Memory and Identity

Atwood suggests that identity is not formed as if through a gift to each individual at birth but rather one constructed in life and most importantly as a result of the human struggle in life. While individuals might be influenced by their families, their environments, or their friendships, the things that make the biggest difference are to do with conflict.

Cat’s Eye depicts how identities are forged in childhood years even before adolescence begins. As a child, Elaine experienced severe bullying from her friends. This ultimately defined who she was as an adult both as a mother, fiercely guarding her daughters, as a wife, willing to walk across matrimonial barriers and as an artist, producing dark mystical works that need an understanding of her life to unlock their meaning. However, Elaine does not just take on the role of the victim, she also begins to merge with her bullies and manipulates others in the same fashion.

When Elaine returns to Toronto, she is fifty years old and a painter of some repute however she has little self-worth and very little enthusiasm. On bad mornings all she can remember is Cordelia and the torment she endured at Cordelia’s hands. Her identity and her memories seem to be linked. She sees a picture of herself on a poster advertising her show and she feels she has achieved a public face however her private self is buried under the weight of suppressed memories, and yet memory is the only tool she has to reconstruct who she is and how she came to be that way.

The problem is that memory is not stable and therefore identity is subject to shifting perspectives. Objects and images that Elaine forgets reappear throughout the novel, attesting to the non-linearity of time and she forgets the experience of bullying, describing it as missing time. This process of forgetting supports the idea of a linear life but forgetting can also be less permanent than it seems. Many of the memories are hidden but she suffers under their weight. The only way to discover her identity and to free herself is to acknowledge what happened to her.

Memory and Identity Quotes

You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away. (Elaine) Chapter 1

There is no one I would ever tell this to, except Cordelia. But which Cordelia? The one I have conjured up, the one with the rolltop boots and the turned-up collar, or the one before, or the one after? There is never only one, of anyone. (Elaine) Chapter 2

Alongside my real life I have a career, which may not qualify as exactly real. I am a painter. (Elaine) Chapter 3

Grace and Carol are standing among the apple trees, just where I left them. But they don’t look the same. They don’t look at all like the pictures of them I’ve carried around in my head for the past four months, shifting pictures in which only a few features stand out… A third girl is with them. (Elaine) Chapter 13

I’m a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good.
I know too much to be good. I know myself.
I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly. (Elaine, after helping the drunk lady) Chapter 28

I’ve forgotten things, I’ve forgotten that I’ve forgotten them. I remember my old school, but only dimly, as if I was last there five years ago instead of five months. I remember going to Sunday school, but not the details. (Elaine) Chapter 38

There are several diseases of the memory. Forgetfulness of nouns, for instance, or of numbers. Or there are more complex amnesias. (Elaine) Chapter 47

I imitate relief. I feel free, and weightless.
But I am not free, of Cordelia. (Elaine) Chapter 63

I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can’t even see it, something that’s drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. (Elaine) Chapter 65

Time and Ageing

Atwood explores time by presenting different Elaines at various times through memory and recall. This gives the reader a full understanding of dimensional time as explained by her brother, Stephen, a physics student who teaches her: ‘Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.’ He believes that one could bend time if they knew enough and could ‘travel backward in time and exist in two places at once’ if they travelled faster than light. Memories are the vehicle that is faster than light and the reader sees Elaine as more than just a person travelling along in a straight line of time.

The multiple dimensions of time that exist are seen in the various coming of age themes in the novel. First, Elaine moves through her childhood, from innocence to trauma through bullying and finally into adolescence. Second, she moves from adolescence to young adulthood discovering men, independence and a talent for painting. Finally, there is older Elaine, but still connected to the younger versions of herself, having to make another transition upon returning to Toronto to forgive and forget.

In addition to these hurdles, Elaine has little self-assurance that she has attained the kind of wisdom that would compensate for the discomforts of aging. Her obsession with Cordelia from her past still haunts her although her career is successful. Success also means that she is older. This is the hint of mortality in the novel, that while the present might be composed of the past, there remains the sense that Elaine’s life and that of the universe itself is leading up to an end.

Time and Ageing Quotes

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once. (Stephen to Elaine) Chapter 1

I see that there will be no end to imperfection, or to doing things the wrong way. Even if you grow up, no matter how hard you scrub, whatever you do, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, somebody frowning. (Elaine reflecting on women in magazines) Chapter 26

I made this right after she died. I suppose I wanted to bring her back to life. I suppose I wanted her timeless, though there is no such thing on earth. These pictures of her, like everything else, are drenched in time. (Elaine about the painting of her mother) Chapter 28

I’m beginning to feel that I’ve discovered something worth knowing. There’s a way out of places you want to leave, but can’t. Fainting is like stepping sideways, out of your own body, out of time or into another time. When you wake up it’s later. Time has gone on without you. (Elaine) Chapter 32

Time is missing.
Nobody mentions anything about this missing time, except my mother. Once in a while she says, ‘That bad time you had,’ and I am puzzled. (Elaine) Chapter 38

The past isn’t quaint while you’re in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you can see it as decor, not as the shape your life’s been squeezed into. (Elaine) Chapter 64

Gender, Feminism and Rights

Like the signs on the door of her school the world seems keen to divide its population into boys and girls. However Elaine’s confusion about the sign, stemming from her enjoyable childhood with her brother, exemplifies her ongoing attitude toward gender. Elaine understands boys, but girls seem confusing in their complex ways and eventually are cruel to her. Men may present as having power but Elaine knows she can take that away with sharp words or complete withdrawal. Placing a male muse in her painting, wearing trousers, playing with insects without being upset, are a few of the things that show gender stereotypes are being questioned in Atwood’s novel. But it is not pushing gender stereotypes for the sake of feminism.

