Feminist Consciousness in Hemingway's "Cat in the Rain".

Authors Avatar by nju_eric (student)

Fang Liang

Professor Ding Yanren

Academic Writing for English Majors

12 December 2012

Feminist Consciousness in Cat in the Rain

Cat in the Rain is one of Hemingway’s most famous short stories, depicting an American couple spends their holiday in an Italian hotel. The American wife in the story sees a cat crouched under a table in the rain and wants to bring it to her room. When she goes to search for the cat, however, it is gone. So she returns to the hotel room and has a conversation with her husband about finding out the cat and then about changing her whole life. Her husband, however, seems to be terribly annoyed by her and not interested at all. Eventually, the cat is delivered to her room by a maid at the request of the hotelkeeper. These images altogether make it easy to consider the story as an episode of marriage crisis. However, I want to argue that Hemingway conveyed in the story has much to do with the feminist consciousness.

We can feel depression and isolation of the American wife from the very beginning of the story. She is in a hotel of a foreign country where they are the only Americans, having to speak an unfamiliar language, with nobody else known but her husband who turns out to be indifferent to her. Her depression mainly comes from him who neglects her needs and feelings. Thus, she is eager to be rescued and to get rid of this depressing situation. At that time, she finds a cat in the rain and wants to help the cat out of the severe environment. The cat is a significant clue that runs through this story. According to Wikipedia,

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“‘Though Hemingway learned as a professional reporter how to report facts as they were, he felt that there was a limit to representing reality’ (Kikuchi, 149). This is what he conveys through Cat in the Rain. The idea that there is‘something below the surface’ to this story is particularly evident in relation to the cat.”

In western culture, cat has close relationship of metaphor with women. “Cat” in English is refers to “evil-minded women,” so the cat in this novel can be seen as the American wife. Their similarity is being lonely, adrift, insecurity and they also can’t control their ...

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