Cat’s Eye in Reading with Style

Sep 11, 2011 Mickey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-favorites

The feeling that I am left with after reading Cat’s Eye is the exact same feeling I had after I finished reading George Orwell’s 1984: a feeling of such weight and pressure that it reminds me of the weighted compression vests that are routinely given to severely autistic children. Yes, I will admit to being curious enough to try one on, and I was unnerved with how much I liked it. Oddly enough, instead of feeling constricted and claustrophobic, the weight feels strangely calming and centering. B
The feeling that I am left with after reading Cat’s Eye is the exact same feeling I had after I finished reading George Orwell’s 1984: a feeling of such weight and pressure that it reminds me of the weighted compression vests that are routinely given to severely autistic children. Yes, I will admit to being curious enough to try one on, and I was unnerved with how much I liked it. Oddly enough, instead of feeling constricted and claustrophobic, the weight feels strangely calming and centering. Both novels deal with stories of a pressure from without (governmental or social) collapsing into the self to create a new pressure within.
Cat’s Eye is about a woman, Elaine, who returns to her hometown searching for connections towards familiar places and people. She remembers her childhood, which was dominated by complicated relationships with other females. From an idyllic early childhood spent in the wilderness with her family (a bit like Eden?), Elaine gets a sharp introduction into female society when her first childhood friends bully her incessantly in a way that is described pitch-perfectly. Their constant critiques of Elaine lead her into a lifetime of insecurity and watchfulness. Throughout her life, her suspicion and paranoia of other women never abates, and her yearning for reconnection, particularly with the ringleader of her childhood friends, is never satisfied.
In a lesser writer’s hands, this story could be a godawful mess. Atwood, through her phenomenal skills with imagery, is able to fully explore the topic without being too melodramatic or mawkish. Her talent with creating characters who are complicated and interesting adds shading that keeps the story from becoming too “after-school special” or formulaic.
I think that when you come to your middle ages, you realize that the people who matter most to you are the people you spend your life with, no matter how imperfect or faulty they might be. Your life becomes intertwined with other lives whether you’ve consciously chosen them or not. There is less of a chance of or belief in “a clean start”. There is more comfort in someone who has known you since childhood than in a person you just met. Elaine, in a sense, is reaching out for that grounding sense, but she finds nothing she can hold onto.
Being an artist, Elaine spends much of her time recreating the culture of her childhood. A fact which is emphasized in an interview with a bored journalist who conducted the interview in a way that made it obvious that she already believed that she knew what Elaine thought and felt. Elaine rebels against this, although in a rather passive way, not really expecting any understanding. Elaine says that she considers herself as a product of the 40’s, not the 70’s where the journalist placed her.
What I found especially interesting was (in my understanding) the subtle critique of feminism that I felt in the book. This is the book that followed The Handmaid’s Tale, and I thought it featured several sharp but well concealed jabs towards feminism. I started a thread on this subject, and no one else saw it my way. And I may be projecting because I personally reject the label because I find it too restricting. It seems to me that she draws a direct line from the social norms that were around when she was a child and the social norms in feminist circles as if to emphasize that although the rules have changed, there are still rules in place. The harsh and judgmental nature of feminine society (at least through the eyes of Elaine) had not changed. What I find personally more abhorrent was the expropriation of her art to fit the narrow confines of the feminist world-view. There was a few passages in which I thought this was very clearly spelled out: For example, when another artist picks out which of Elaine’s art pieces to show during a makeshift women’s art show:

“The Virgin Mary pieces are in the show, and all of the Mrs. Smeaths [an adult from Elaine’s childhood who approved of the bullying]. I thought there were too many of her, but Jody wanted them. “It’s woman as anticheesecake,” she said, “Why should it always be young, beautiful women? It’s good to see the aging female body treated with compassion for a change.” This, only in more high-flown language, is what she’s written in the catalogue.”

This violation of the meaning of her artwork bothered me, because Jody is taking something complicated and profound and making it into something simplistic, and this seems to prefer ascribing a trendy political view instead of trying to understand Elaine’s personal meaning There seems to be no acknowledgement that the meaning behind the piece is anything but a simple inversion of norms, merely because it depicts an aging woman (which is a reduction of the subject, Mrs. Smeath, to nothing more than her aging body). This passivity and reluctance to discuss meaning with others about her paintings continues to the present-day showing of her work, her artwork which depicts her brother’s death becomes a generic statement about men and war. Elaine seems to find the showing artificial and draining, standing sourly on the sidelines with an idle wish to destroy her artwork because she is not allowed to control the meaning after finishing the pieces. It’s as if the only avenue in which she can express herself is drowned out by this foreign and topical ideology.
This is probably my favorite book of Atwood’s so far. It is particularly moody and nostalgic with a fiercely interior meaning that is intensely personal. Atwood is on top of her game and this would be the first book of hers I would recommend.

The. Most. Amazing. Book. Ever.

This is essentially a book about how girls and women interact with each other. It's pretty brutal, but very truthful as well. Being a member of a profession which is traditionally female (teaching), I can vouch for the ways in which both girls and women gang up on others.

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Feb 24, 2012 Rosemary rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, ultimate-teen-guide

A successful painter revisits Toronto, where she spent a difficult childhood, bullied by other girls. Not an easy read because of the cruelty that girls can inflict on each other, but interesting how she triumphs by using the buried pain in her art.

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Aug 31, 2013 Susan rated it really liked it

Shelves: women, world-lit-na-canada, canada-reads

A coming-of-age look into what women "of a certain generation" experienced as they grew up, grew older. Elaine is a "50ish" woman in the 1980's who has returned to the Toronto she once escaped from. She is coming for a retrospective showing of her art. Her art is connected to her life. As Elaine recalls her childhood in Toronto we travel to post-war Canada. She demonstrates the viciousness of children and adults as she recalls her school years. This work exemplifies the drastic changes that wome ...more

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