Against her personal wishes, Margaret Atwood’s novels have been described as strongly feminist. However it is not strictly that simple with Cat’s Eye as it follows closer to Atwood’s own position that her novels are not feminist but social commentary. The novel deals with the differences between men and women and in particular the cruelties specific to each gender. It also raises the idea that those cruelties play out in the form of a female identity. Although male struggles are present in the novel, the most potent examples of physical and psychological damage in Elaine’s life occur in her relationships with women. So much so that when an adult Elaine tries to attend feminist meetings she does not feel comfortable as her pain was not from men alone.

Another social issue at the time and presented in the novel is abortion rights. The artist Susie performs an at-home termination of her pregnancy that ultimately requires Elaine to take her to the hospital. At the time of this incident, the 1960s, abortion in Canada as well as the United States was illegal. Incidents such as that involving Susie were not uncommon.

Gender, Feminism and Rights Quotes

I am very curious about the BOYS door. How is going in through a door different if you’re a boy? (Elaine) Chapter 9

I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder. (Elaine) Chapter 9

‘So you don’t feel it’s sort of demeaning to be propped up by a man?’ she says.
‘Women prop up men all the time,’ I say. ‘What’s wrong with a little reverse propping?’
(Andrea to Elaine – interview) Chapter 16

Other people thought it was about female slavery, others that it was a stereotyping of women in negative and trivial domestic roles. But it was only my mother cooking, in the ways and places she used to cook, in the late forties. (About Elaine’s paintings of her mother) Chapter 28

I ride to the hospital with Susie, in the back of the ambulance. She is now semiconscious, and I hold her hand, which is cold and small. ‘Don’t tell Josef,’ she whispers to me. The pink nightie brings it home to me: she is none of the things I’ve thought about her, she never has been. (Elaine) Chapter 57

Power and Bullying

There are moments in the novel when power is seized by an individual over others. The prominent case of this is the bullying that Elaine experienced as a young child. Elaine tries to please her friends, ‘terrified of losing them’, and follow the primary bully Cordelia’s rules so that she is not left out. Elaine constantly fears Cordelia to the point where she wishes to become invisible. Her ‘chewed skin’ and fainting show the trauma she is experiencing. Noticeable in this bullying is the response of those around Elaine, her first two friends Grace and Carol turn on her when Cordelia appears, perhaps thankful that they are not the target. Mrs Smeath is confident that the bullying is deserved as Elaine has not fitted into church life to Mrs Smeath’s satisfaction. Mrs Risley, who reveals she knew more about the incidents later, is quietly absent. Mr Risley seems unaware.

However, power and bullying is not restricted to the protagonist. Later, Elaine herself will be controlling and use her sharp mouth to hurt others. Mr Banerji is not promoted, leading Elaine to speculate that he must have been subjected to some shoving on the Toronto streets too. Stephen is taken against his will and killed by power hungry hijackers. These examples of struggle show the human condition in a state of entropy like a universe described by Mr Risley in catastrophic crisis.

Power and Bullying Quotes

This is what Mummie says when she’s angry: ‘I am disappointed in you.’ If she gets very disappointed, Cordelia’s father will be called into it, and that is serious. None of the girls jokes or drawls when mentioning him. (About Cordelia’s family) Chapter 14

Each cluster of girls excludes some other girls, but all boys. (Elaine) Chapter 19

When I was put into the hole I knew it was a game; now I know it is not one. I feel sadness, a sense of betrayal. Then I feel the darkness pressing down on me; then terror. (Elaine) Chapter 20

In the endless time when Cordelia had such power over me, I peeled the skin off my feet. I did it at night, when I was supposed to be sleeping. (Elaine) Chapter 21

All fathers except mine are invisible in daytime; daytime is ruled by mothers. But fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home the fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to them than meets the eye. And so we believe the belt. (Elaine) Chapter 32

I can see this idea gathering in Cordelia as well. Maybe she’s gone too far, hit, finally, some core of resistance in me. If I refuse to do what she says this time, who knows where my defiance will end? (Elaine) Chapter 35

I have such a mean mouth that I become known for it. I don’t use it unless provoked, but then I open my mean mouth and short, devastating comments come out of it. (Elaine) Chapter 43

Josef is rearranging me. (Elaine) Chapter 55

My brother Stephen died five years ago. I shouldn’t say died: was killed. I try not to think of it as murder, although it was, but as some kind of accident, like an exploding train. Or else a natural catastrophe, like a landslide. What they call for insurance purposes an act of God. (Elaine) Chapter 68

