Question: Does the cat in Hemingway’s story Cat in the Rain represent material desire or spiritual/emotional desire?
Ernest Hemingway, as a person, is a complex individual and that is clearly reflected in all of his works—most especially in Cat in the Rain. This incredibly short story was written with a lot of symbolism, the most important symbol being the cat. The cat represents both material and spiritual/emotional desire. The cat is a material desire because it represents a baby, a home and possesions that the wife wants. It also symbolizes emotional desire because it represents attention and stability and protection.
The cat represents a baby in two aspects. The first one is when the American wife calls the cat a ‘kitty’ while her husband and maid call it a cat. In Gieseler’s (2011) writing, Coulthard says that “it is interesting to note that in American English the pronunciation of ‘kitty’ is very close to the pronunciation of ‘kiddy’ which leads most readers to assume the couple to be childless and see the kitty as a potential child substitute”(p. 31).
The good weather in the beginning of the story may tell us that at first the marriage was fine. But later, there is some kind of a problem between the couple and the rain represents this problem. Neither of them go out in the rain, instead they stay inside the room. They both avoid solving the issue. The wife wants to fill the emptiness of their marrige with a baby, which she wants very much. She goes out in the rain and tries to get the cat which she also really wants. In the story we can see that in line 105 and 106 the wife says “I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her”. The ‘kitty’ here is the desired baby. She wants to have and take care of a baby.
The Essay on The Cat In The Rain
The Cat in The Rain In the short story the "The Cat in the Rain" by Ernest Hemingway, the cat is a symbol around which the story revolves. As a central symbol, the cat reveals the psychological state and emotional desires of the American wife. When the cat is first observed it is "crouched under one of the dripping green tables. The cat was trying to make herself so ...
Secondly, the wife wants a family when she says that she wants to eat at a table with her own silver and candles. The wife wants to be a family and the way to make a family is by having a baby. She feels very alone, with no attention from her husband and nobody that she knows around her because they are not in their own country. We understand this when Hemingway says “It was raining.[…] The motor cars were gone from the square by the war monument. Across the square in the doorway of the café a waiter stood looking out at the empty square”. She needs a companion that makes her happy and keep her from loneliness. She sees the cat as a companion and wants to take care of it. In the same way, she wants a baby to give attention to and have a family. Another interesting point is that Carlos Baker (1972) says that “Cat in the Rain” was about Hemingway, his wife Hadley and the manager and the maid at the Hotel Rapallo where the story was written in 1923 “[…] the Hemingways had left the chilly thaw of Switzerland and gone to Rapallo because Hadley had announced that she was pregnant” (p. 30).
So, the story seems to be related to Hemingway’s life. This is like what happens at the end of the story: the maid comes to the room with a cat but this was unexpected for the couple. We can relate the cat brought by the maid is the news of Hadley’s pregnancy. All of these aspects point out the cat represents a baby and a family.
The cat is crouched under one of the tables because it doesn’t want to get wet. It needs a safe place to escape from the rain outside. The American wife intends to rescue the poor cat because it doesn’t like the rain and it doesn’t belong outside. The cat needs protection and safety and the wife sees herself as the cat. Her relationship with his husband isn’t well and the husband is not interested with her desires. She wants to be safe in her marriage like the cat wants to be safe from the rain. Also, the cat is lonely outside, with nobody to help it. The American wife is in a foreign country, Italy, and she has nobody except for her husband, who does not pay attention to her. The couple is staying at a hotel room and the wife doesn’t feel like she is home. She is living in a strange place. Every woman would want a family, a home and a stable life but the American wife doesn’t have any of these— that’s why she see the kitty miserable outside alone in the rain and wants to save her and protect her. “I wanted that poor kitty. It isn’t any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain” the American wife says in the story. How would she know it is no fun being out in the rain? This only means that she is in the position as the cat and clearly she is not happy about not having stability, protection and a home. We can see her need of protection and stability in her thoughts about the hotel-keeper too. She likes his dignity and the way he wanted to serve her. She likes his old, heavy face and his big hands. We can perceive that many of the adjectives she uses to praise the hotel owner are related to stability, dignity and protection (Gieseler 32).
The Essay on Cat in the Rain Ernest Miller Hemingway
... reading and he has no desire to go out in such weather for the cat his wife wants so much. Although ... a kindness are opposed egoism of her husband. In this story, cat is the symbol of woman. Woman feels ... say directly that she is not satisfied with her family life. But the reader can see it in the ... cat in the rain wet, alone. She is neglected like a poor kitty. She needs to be loved (by her husband) ...
Another vital point is that the wife calls the cat a ‘she’. How could the wife know if the cat is a he or a she? The wife calls the cat a ‘she’ because she correlates herself with the cat. Benson (1990) talks about the ‘she’ point as,
When she sees the cat in the rain, she has no way of knowing it is a female, yet she immediately makes a sunconscious transference of her own sense of homelessness to the cat, and she wants to do for the cat what George will not do for her, provide a place of acceptance and comfort (p.252).
In addition, the cat represents the possesions of the American wife. Since she couldn’t find the cat, she wants different things such as growing her hair and a big knot at the back. She wants it to be spring again, brush her hair out in front of the mirror and buy some new clothes. But still, she wants the cat and the cat is all of her desires. She wants things that belong just to her by saying “I want to eat at a table with my own silver” in the story. In a different angle, Gieseler (2011) says,
The Essay on The Black Cat Wife Narrator Man
"The Black Cat," by Edgar Allan Poe "The Black Cat," a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, is about a man who is in jail confessing to murdering his wife. He starts of by stating that he was happily married to a nice beautiful woman, and the couple had many animals. Among those animals was a black cat named Pluto and this cat is the narrator's favorite animal. The cat and the narrator established a ...
When she notices this “cat trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on”, she relates to her in the sense that she also lives this way, so compact as possible, to not be dripped on: she does not confront her husband, despite of her apperent discontent with him; she uses her hair short, despite being “so tired of looking like a boy”; she is living in a hotel room and not in house, a home of her own, despite desiring one, as she later expresses (p. 34).
The wife’s desires are not important to the husband. The American wife lives the
life her husband wants. She wants different things but the husband is not interested in any of her desires. When she asks about growing her hair, the man wants her hair to keep her hair the way it is. They don’t even have a house to live in, they stay at the hotel. The American wife’s individuality is imprisoned by her husband. The wife realizes that she wants to be independent with her desires when she sees the cat trying to compact so that it would not get wet, just like she tries not to confront her husband about her desires.
To conclude, all of the material desires come with the emotional ones too. For this reason, the cat in this story symbolizes both material and emotional/spritual desires. When the cat represents a baby, it also represents a companionship, family, love and happiness. When the cat symbolizes a home it means stability, protection and family. The possesions also mean ownership, individuality, identity and independence. They are all connected to each other: we cannot seperate the material from the emotional.
References
Baker, Carlos. 1972. Hemingway, the writer as artist. United States of America: Princeton University Press.
Benson, Jackson J. 1990. New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. United States of America: Duke University Press.
Gieseler, Adriana L. S. 2011. The American Wife in the Rain: a Reading of Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain”. Porto Alegre: Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.
