A Tale of Two  Kitties: Readings of Hemingway's 'Cat In the Rain.'

I am reading an article by David Lodge, 'Analysis and Interpretation of a Realist Text ' (1980), in which he examines two analyses of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, ‘Cat InThe Rain’, by Carlos Baker (1952) and John V. Hagopian (1962) respectively. The story itself is an account of an American couple staying at an hotel on a wet day when both are confined indoors. The wife sees a cat outside in the rain and announces her intention of going out to rescue it. The husband is reading his book and shows only half-hearted interest. The wife goes downstairs and enlists the help of hotel staff to find the cat but it has disappeared. When she returns to their room she is fixated on getting a cat to alleviate her boredom, to the annoyance of her husband. While she is nagging him on the subject of getting a cat, the hotel maid knocks at the room door with a large tortoiseshell cat which the manager has sent up for the wife.

     The main points of the two analyses discussed in Lodge’s article may be summarised as follows:

Baker: The cat represents for the woman a comfortable bourgeois domesticity. The cat in the wife’s mind is associated with other things that she desires, (long hair, new clothes etc). The wife stands between the actual situation – being in a boring, dull hotel room in the rain with an inattentive husband – and the possibilities of new, exciting scenarios – getting new clothes, a different hairdo, having a cat. For Baker there is closure in the story as the cat is sent up to the room by the hotel manager. Baker assumes the cat at the end is the same cat as the desired ‘kitty’ seen earlier by the wife, although there is nothing in the text to suggest this is so.

Hagopian: The cat represents for the woman, a longed-for child. Various symbols in the story represent fertility (rain, the garden). The man in the rubber cape who appears in the garden represents contraception. Hagopian interprets the story as being about the childlessness of the couple and the wife’s desire for a child. The cat at the end of the story in Hagopian’s view, is not the originally desired ‘kitty’. It is a big, adult cat which cannot fulfil the wife’s desire for a child, therefore there is no closure at the end of the story.

     Having outlined these analyses, Lodge goes on to interpret them, pointing out problems and making his own structural analysis of the text. He agrees with Baker and Hagopian that the story is about a rift between a man and his wife. The ambiguity of the ending as to whether the cat presented is the one the wife originally saw, in Lodge’s view suggests that this is not the point of the story.

     While the idea of the cat as a child surrogate is a possible interpretation, Lodge finds no evidence for Hagopian’s suggestion that the wife desires a child, but in fact points to remarks in the text that are more fitting to a woman who is pregnant and having ‘irrational desires’. Lodge goes on to quote Baker’s biography of Hemingway in which he states that the story was in fact drawn from the Hemingways’ visit to Rapallo in 1923 and that Hadley Hemingway had at that time just become pregnant. However Lodge goes on to conclude that the childlessness or fecundity of the wife is irrelevant to the point of the story which the structural nature of his analysis leads him to identify as the opposition between joy and ennui in the marriage.

     I first read the story ‘Cat In The Rain’ when I was about halfway through reading Lodge’s article. The first reading did not give me any specific meaning although I was struck by the wife saying, “It isn’t any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain,” as if she identified with the cat.

     Considering the analyses offered, Baker’s interpretation seemed to be less an analysis than an account, lacking meaningful interpretation. The wife’s sense of loss is underplayed and not given any interpretation. Hagopian on the other hand, seems at pains to fit the story to his analysis. The idea of the rubber-caped man standing for contraception, while appealing to Freudian notions of transference, seems far-fetched and there is no real basis for the idea that the wife mourns the lack of a child.

     Having read the information about Hadley Hemingway’s pregnancy towards the end of the article, I re-read the story and immediately found evidence to support the thesis that the story in fact explores the fears and uncertainties of facing the prospect of parenthood for the first time.

     The cat is female, thus it offers twin symbols of motherhood and petted baby. The concern of the wife for the cat’s safety and security is frequently reiterated. “Poor kitty, trying to keep dry under a table.”  “No fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain.” Such comments show the displaced concern of the wife for her own security as a pregnant woman needing safety and support. The apparently arbitrary demands to eat at her own table are clearly not irrational but reflect a nesting instinct, the need for a permanent home, rather than hotel rooms.

     The other characters in the story show an exaggerated concern for her well being which becomes understandable if she is indeed pregnant. Why else the reiterated advice not to get wet, from her husband, the hotel manager and the maid? If she is pregnant, the wife herself is on the threshold of a new and responsible persona. The padrone makes her feel very small yet important because of his protective stance. The wonder of the child inside her is reflected in the moment of feeling herself to be of supreme importance.