Environment

Elaine is aware of the environment and the natural world in all of the novel’s time periods. In her childhood, her father discusses environmental destruction with her and her friends. Her father shows her an infestation of budworms, saying: ‘Remember this… you won’t see an infestation like this again for a long time.’ Elaine thinks that this is ‘the way I’ve heard people talk about forest fires, or the war: respect and wonderment mixed in with the sense of catastrophe’. In her adult life she sees that the predictions have come true and that urban sprawl and corporate greed are swallowing a once sleepy town. Whilst Mr Risley is an ambassador for the environment, Stephen is also its strong advocate, possessing an unquenchable curiosity about the universe but the catastrophe comes for him too and his life is taken too early.

Environment Quotes

‘Remember this,’ our father says. ‘This is a classic infestation. You won’t see an infestation like this again for a long time.’ It’s the way I’ve heard people talk about forest fires, or the war: respect and wonderment mixed in with the sense of catastrophe. (Elaine) Chapter 13

‘There are no limits to human greed,’ says my father. (Elaine) Chapter 24

‘Fooling with Nature, sir,’ says Mr Banerji. I know already that this is the right response. Investigating Nature is one thing and so is defending yourself against it, within limits, but fooling with it is quite another. (Elaine) Chapter 24

He says Toronto is getting overpopulated, and also polluted. He says the lower Great Lakes are the world’s largest sewer and that if we knew what was going into the drinking water we would all become alcoholics. As for the air, it’s so full of chemicals we should be wearing gas masks. (Elaine about Mr Risley) Chapter 58

Art, Science and Religion

Elaine’s world is a balance and testing of three fields of discipline that have long been both in tension and in synchronicity: art, science and religion. Elaine’s career as a painter is in contrast to the vocations of her father and brother both of whom are scientists, an entomologist and physicist, respectively. The entomologist explores microscopic elements while the physicist explores the largest elements of the universe. Atwood’s treatment of the science-based characters suggests that theirs is the noble pursuit with these characters seeming to avoid the everyday, mundane problems that trouble other characters. However, the life of the scientist may appear plain and unmemorable.

Religion is introduced when Elaine starts attending church around the age of nine with the family of her friend, Grace Smeath, despite her own agnostic parents’ reluctance. She initially finds the ceremonies captivating after she comes home the first day, thinking that the stars ‘no longer look cold and white and remote’ but instead now ‘look watchful’. Religion directly replaces the coldness of science and gives Elaine hope. Even after the disappointment of the overheard conversation when Mrs Smeath suggests Elaine is a heathen and deserves bullying, Elaine finds solace in the Virgin Mary rather than dismissing religion altogether. However, the lives of the religious characters may appear hypocritical or conservative.

A third element for Elaine, or maybe her interpretation of the previous two, is art. Elaine paints religious motifs and draws scientific anatomies with equal vigour. She calls one painting, Unified Field Theory, referencing the theory in physics presented by Stephen, but the painting itself is of a ‘wooden bridge’, connecting her brother’s scientific passion with his childhood decision to bury a jar of marbles under the bridge. Other paintings contain cross-sections of insects that only an entomologist would observe as to the untrained eye they are pink splotches.

In other paintings, Elaine portrays religious motifs such as the Virgin Mary who appears to her during her childhood near-death experience in a frozen river. Although she had trouble with the Smeathses religion, depicted in the many Mrs Smeath paintings that express her hatred, here this Mary figure reappears in that same Unified Field Theory painting, where, between her hands, at the level of her heart, she holds a glass object: an oversized cat’s eye marble with a blue centre. The cat’s eye is a symbol of Elaine herself. However, the life of the artist might be viewed as passionate and volatile.

Art, Science and Religion Quotes

Our curiosity is supposed to have limits, though these have never been defined exactly. (Elaine) Chapter 7

Carol asks me what church I go to, and I say I don’t know. In fact we never go to church. (Elaine) Chapter 9

‘Every educated person should know the Bible,’ he says. (Mr Risley) Chapter 18

Your elbows, especially your elbows: aging begins at the elbows and metastasizes. This is religion. Voodoo and spells. I want to believe in it, the creams, the rejuvenating lotions, the transparent unguents in vials that slick on like roll-top glue. (Elaine) Chapter 21

I want to believe you should love your neighbors as yourself and the Kingdom of God is within you. But all of this seems less and less possible. (Elaine) Chapter 23

I made this right after she died. I suppose I wanted to bring her back to life. I suppose I wanted her timeless, though there is no such thing on earth. These pictures of her, like everything else, are drenched in time. (Elaine about the painting of her mother) Chapter 28

‘It’s God’s punishment,’ says Mrs. Smeath. ‘It serves her right.’ (Aunt Mildred and Mrs Smeath about Elaine) Chapter 33

‘Time is a dimension,’ he says. ‘You can’t separate it from space. Space-time is what we live in.’ He says there are no such things as discrete objects which remain unchanged, set apart from the flow of time. (Stephen to Elaine about time) Chapter 40