Further evidence against Tylers arguments appear in the story Mr. and Mrs. Elliot

within In Our Time. Almost tossing Tylers argument on its head, the male character, Mr. Elliot,

seems more obsessed with having a child than his wife, although it remains unclear whether this

desire is based on his fears from previous rejection or perhaps from a male ego nervous to admit

impotency (85-87). In this story, from the same work as Cat in the Rain, the male character

experiences an alienation only alleviated through constantly drinking white wine while the wife

experiences a greater level of intimacy with her female friend with whom she can cry and find a

refuge to express her inner thoughts (86, 88). This evidence supports the idea that Hemingway,

rather than singling out the girl-wife in Cat in the Rain as a female character attempting to
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shed her male-enforced reflection, is only providing further proof of the bleakness and alienation

implicit in all modern relationships, experienced by males and females alike.

Finally, in Soldiers Home, Hemingway paints a tale about a war veteran that can only

objectify women and is not able to form a connection or relationship with any female except his

mother (69-77). Again, a male figure is placed outside the realms of healthy relationships with

the opposite sex. Although painting a crude picture of the common misogynistic idealization of

women as objects, the underlying theme of this story more strongly repeats the bleak outlook of

modern relationships for men, women, and especially those suffering from past experience in

war combat.

In conclusion, although Lisa Tyler offers several valid, new, and enlightening

interpretations of the characters in the story Cat in the Rain in Ernest Hemingways In Our

Time, I believe she has confused a modernist tool that Hemingway artfully employed to expose

the barrenness of relationships with Hemingways personal misogynistic reputation and has

thereby missed the greater context of the text within the work. Seeking to expose the

characteristically modern view of the isolation of relationships, Hemingway used both male and

female characters in In Our Time to further dramatize his modernist ideas from many different

vantage points another defining, modern literary trait.

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Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. In Our Time. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.

Tyler, Lisa. Id Rather Not Hear: Women and Men in Conversation in Cat in the Rain and

The Sea Change. Hemingway and Women: Female Critics and the Female Voice. Ed.

Lawrence R. Broer and Gloria Holland. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002.

Print.