     The husband however, is oblivious to all this. The wife returns to the room and her feelings are confused. Her importance is not noticed by her husband. She doesn’t know why she wants the kitty. Her uneasiness translates into confused desires for long hair, new clothes, some sort of new activity, yet the very desire for long hair, the statement that she “got tired of looking like a boy,” emphasises the position of the woman setting out on the journey from immature girl to the maturity of motherhood. At the same time there is a yearning back to the freedoms of youth in the desire for new clothes and springtime. A clinging to the familiar pleasures of girlhood pulls in the opposite direction to the mother’s desire for a stable home life and security for her child.

     There is conflict and fear here; a fear of losing the fun of travel, freedom, perhaps even of losing the euphoric relationship of the newly-wed; a fear of being trapped in a boring relationship balanced with the need for a secure future and love for her unborn child. The wife is poised between her changing roles and she has little choice over the future. The story, for me, represents a crossroads and the ambiguous delivery of the (probably) wrong cat merely emphasises how she must resolve all this for herself and how others do not understand her dilemma.

     None of the analyses in Lodge’s article bring in any of these points. Although Lodge makes passing reference to the wife’s possible pregnancy, he doesn’t see it as important to the meaning of the story. I am conscious that all these analyses were written by men while I am a woman, aware of how it feels to contemplate bearing a first child. The story is of course, written by a man, although mostly from the wife’s viewpoint. It would take a very sensitive man and an accomplished writer to appreciate the wife’s feelings and embed them so skilfully in the story. Hemingway’s mastery of the short story certainly makes this a possibility. It is also possible that these pointers are unconsciously written into the story and in fact the story is ‘meant’ to be about a supposed rift as the other analyses claim. I cannot, however, find any evidence in the story to support such an interpretation.

     It is interesting that the analysis I finally arrived at did not occur to me until I was primed with the information about Hadley Hemingway’s pregnancy, so it is also possible that I have read more into the wife’s concerns than is actually there, based on my own feelings about marriage and motherhood.

     What of the husband’s role? His part in the story is underplayed and passive. His remarks are for the most part inconsequential, following the lead taken by his wife. Far from bickering or asserting himself, he avoids confrontation, taking refuge in his book each time she attempts to make any demand on him. If the character represents Hemingway himself, as Baker claims in his biography, then he is taking a backseat in the story and foregrounding the feelings of his wife, yet he too must have had concerns at forthcoming changes in their relationship. If the wife is pregnant, he too faces the loss of youthful freedom and will have to shoulder the new responsibilities of parenthood. Such fears may leak out in his wistful comments about her hair, “I like it the way it is. You look pretty darn nice.” (reproduced in Rice& Waugh 1989,p40). He seems unable to articulate his feelings. Instead of confronting or exploring her seemingly irrational statements, he can only say, “Yeah” and is eventually goaded into telling her to read a book, which is his own means of escaping from the unknown changes to come.

    A major aspect of the story seems to be a failure of communication between husband and wife but this is not the whole point as communication problems also occur between the wife, the hotel manager and the maid. The misunderstanding that ensues when the manager sends up the wrong cat – any cat – despite the best of intention, expands the wife’s feelings of isolation. Even if the cat is the right cat, (we are left in doubt about this at the end of the story), the misfit between the reality of the cat and the wife’s expectations of a ‘kitty’ show a misfit between her inner and outer worlds. The point then is not a rift between husband and wife, but a rift between the wife and the rest of the world, albeit a temporary one, occasioned by the new persona of impending motherhood being thrust upon her.

     The wife’s concluding statement, “If I can’t have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat” (ibid:41), seems to articulate her willingness to give up the freedom of youth for security and comfort. Reading the story again, every line seemed to shout corroboration for my supposition, but is that just my readerly response, and if it is, is it any less valid than the other analyses in Lodge’s article?

 

References:

Baker, C. (1963) Hemingway: The Writer As Artist, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.

Hagopian, J.V. (1975) ‘Symmetry in “Cat In The Rain”, in Benson, J.J. (ed.) The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays, Duke University Press, Durham, N.C.

Hemingway, E. (1925) ‘Cat In the Rain,’ in Lodge, D. (1980) ‘Analysis and Interpretation of the Realist Text’ (see below).

Lodge, D. (1980) ‘Analysis and Interpretation of the Realist Text’ in Rice, P. & Waugh, P. (eds.) (1989, 1996 ed.) Modern Literary Theory: a Reader, Arnold, London.

 

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